AN AESTHETIC OF ETHICS: SYLVIE GERMAIN`S LEVINASIAN

AN AESTHETIC OF ETHICS: SYLVIE GERMAIN’S LEVINASIAN ALLEGORY OF
MODERNITY
by
MICHAEL J. PAPARONE
(Under the Direction of Ronald Bogue)
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the influence of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy, as
presented in Totality and Infinity, on Sylvie Germain’s novel L’Enfant Méduse. The
underlying philosophical question of this study examines the viability and effects of
dialectical logic as found in oppositions between aesthetics and ethics as well as between
history and the individual. The result is a meditation on the ways in which physical and
intellectual violence have been represented and transmitted, culminating in an
identification of how Levinas and Germain suggest a more purely ethical and aesthetic
future for the human sciences.
INDEX WORDS:
Levinas, Germain, Totality, Infinity, Méduse, aesthetics, ethics, dialectic,
dependent origination, history, individual, psychism, Other,
transcendence, myth, fable
AN AESTHETIC OF ETHICS: SYLVIE GERMAIN’S LEVINASIAN ALLEGORY OF
MODERNITY
by
MICHAEL J. PAPARONE
B.A., North Carolina State University, 2003
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
ATHENS, GEORGIA
2009
© 2009
Michael J. Paparone
All Rights Reserved
AN AESTHETIC OF ETHICS: SYLVIE GERMAIN’S LEVINASIAN ALLEGORY OF
MODERNITY
by
MICHAEL J. PAPARONE
Electronic Version Approved:
Maureen Grasso
Dean of the Graduate School
The University of Georgia
August 2009
Major Professor:
Ronald Bogue
Committee:
Thomas Cerbu
Timothy Raser
iv
DEDICATION
For my grandfather Benny Paparone, whose benevolence, selflessness and eternal
optimism remains a constant guide.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER
1
Introduction ....................................................................................................................1
2
“Chez soi” and the Fables of Youth .............................................................................12
3
Encountering the Other ................................................................................................26
4
Vengeance, Justice and Transcendence .......................................................................38
5
Conclusions ..................................................................................................................51
REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................69
Chapter 1- Introduction
Sylvie Germain’s writing defies generic classification. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s “nouveau
roman” is perhaps the closest predecessor to her style, which privileges description over
narration. Germain elaborates on the “nouveau roman” by translating characters’ perceptions into
the language of fables, legends, and the anecdotal format of the Torah. These passages appear in
a variety of rhetorical frames, from essay to ekphrasis. She endorses the interpretation of her
works as a disruption of generic conventions, stating that her motivation is that “le désir se relève,
il se déplace” (Germain 115). She offers the explanation that
Je ne peux pas dire que j’aie un auteur privilégié. Déjà pour une raison simple,
c’est que je ne pensais pas du tout être romancière. Même si le rapport à l’écriture
est important, il se situe sur le même plan que le rapport à la peinture, au cinéma,
à la philosophie. Il existe un ensemble d’influences plus ou moins conscientes
(107)
Her interest in exploring the affinities between literature and other disciplines in the humanities
intersect in her novel L’Enfant Méduse. In this novel Germain presents a Levinasian allegory of
modernity, or an aesthetic of ethics.
Ancestral biography is the most consistent theme in Germain’s oeuvre. Families are
united foremost by symmetry and silence in her novels. Her first two novels, Le Livre des Nuits
and Nuits d’Ambre, trace the lineage of a single family. Each successive generation produces
sets of twins. Germain uses symmetry, whether in the physical counterparts of her early novels
or the doubling of individual consciousnesses of her later novels, to represent the duality of
human experience. Her characters are often presented in situations where they are faced with the
choice between selflessness or selfishness, whereby they may follow the path of either the sacred
or the profane. The choice they must make is essentially to transcend or to be damned. The
fundamental incompatibility of these conditions produces silence. Characters are divided by
2
irreconcilable oppositions, and as a result they cease to communicate with one another. There are
exceptions to this rule, where the death of one sympathetic twin results in the incorporation of
their identity into the survivor (as is the case with Augustin and Mathurin in Le Livre des Nuits).
The resuling structure of her novels suggests that ancestral curses characterize filial relationships,
often propelling characters toward madness.
Germain presents the family as a paradigm for both human existence and society. By
doing so, she establishes a consistent logic for the structure of her novels. Being is bivalent; one
of the two choices in a given situation will be correct, and one will be incorrect. Thus the moral
center of her novels is easily distinguishable and rarely questionable. In her works, characters
who attempt to maintain filial bonds suffer frustration and madness. Characters that go beyond
filial bonds are rewarded with prosperity. However, neither the family unit nor society is on trial.
It is rather a question of transcendence versus immanence. Change brings prosperity and
resistance brings misfortune. Germain’s moral centers are influenced by her interests in Christian
mysticism and rabbinical midrash. Both of these traditions support the perspective that the goal
of the individual is to transform the self by a more intimate knowledge of the divine.
Transformation of the self is contingent upon spiritual evolution, which explains why Germain
privileges the characters that attempt to exceed their facticity. Each successive generation
presents the possibility for a closer encounter with the divine, and thus for the evolution of the
individual and society.
Germain’s moral logic corresponds to the conception of history presented in her fiction.
Most of her novels take place during World War I, World War II, or the Algerian War. She does
not present war as a binary opposition between righteous cause and malicious intent. Germain
deconstructs the prevailing conceptions of war; right and wrong are subsumed under the mutual
3
condition of violence. As a result, she presents war in terms of disfigurement. In Le Livre des
Nuits, one generation fights in World War I, and another in World War II. In the first case,
Theodor-Faustin receives a wound that divides his face into two distinct halves. The result is
total physical disfigurement, a speech impediment, and an entirely hostile reaction to others,
which is the opposite of his previous disposition. His grandchildren, Augustin and Mathurin, are
drafted into World War II. One of the twins, whose identity is not revealed, is blown to bits when
a bomb detonates nearby. The surviving twin absorbs his identity, which causes confusion and
ultimately alienation when he returns home to their mates. Disfigurement is symbolic of that
which prohibits evolution. War is, in many cases, an event that depletes resources and prevents
progress. Diplomacy, on the other hand, is an action that reflects the privileged theme of
divinely-inspired transformation of the self, whether that self is an individual or a society.
Germain again endorses the notion that to prohibit change is disfiguring, ultimately constructing
non-productive divisions of the self and society.
Germain enhances these themes by communicating them through primarily didactic
genres. Myth, legend and fable are the most commonly used genres in her novels. Myth is not
used as extensively as the others. She adheres to the conventional use of myth as a story of
origins, which corresponds to her primary interest in families as paradigmatic of society. Le
Livre des Nuits begins “ex nihilo,” with Charles-Victor Peniel emerging from the primordial
chaos and void of night. Charles-Victor is soon replaced by his son Theodore-Faustin, who
becomes a Zeus-like tyrant, sometimes exiling and sometimes reproducing with his children.
Myth occupies the un-evolved end of the spectrum of civilization in her novels, which is an
elaboration of her theologically-motivated moral system. Legends account for the progression of
her novels. The fantastic nature of her prose evokes the sense that the family histories are not
4
authentic. However, they come to be regarded as historical by later generations and thereby come
to qualify as legend. Germain’s conception of history is twofold: history is made up of actual
events that are used to propel her semiosis, and apparently fictional ancestral histories that shape
future belief. Fables, which incorporate both proverbs and fairy tales, are nearly as common as
legends in Germain’s novels. Fables are stories that present conflicting perspectives in order to
teach a moral lesson. She uses fables in situations where each pair of twins, or each generation, is
presented with the choice of progressing or resisting change, which is the fundamental action
common among her novels. Each of these situations is presented as a fable, in which according
to the author, virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. The result can be conceived of as a
teleological narrative spectrum that proceeds from amorality to transcendence, from myth to
revealed truth--a notion of progress defined by successive encounters with the divine.
The distance imposed by the author between the characters and reader suggests that the
characters are to be understood as exempla rather than personae. This distance could be a
function of genre, given that the didactic tone of her works does not encourage empathetic
relationships between readers and characters. However, a definite systematicity emerges as one
proceeds through Germain’s novels. Characters demonstrate regular response patterns when
involved in or reacting to recurring events and situations. Since the characters do so, readers
have the sense that the myths, legends, and fables of Germain’s narrative spectrum make
reference to a system that transcends the “mise-en-scène”.
Sylvie Germain uses Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy as the basis for the situations
and interactions in her novels. Germain earned her doctorate in philosophy under Levinas’
guidance. She has spoken explicitly of his influence on her thought and writings:
5
Mes livres s’inscrivent dans cette conviction de l’importance de l’autre: on se
constitue par l’autre, grâce à l’autre, jusque dans le conflit, dans un affrontement
qui est peut-être la première forme de la Lutte avec l’ange, cette image biblique
située au départ de mes premiers romans. Mes livres sont très imprégnés par ce
passage opéré par Lévinas du niveau éthique vers le spirituel, vers un moi qui
s’oublie dans l’Autre et qui a sans cesse présent à l’esprit le « Tu ne tueras point »
inscrit sur le visage de l’autre mais constamment tourné en dérision par l’Histoire.
(Germain 54-55)
Despite her use of didactic genres, the ethical content is neither foregrounded nor immediately
apparent. Germain does not write philosophical novels as such, but the influence of philosophy
does emerge gradually as one reflects on the stories. This latent realization is comparable to the
way in which phenomenology emerges as an essential aspect for understanding Proust’s À la
recherche du temps perdu. The result, in Germain’s novels, is a direct allegorization of Levinas’
ethical philosophy, an aesthetic of ethics, rather than a development of an existing philosophic
dialogue.
Phenomenology, as Levinas inherited it from Husserl, examines the structure of
experience. Husserl was perhaps the first twentieth-century philosopher to emphasize the firstperson, individualistic basis of philosophical inquiry. Husserl inherits this notion from Descartes
and Kierkegaard, but his innovation is to apply it to an analysis of lived, rather than
transcendental, experience. Husserl’s contribution is the introduction of “intentionality” to
examine how being projects itself and interacts with its environment (Beyer). Intentionality
requires that consciousness always have an object, that consciousness always be directed toward
something. Quite simply, intentionality is a technical term for paying attention to something,
which is the primary, ineluctable mode of operation for consciousness. Awareness proceeds from
consciousness directed toward something. Husserl’s phenomenology categorizes types of
awareness, such as self-awareness, awareness of other persons, embodied action, and linguistic
6
activity (Beyer). The process of conscious interaction is the transformation of “object-as-itappears,” or phenomenon, to “object-as-it-is-intended,” or noema (Beyer). Consciousness, for
Husserl, is subjective and intentional, rather than a process of passive reception and
internalization. Individuals act on and in the world, which breaks with the Kantian categorical
imperative. Husserl’s revolutionary theory of consciousness bestows the freedom, volition, and
responsibility of action on the individual. This theory exerts immense influence on the direction
of twentieth-century philosophy.
Martin Heidegger recognizes that a more complete conception of phenomenology
requires a more detailed understanding of ontology, which he pursues for most of his career. In
other words, an account of intentional interaction is incomplete without establishing an adequate
conception of individual being. Heidegger is most recognized for his refrain “What is…”, which
is the fundamental question of ontology. Nothingness and being have a mutually informative
relationship for Heidegger. Nothingness is related to death, or more specifically our awareness of
death, which produces a condition of uncertainty (Sorenson). This uncertainty encourages
individuals to habitually meditate on death and annihilation, which is the formative aspect of
being. Being is realized by virtue of its finitude (Sorenson). Individuals must resist and master
uncertainty, and only by doing so may they live self-aware, authentic lives (Sorenson).
Responsibility is the common denominator, as it was in Husserl. However, Heidegger’s
ontological focus places the burden of responsibility on the individual. For Heidegger, awareness
of others is only marginally relevant; social interaction is determined a priori by the individual.
As such, Heidegger proposes the idea that ontology is fundamental, that being (what is) is the
foundation from which all other areas of inquiry proceed.
7
Levinas’ philosophy of ethics is metaphysical. His use of the term “metaphysics” arises
from dissatisfaction with contemporary philosophers’ insistence upon locating, and thereby
reducing, all noetic events to being. Levinas criticizes both Husserl and Heidegger by suggesting
that there are processes that shape being before proceeding to intentionality and the development
of the self. Levinas argues that being is essentially self-satisfying; being is that which seeks
resemblances of itself in others and attempts to reduce the difference found in others to conform
to its preconceived notions of the world (Levinas, TI 43-47). Levinas calls “totality” the tendency
to reduce everything to the same. He calls being, or the self, “psychism.” The work of totality
through psychism is to reduce everything to the same, which is essentially an act of violence.
Maintaining the primacy of being enforces and perpetuates violent interactions. Ethics and
morality are precluded by such a schema. Therefore, ethics and morality must occur in an
encounter prior to being, or psychism, which is necessarily metaphysical. Ethics, for Levinas, is
questioning the individual’s will to reduce the Other to the same (as the individual), which
results in an understanding of the impossibility of this desire.
Levinas’ metaphysics is communicated through orientational metaphors. Totality, as
enacted through psychism, seeks to reduce everything to the same. Such reductionist encounters
are described in terms that foreground contiguity and proximity. The will to totalize is to bring
others close to oneself. Psychism does not exceed its own limits, but draws others to itself.
Levinas’ ethical metaphysics opposes such tendencies. Metaphysics “is turned toward the
‘elsewhere’ and the ‘otherwise’ and the ‘other’…The metaphysical desire tends toward
something else entirely, toward the absolutely other” (Levinas, TI 33). The desire toward
something entirely different is diametrically opposed to the motion that seeks to eliminate
difference, to create and enforce a contiguous relationship. If the same is close, then the Other
8
must be distant. Levinas describes the Other in terms of height (BPW 33). The Other is someone
that looks down to the individual. The desire for an encounter with the Other, who is in an
elevated position, encourages the individual to transcend the limiting tendencies of the psychism.
Levinas designates “infinity” as this desire for the Other that results in transcending the limits of
the psychism. Totality is negative in its desire to reduce, or to bring down. Infinity is positive
because it encourages transcendence, a movement that encourages one to deny egoistic
tendencies. Levinas’ communication of metaphysics through orientational metaphors facilitates
understanding by employing common linguistic conventions, specifically that elevation or rising
is good and sinking or going down is bad.
The encounter with the Other is enacted by disturbing the complacency of the self. There
is a state of receptivity called “chez soi” prior to the violence of being. The “chez soi” is
metaphysical, being is physical. Levinas states: “The ‘at home’ [Le ‘chez soi’] is not a container
but a site where I can, where, depending on a reality that is other, I am, despite this dependence
or thanks to it, free” (Levinas, TI 37). Essentially, the “chez soi” is the self in isolation, in
contemplation and enjoyment, because it is not competing in the world. The Other is “the
Stranger who disturbs the being at home with oneself [le chez soi]. But Stranger also means the
free one. Over him I have no power” (TI 39). The “chez soi,” a pre- or extra-physical state, does
not have an identity that is projected into and in conflict with the world. The Other is without
identity as well. What Levinas calls the “face to face” is merely the recognition of the Other, or
the Stranger (TI 50-51). The result of this recognition, in which identity is held in abeyance in
order to preclude conflict, is a conversation.
For language accomplishes a relation such that the terms are not limitrophe within
this relation, such that the other, despite the relationship with the same, remains
transcendent to the same. The relation between the same and other, metaphysics,
9
is primordially enacted as conversation, where the same, gathered up in its ipseity
as an “I,” as a particular existent unique and autochthonous, leaves itself (TI 39)
Inifinity, the encounter between the same and Other that precedes identity and manifests itself in
language, is Levinas’ alternative to the totality, or the violence of being.
Learning, or teaching, is the purpose of the conversation that unites the same and the
Other. Levinas describes lack of identity as nudity, which is represented in the face (Levinas 7475). The Other is recognizable as a face without defining features, or nude, that encourages the
same, the “chez soi,” to imitate and disregard its own identity. This establishes a universal
condition between the chez soi and the face, a means of rendering similarity without violence.
The Other, by its position of height, exceeds its own limits by reaching down to the same, and
thereby encourages the same to overflow its own limits in the desire to encounter the other
(Cohen xxxiii). The same relinquishes its comfort in being at home (chez soi) for the sake of the
other. Spontaneous asceticism is the lesson the Other teaches to the same. The ascetic lesson
produced by the encounter between the same and other is the primary ethical situation. By
acknowledging that ethics is fundamental, as demonstrated in Levinas’ metaphysics, and by
participating in such encounters, humanity may overcome the violence inherent to being, or the
self. The problem of evil, for Levinas, is the denial of the ethical relation and the acceptance of
being. One may kill another, but such actions are only an obstacle to the ultimate ethical
realization that difference cannot be eliminated. Infinity, which is transcendence through the
encounter with and teaching by the Other, is ethical and, as such, will always overcome totality,
which wallows in violence until acknowledging the primacy of ethics.
10
Sylvie Germain incorporates Levinas’ ethics into her novels. She focuses exclusively on
the problem of evil and the resulting possibility, or impossibility, of the conversion of totality
into infinity. In other words, she asks whether an individual who is violent, who seeks to
dominate and control, can acknowledge his or her prior ethical transgression and accept the
transcendence offered by the Other. Germain correctly acknowledges, following Levinas, that
the condition of the world during the 20th century is unconscionably violent. If evil exists and
prevails, then is there any possibility of transcendence? She explores this question from the
perspective of the victims, or the others who offer transcendence.
Germain’s novel L’Enfant Méduse explores the conflict between the violent totality of
being and the innocent compassion of the other. The novel tells the story of Lucie Daubigné, a
young girl who is prematurely forced into adulthood after being raped by her adult step-brother,
Ferdinand. Lucie transforms from a child whose world is fantastic, mingling fairy tale and myth
with reality, to a being who is neither child nor adult. The limbo that she inhabits usurps her
fantasy world, as she seeks to incorporate others within herself to defend herself against the
threat that Ferdinand presents to her. In terms of Levinas’ philosophy, Lucie’s youth before her
corruption is an example of the “chez soi”; she is comfortable in the world that she has created
for herself without intrusion by others. Ferdinand, in this case, would be “the same” who
demonstrates totalizing tendencies. He is violent and repeatedly denies the sovereignty of the
other, which classifies him as the “being” that attempts to reduce others to the same. Rape is the
act par excellence that illustrates the contiguity and violence that characterize being. Lucie is the
Other through whom Ferdinand may renounce his violence, acknowledge the compassion of the
other, and transcend his violent condition. However, he denies this opportunity. His desire for the
other is physical, not metaphysical and ethical. Lucie’s reaction to the violation of the ethical
11
responsibility to the other, is the point from which Germain elaborates on Levinas’ philosophy.
Levinas remains optimistic about society’s possibilities for redemption, and prefers to explore
how to effect this change rather than meditate on its impossibility. Germain attempts to answer
the question: what happens to the other whose compassion is exploited? Germain considers evil
to be contagious. Ferdinand’s violence transforms Lucie in turn. She appeals to the spirits of
Ferdinand’s previous victims, both of whom are deceased, as well as observing insects and birds
of prey to incorporate them into her self. She reduces others to the same after her sovereignty is
violated. Germain’s conclusion is that hatred breeds hatred if the ethical imperative that Levinas
identifies is not observed.
Germain allegorizes Levinas’ philosophy. Characters are not placed in problematic
situations where they analyze possible courses of actions and their consequences. The reader is
presented instead with series of images and metaphors that represent the characters’ perceptions
and reactions. For instance, Lucie feels that she cannot verbally communicate her terror to others,
so her thoughts are communicated through descriptions of her perceptions. The physical
encounters between Ferdinand and Lucie are not described, but Lucie’s reaction is evident
through the changing descriptions of her perceptions. Narrative is subordinate to description in
this sense. By subordinating narrative to description, Germain creates an aesthetic of ethics.
Lucie’s transformation represents the alternative to Levinasian ethics, in which the sovereignty
of the other is violated. Germain implicitly critiques modernity as well by exploring the effects
of unconscionable violence on its victims, which is the common condition of 20th century society.
The prophetic result is that the problem of evil subverts compassion, despite the immanence of
the ethical imperative.
12
Chapter 2- “Chez soi” and the Fables of Youth
Literary narrative and philosophical inquiry both demonstrate a preoccupation with the search for
origins, whether through myth, through the search for “a priori” bases, or through the very notion
of “beginning” a story. The interdisciplinary confluence of the humanities can be located in the
examination of how individuals and worlds, or “reality,” emerge ex nihilo. Emmanuel Levinas’
ethical philosophy recognizes that individualistic “being” did not create the world, and therefore
cannot be the origin or basis for examining relations between constituents of the world. Levinas
suggests that the individual must return to an undifferentiated relation with the material world in
order to completely comprehend his or her ethical responsibility to the others that present
themselves in the world. Levinas’ ethics is metaphysical, in that it entails a return to origins and
first causes. Sylvie Germain elaborates on Levinas’ return to metaphysical ethics as fundamental
philosophy. She recognizes the beauty inherent in the reawakening within the world that Levinas
articulates. She represents this beauty through the innocent awareness of a child for whom there
is no division between fantasy and reality, receptivity and dominance, or disinterest and utility.
The idea of “separation” is the most essential concept for understanding “chez soi,” the
first movement of Levinas’ ethical philosophy. Levinas communicates his ideas through
phenomenological accounts, or descriptions of the perception of phenomena. He insists that
accounts of perception be separate from and prior to the formation of a concept of the
phenomena in question, which reinforces his position that ethics is fundamentally metaphysical
and prior to ontology. Separation is applied foremost to enforce a distinction between exteriority,
or the material world, and interiority, or individual cognition. Levinas conceives of this
distinction as the difference between physical and metaphysical modes of experience and
interaction. Psychism, or ontological being, characterizes the individual who operates
13
exclusively within the physical, material plane. Levinas gives the term “ontological being” a
pejorative connotation. Individuals operating within this mode of being conceive of themselves
as “the same,” seek resemblances of themselves in the material world and attempt to homogenize
their environment. Reductions are necessarily violent for Levinas. Reductionism becomes
habitual, resulting in an insatiable appetite. This appetite separates being from the capability for
reflection and thereby precludes an inward turn, or involution, to the metaphysical plane of
experience. Receptivity to others, the primary movement of Levinas’ ethics, can only be realized
by the individual who is “chez soi,” operating from the metaphysical plane of experience. “Chez
soi” is translated in various ways, such as “being at home” or “at home with oneself.” The
variety of experience within “chez soi” conditions and produces ethical interaction before
integration with the physical world.
The separation of “need” and “Desire” is accomplished “chez soi.” Levinas suggests the
codependence of these states, that an individual can realize “Desire” only after the separation
from ontological being accomplished by realizing “need.” However, “need” is the motivation for
ontological being to reduce everything to “the same.”
Physiology, from the exterior, teaches us that need is a lack. That man could be
happy for his needs indicates that in human need the physiological plane is
transcended, that as soon as there is need we are outside the categories of being—
even though in formal logic the structures of happiness—independence through
dependence, or I, or human creature—cannot show through without contradiction.
(Levinas, TI 115)
“Need,” then, is the paradox that produces a sudden enlightenment for “the same.” The
individual comes to understand “need” on a conceptual rather than appetitive level. This
realization compels reflection, an involution to “chez soi,” and thus accomplishes the movement
“outside the categories of being” identified in the quote above. This realization makes room for
14
the progression from individuated perception, which compels “the same” to homogenize his or
her environment, to undifferentiated perception.
The unicity of the I does not merely consist in being found in one sample only, but in
existing without having a genus, without being the individuation of a concept. The ipseity
of the I consists in remaining outside the distinction between the individual and the
general…This refusal of the concept drives the being that refuses it into the dimension of
interiority. It is at home with itself. The I is thus the mode in which the break-up of
totality, which leads to the presence of the absolutely other, is concretely accomplished.
(TI 117-118)
The progression to “chez soi” initiated by “need” renders the individual receptive to
“metaphysical Desire,” in which the “absolutely other” can be recognized as such.
Levinas’ designates experience “chez soi” as “living from…” He conceives of life as
living, a series of independent spontaneous sensations, rather than life as a repository of collected
experiences. This subtle distinction is clarified by the separation between “enjoyment,” or the
experience of wonder produced by spontaneous sensations, and “utility,” which is characteristic
of ontological being, psychism, or “the same.” “Living from…” and “enjoyment” are the
concomitant attributes of “chez soi.”
To enjoy without utility, in pure loss, gratuitously, without referring to anything
else, in pure expenditure—this is the human…To live is to play, despite the
finality and tension of instinct to live from something without this something
having the sense of a goal or an ontological means—simply play or enjoyment of
life. (Levinas, TI 133-134)
Enjoyment transcends need and renders it obsolete. The utility inspired by need is replaced by
enjoyment produced by sensibility. Sensation is disinterested for Levinas; it is purely
experiential and denotes the absence of utility.
The sensibility is therefore to be described not as a moment of representation, but
as the instance of enjoyment…Sensibility is not an inferior theoretical knowledge
15
bound however intimately to affective states: in its very gnosis sensibility is
enjoyment; it is satisfied with the given, it is contented. (TI 136)
The result of these processes is an evolution that appears to be a regression for the individual
from a Sartrean engagement in the world to renouncing the responsibility of freedom. However,
by renouncing the competition inherent in ontological being, psychism, or “the same,” the
individual “chez soi” becomes innocent and selfless. Such renunciation reveals an ethical space
that dispenses with notions of freedom and responsibility conditioned by competition.
The individual’s perception and conception of his or her environment, from the physical,
ontological plane of being to the metaphysical, ethical plane of living, must change accordingly.
Levinas’ attempts at the eidetic reduction of sensibility aim at a general, holistic conception of
experience in the world rather than a delineation of specific perceptions with the goal of
deducing an absolute theory of sensibility (à la Descartes).
The world I live in is not simply the counterpart or the contemporary of thought
and its constitutive freedom, but a conditioning and an antecedence. The world I
constitute nourishes me and bathes me. It is an aliment and a “medium”
[“milieu”]. The intentionality aiming at the exterior changes direction in the
course of its very aim by becoming interior to the exteriority it constitutes.
(Levinas, TI 129)
“Chez soi” constitutes a world, or more precisely a “milieu.” For Levinas, milieus are the
collections of things qua things, prior to an organizing logic. His account is an implicit critique
of German Idealism and Kant, or more precisely Heidegger’s interpretation and appropriation of
Idealism. Levinas denies that the world exists solely in the individual, as Idealism maintains. The
individual is but another object within the physical world, undifferentiated from and equal to
other objects prior to conceptions of being and utility. For example, Levinas perceives an object
as inert matter prior to identifying its nomenclature, whereas Heidegger perceives a tool whose
16
form immediately presents itself as useful. Levinas also breaks with empiricism, as the
traditional opposition to Idealism, suggesting that “The analysis of enjoyment and living from…
has shown that being is not resolved into empirical events and thoughts that reflect those events
or aim at them ‘intentionally’…the consciousness of a world is already consciousness through
that world” (TI, 153). Levinas breaks with Husserlian phenomenology as well, suggesting that
“intentionality” promotes the notion that the individual is capable of controlling or directing the
world. The individual, at this point, cannot be considered to be individuated from his or her
environment. “Chez soi” is a complete withdrawal into oneself that, as a result, retreats to the
metaphysical plane where the notions of “concept” and “utility” are suspended.
The involution accomplished by the “chez soi” movement is converted into “dwelling,” a
metaphysical interiority that allows the individual to be receptive to the Other. An evolution in
perception and relation to the individual’s environment is accomplished in the “dwelling.”
To dwell is not the simple fact of the anonymous reality of being cast into
existence as a stone one casts behind oneself; it is a recollection, a coming to
oneself, a retreat home with oneself as in a land of refuge, which answers to a
hospitality, an expectancy, a human welcome. (Levinas, TI 156)
The individual once completely withdrawn “chez soi” cannot remain so indefinitely, and hence
must discover a new relation to his or her environment as an alternative to the violent
reductionism of “the same.” Separation from “the same,” or psychism, makes recollection
possible.
The movement by which a being builds its home, opens and ensures interiority to
itself, is constituted in a movement by which the separated being recollects
itself…Recollection, in the current sense of the term, designates a suspension of
the immediate reactions the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself,
one’s possibilities, and the situation. It is already a movement of attention freed
17
from immediate enjoyment, for no longer deriving its freedom from the
agreeableness of the elements. (TI. 154-157)
“Dwelling,” also referred to as “habitation” or “home,” is the starting point for the individual’s
movement from undifferentiated, coexistent enjoyment in the elemental to an ethical conception
of his or her relation to the world. Levinas suggests that “the postponement of enjoyment makes
accessible a world, the world does not result from this postponement” (TI, 157). Levinas
continues to distinguish his conception of being from other philosophers accounts, suggesting
that one must entirely separate oneself from the world rather than assume one’s primacy as the
origin of the world.
Levinas proposes “acquisition” as an alternative to Husserlian “intentionality” as the
means of proceeding to “awareness.” He uses the term “en-ergy” to denote the process by which
one suspends enjoyment and accomplishes the “labor” of “acquisition.” “Acquisition” is a point
where the element “renounces its anonymity,” a limbo between entirely the undifferentiated and
the point at which an element becomes useful, can be understood as a concept, or can be
theorized (Levinas, TI 157-160). “Acquisition” leads to “possession.” The collection of
“possessions” constitutes the “home.”
The world is a possible possession, and every transformation of the world by
industry is a variation of the regime of property…Proceeding from the dwelling,
possession, accomplished by the quasi-miraculous grasp of a thing in the night, in
the apeiron of prime matter, discovers a world. The grasp of a thing illuminates
the very night of the apeiron; it is not the world that makes things
possible…There therefore exists no duality—lived body and physical body—
which would have to be reconciled. The dwelling which lodges and prolongs life,
the world life acquires and utilizes by labor, is also the physical world where
labor is interpreted as a play of anonymous forces. For the forces of the exterior
world the dwelling is only a postponement. (TI, 163-165)
18
The movement from the void of undifferentiated elements to the appearance and recognition of
objects, via acquisition and possession, is merely the process of an individual orienting his- or
her-self in their environment in order to foreground the implications of successive stages of
awareness. Levinas suggests that there is a place between the void and creation, before being,
where the ethical relation becomes accessible.
Sylvie Germain recognizes the creative possibilities of Levinas’ conception of “chez soi.”
The involution that begins the “chez soi” process is a return to innocence. The re-awakening
performed through the construction of the “home,” in contrast to the violence and competition of
psychism, suggests that this “recollection” is inherently beautiful. Thus for Germain beauty is
diametrically opposed to violence. Germain’s representation of “chez soi” in her characters is
based on this aesthetic imperative.
Germain’s novel L’Enfant Méduse begins with an ekphrastic passage describing a solar
eclipse. The eclipse symbolizes “the happy childhood of Lucie and Félix, absorbed in their
admiration of the earth and sky.” (Krell 100) However, the eclipse is personified as “le loup
céleste,” a phrase with predatory connotations. (Germain 16)
Solar eclipses have always been harbingers of catastrophes. Omens of death, they
are considered in some mythologies to be the death of the sun, devoured by some
monster or wild animal, such as a wildcat, a serpent, or the “celestial wolf” that
Germain describes above (Chevalier 1982, 389-90; Durand 1984, 92). Eclipses
are manifestations of the “black sun,” which illuminates another world during its
nocturnal voyage, and heralds great change, such as the beginning of a new age,
or the fiery end of the world (what the Stoics called ekpyrosis). (Krell 102)
Light and darkness are, common of course, metaphors. Light is that which illuminates, making
both phenomena and noumena accessible to the intellect. Darkness is the obverse of light, or that
which conceals from vision or knowledge. Taken together, the innocents will encounter danger,
the outcome of which will be either to resist the elemental force of darkness and thereby become
19
enlightened, beginning the “new age” identified in the preceding quote, or to concede to the
elemental force of darkness and thereby renounce their transcendence, a condition that
corresponds to the “fiery end of the world” identified in the preceding quote.
Germain makes a philosophical allusion through the children’s decision. If “Le loup
céleste dévore la lumière,” then this devouring calls freedom and responsibility into question.
She continues
Ce n’est pas le jour, ce n’est pas la nuit. C’est un temps tout autre, c’est un frêle
point de tangence entre les minutes et l’éternité, entre l’émerveillement et
l’effroi… C’est soudain le doute dans l’âme des homes quant à leur destin dans le
vent du temps, dans la chair du monde… (Germain 16)
The references to time and eternity in this passage allude to the terms “totality” and “infinity,”
which are the foundation of Levinas’ ethical philosophy. Totality, or “les minutes,” refers to
psychism, which corresponds to darkness and “le loup céleste.” Therefore, one decision will be
the choice to deny responsibility for others in favor of perpetuating the violence of “the same,”
or psychism, and interacting with the environment from the perspective of utility characteristic of
ontological being. Infinity, or “l’éternité,” is the choice to accept the teaching of others, which
leads to transcendence and the institution of Levinas’ ethical imperative. Lucie and Lou-Fé, the
two children in the novel, will embody these choices and demonstrate the consequences of each
decision.
Germain’s use of symmetry, which is common to the structure of all her novels, is first
evident in L’Enfant Méduse in the figures of Lucie and Lou-Fé. Lucie insists that they both wear
red scarves and that “il [Lou-Fé] est son jumeau” (Germain 28). The color red is associated with
the constellation Gemini, and “De plus elle est du signe des Gémeaux,--cela doit bien avoir un
sens, tout le meme” (28). As well, Lucie “a décrété la gémellité qualité supérieure” (28). In
20
Greek mythology, the constellation Gemini is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux, twin
children mothered by Leda; Pollux was fathered by Zeus and thereby immortal, and Castor was
fathered by Tyndareus, Leda’s mortal husband, making Castor mortal. Germain uses the
Dioscuri, a term used in reference to Castor and Pollux collectively, to characterize the
relationship between Lucie and Lou-Fé. Lou-Fé corresponds to Pollux in the sense that he is
obsessed with the stars, declaring “Quand je serai grand…je serai astronome” (20). Hence, LouFé’s association with the heavens evokes the immortality of Pollux. Lucie corresponds to Castor,
who becomes increasingly terrestrial, or obsessed with nature and “le marais,” as the novel
progresses. The symmetry established between the two children suggests that Lucie, as the
mortal and terrestrial character, represents totality, and that Lou-Fé, as the immortal and celestial
character, represents Levinas’ conception of infinity.
Lou-Fé is defined entirely in terms of astronomy. He is the first exemplum in the novel
and is paradigmatic of Levinasian ethics. His absence after the first section of the novel
reinforces such an interpretation. In accordance with his celestial nature, his interactions with the
terrestrial world are consistently represented as relationships characterized by height.
Il est myope, il porte des lunettes…il cligne sans cesse de paupières. C’est qu’il a
tant de curiosité pour toutes choses de ce monde, tant d’ardeur à voir le visible, et
tant de passion surtout pour les géographies du ciel. Cet engouement pour le ciel
s’est saisi de lui dès sa petite enfance; d’emblée les étoiles, les astres, les planètes
lointaines ont séduit son regard. Il aime d’ailleurs bien rappeler qu’il est né au
plus noir d’une nuit d’été, sous un ciel sans lune ni brouillard. Un ciel pur et
constellé. Il est né à l’heure où culminait Véga, sous l’éclat de la Lyre. Et la Lyre,
semble-t-il, émit cette nuit-là un son très clair qui vibra jusque sous les paupières
de l’enfant nouveau-né, et qui, depuis ce temps, n’en finit plus de monter à l’aigu
dans le cœur envoûté du garçon. (Germain 19-20)
His birth during the darkest night of summer is not related to the darkness of the eclipse.
Darkness, in Lou-Fé’s case, is a means by which the stars are revealed. Stars represent the
21
innumerable “absolutely Other” from which he seeks to learn. His stated desire to become “un
astronome” testifies to his hospitality toward the other. Germain allegorizes Levinas’ conception
of transcendence as a relationship of height through Lou-Fé’s obsession with the stars, thereby
beatifying the absolutely Other. She extends the aestheticization of ethics through Lou-Fé’s
association with Lyra. The constellation Lyra represents Orpheus’ harp. Orpheus is a character
from Greek mythology associated with benevolence and harmony with nature. He was killed by
the Bacchanates, and his harp, or lyre, was rescued by Zeus and placed in the heavens. The
harmony implied by the incorporation of Lyra in Lou-Fé’s character suggests the lucidity
resulting from transcendence in Levinas’ ethics, as opposed to the violence of psychism
represented by the Bacchanates. In addition, Lou-Fé’s conception of the stars is represented as a
text that continually rewrites itself.
C’est un livre, le ciel, un grand livre d’images qui sont forces et vitesses. Un livre
aux pages vives qui s’enroulent, se tordent, s’envolent, se déchirent, et
reparaissent, à chaque fois les mêmes de cependant nouvelles. C’est un texte
toujours en train de se récrire, de se poursuivre, et de se ré-enluminer. (20)
Germain includes the conception of the starts as a revelatory text in order to allude to the
influence of rabbinical midrash on Levinas’ philosophy. Each successive revelation is a
transcendence, a continual process of self-refinement as one approaches the divine. Lou-Fé, then,
represents the aestheticization of the individual who renounces the violence of psychism, who is
receptive to, desires, and interacts harmoniously with the absolutely Other, and thereby serves as
a model for transcendence and seeking the divine.
Lucie is the practical counterpart to Lou-Fé’s paradigmatic exemplum. In other words,
Lucie’s character is used to dramatize Levinasian ethics in a realistic situation. Lou-Fé is the
static, synchronic exemplum and Lucie is the dynamic, diachronic exemplum. Germain is in this
22
manner able to explore in detail certain aspects of Levinas’ philosophy. In this regard, her
writing may be seen as an aesthetic phenomenology that parallels Levinas’ hermeneutic
phenomenology. The reader discovers the world in the text through descriptions of Lucie’s
perceptions, the moral or ethical content of which emerges through the contrast between the
sublime and the grotesque.
Lucie is introduced in the novel as “une petite fille d’une huitaine d’années, toujours
enjouée.” (Germain 27, my italics) Enjoyment, perhaps playfulness or light-heartedness in
Germain’s terms, is the primary mode of existence in Levinas’ philosophy defined as “love of life,
a relation with contents that are not my being but more dear to me than being: thinking, eating,
sleeping, reading, working, warming oneself in the sun” (Levinas 112). Lucie embodies
enjoyment in the beginning of the novel. Germain aestheticizes enjoyment in terms of light, or
“lumière,” and the lightness of someone who is “enjouée.” For example, Germain says that “Les
jours de leur enfance sont legers et allègres. Des bulles de savon souflées dans la lumière”
(Germain 19). Germain proceeds to describe Lucie’s relation to her environment in similar terms.
Le bonheur du jour, c’était le matin; la cueillette miraculeuse de bonbons bariolés
et de bestioles en chocolat à travers le jardin. Et puis il y a eu l’apparition de l’arcen-ciel, ce déploiement de couleurs tendres dans la sérénité du jour, cette arche
d’humble gloire ouverte à l’horizon. Lucie aurait voulu courir jusqu’à cette arche,
en franchir le seuil, car certainement de l’autre côté le monde doit être différent.
(41-42)
This scene, a description of Easter morning, communicates Levinas’ sense of enjoyment in terms
of the fantastic and sublime. Germain represents enjoyment in all of its blissful oblivion as a
state approaching the sublime. Not only do floating bubbles demonstrate the enjoyment of living
that exceeds the concerns of utility and purposiveness, but the rainbow is described in the novel
as a symbol of God’s covenant to protect mankind:
23
C’est une cloche de lumière, elle porte les couleurs de la miséricorde et elle
n’émet qu’un son qui est de pur silence et de haute mémoire: « Et Dieu dit : Voici
le signe de l’alliance que je mets entre Moi et vous et tous les êtres vivants qui
sont avec vous, pour les générations à venir : Je mets mon arc dans la nuée et il
deviendra un signe d’alliance entre Moi et la terre. »” (38)
This passage follows the theme of change, or crossing boundaries initially introduced by the
eclipse. The children “quittent les jardins” and, like Adam and Eve, lose their Edenic innocence.
Lucie’s possible crossing to the other side of a rainbow can be interpreted as a metaphoric
crossing over from the ephemeral magic of childhood to the violent realities of adulthood.
However, these details are mere portents of change at this juncture, since Germain has not yet
established the details of “chez soi,” which form the necessary foundation for Lucie’s crossing of
these boundaries.
Lucie’s dialectical imagination is Germain’s aestheticization of the labor that leads to
“acquisition” and the construction of a “dwelling” in Levinas’ philosophy. Germain says that
Lucie “jouit pleinement de son propre royaume.” (Germain 44) Lucie’s “propre royaume” is a
synthesis of the material world and of the assembled population of the fairy tales and legends
that compose her imaginary, immaterial world. Germain connects these two worlds through
Lucie’s ludic acquisition and construction of language. “Les mots ont encore pour Lucie la
légèreté des feux follets courant dans l’herbe, la fantaisie des ondins et des elfes; comme eux ils
sont doués d’une présence aussi vive qu’impalpable, et sont profondément enchanteurs” (58).
Germain explains the labor that transforms elements into the objects that constitute a dwelling
for Levinas through Lucie’s attempt to define the words she hears during the adults conversation
over Easter dinner.
Au moment où Lucie reçoit sa part de dessert, l’un des convives qui discute à mivoix non loin d’elle, dit d’un air de confidence à sa voisine : « Vous ne saviez pas ?
Mais il est opiomane !... », tandis qu’une autre, à l’autre bout de la table raconte :
24
« …Anne portait ce jour-là une très jolie veste en opossum… » et qu’un troisième,
lancé dans une autre conversation encore, annonce en riant : « Mais oui, figurezvous, ce brave Dédé joue dans l’orphéon municipal… » Et soudain il semble à
Lucie que ce sont ces trois mots inconnus que l’on vient de servir dans son
assiette, -- opiomane, opossum et orphéon. Trois jolis mots dont elle ignore
complètement le sens, et qui tous commencent par un O. Lucie aime les mots, et
aussi les lettres de l’alphabet ; mais elle a ses préférences, ses engouements, ses
antipathies et même parfois ses répugnances à leur égard. Le O est sa voyelle
préférée, avec le U et le I. Ces deux dernières, elle a la chance de les porter dans
son prénom. Le O lui plaît à cause de sa forme autant que de sa sonorité. On peut
dessiner un visage dans un O, on peut aussi en faire le cœur d’une fleur ou le
corps d’un soleil, le transformer en ballon, en pomme ou en orange, en roue de
brouette ou en lucarne. On peut inventer mille choses avec un O. (57)
Lucie’s retreat to her imagination, her separation from the conversation, corresponds to the
involution that begins the “chez soi” process. Her dialectical imagination aestheticizes the words
and objects that she encounters. She prefers things that are capable of metamorphosing into a
variety of different objects. Lucie transforms the ugliness of opium addicts and opossums into
objects that are eminently enjoyable, such as flowers or balloons. Germain thus aestheticizes
Levinas’ conception of labor and acquisition by using the imagination to transform the mundane
or harshly realistic into the playful or sublime.
Lucie’s dwelling is composed of the perceptions produced by her dialectic imagination.
Things are not good or evil, but beautiful or ugly. Germain’s sense of beauty conforms to
commonly accepted standards of taste. Rainbows, bubbles, and balloons are beautiful, whereas
opium addicts and opossums are ugly. The simple act of connoting is not sufficient for
aestheticizing an abstract idea. Aesthetic perceptions must possess all of the qualities of reality to
be effective. Dwelling is not different from the established material world for Levinas, but a way
of perceiving this world with new eyes. Lucie’s dialectic imagination endows beauty and
ugliness with the same claims to reality as are given to ideas of good and evil.
25
Rumeur de cette mer ivoire qui encercle l’îlot très mystérieux. L’assiette se creuse,
s’évase immensément. Lucie s’embarque à l’insu de tous sur son îlot roussi, toute
à l’écoute et à l’olfaction des trois mots clandestins enfouis dedans, opiomane,
opossum et orphéon. Elle largue les amarres, entre en dérive sur les eaux ivoirées
d’un songe déjà en voie de devenir fable. Un rien suffit pour aimer les mots,
surtout les inconnus, pour les lancer dans de grandes aventures, toujours
inachevées. Les mots sont prêts à se lever, à percer la croûte de caramel, à prendre
forme et mouvement. (58)
Germain thus accomplishes the final movement of Levinas’ “chez soi.” The dwelling that Lucie
constructs fulfills Levinas’ requirement of a separate reality within the established material world.
Her demonstrated openness to allowing objects to metamorphose suggests the fulfillment of
Levinas’ requirement that objects maintain their sovereignty and not be conceived of in terms of
utility. Germain’s aesthetic is faithful to the foundation of Levinas’ philosophy. The
transformation of Lucie’s aesthetic perceptions is the point at which Germain departs from a
strict demonstration of Levinas’ philosophy and contests the viability of his ethical imperative
when one encounters the problem of evil.
26
Chapter 3- Encountering the Other
Conflict presupposes the notion of encountering. The dialectic of thesis, antithesis,
synthesis is one common logical model through which conflict is traditionally resolved in
philosophy. However, there is no formal model that can adequately and consistently define the
parameters of synthesis. Successive attempts at synthesizing, in reaching an agreement,
necessarily bring definitions of truth and justice into question. Therefore, what qualifies as a
synthesis depends on accepted contemporary preferences for transcendentalism, empiricism or
other formal analytical models. Emmanuel Levinas identifies this problem in the history of
philosophy and addresses it by suggesting that ethics is the first philosophy, or the first cause to
be resolved in order to understand and improve the human condition. Levinas conceives of ethics
as a metaphysics that is prior to formal logic and resists that logic. Ontology and epistemology
are the arenas in which violence dominates, both of which are subject to conflicting formal
models. The ethical imperative, which Levinas formulates as “Tu ne tueras point” and which is
enacted in the receptivity to the Other, is characterized by asceticism, a nudity understood as a
primordial state before conceptions of being and the resulting psychism that make conflict and
violence possible, and hence prior to formal logic. Sylvie Germain’s dramatization of
encountering the Other is grounded in Levinas’ philosophy, and in L’Enfant Méduse she
explores the effects of a legacy of disregarding the ethical imperative and the means by which
such cycles can be broken.
Levinas defines the Other in terms of absolute difference. The individual in a state of
dwelling, or “chez soi,” remains defined in terms of egoism, albeit removed from the
reductionism that characterizes psychism. Such an individual is prepared for an encounter with
the Other, through which the ethical imperative is realized. In other words, an individual “chez
soi” is open to the contestation of the individual’s selfhood instead of seeking to maintain a
27
conception of self by violent interactions with his or her environments. Levinas describes the
revelation of the Other to the individual “chez soi” as an irruption of the limits of individual
consciousness.
And yet the Other does not purely and simply negate the I; total negation, of
which murder is the temptation and the attempt, refers to the antecedent relation.
The relation between the Other and me, which dawns forth in his expression,
issues in neither number nor concept. The Other remains infinitely transcendent,
infinitely foreign; his face in which his epiphany is produced and which appeals
to me breaks with the world that can be common to us, whose virtualities are
inscribed in our nature and developed by our existence. (Levinas 194)
Levinas insists that the Other is beyond sensibility, which places an account of such encounters
beyond what can be conceived of through formal logic (193-195). The relation Levinas seeks to
describe in the encounter with the Other is not that the I, or self, is obliterated and given new life
by the Other, which is a distinctly Christian idea. The Other is that which encourages the I, the
self, or the same to overflow its limits, in Levinas’ terms, in a relation that produces harmony
among individuals through self-improvement. He states that “the other absolutely other—the
Other—does not limit the freedom of the same; calling it to responsibility, it founds it and
justifies it” (197). Self-improvement is conceived of as responsibility to accept the teaching of
the Other, not as an Existentialist seizure of one’s destiny.
The Other appears to the individual as a face. The distinction between the face as a
physical feature and what the face represents is essential for understanding Levinas’ philosophy.
Variations in physical appearance do not account for difference. The Other is prior to or beyond
sensibility, rendering obsolete a conception of encountering the Other as a person emerging from
shadows. The face of the Other is a signification. It signifies the possibility of transcendence and
infinity. The idea of infinity signified in the face of the Other is the impetus for the overflowing,
excessive thought that liberates the individual from the totality of egoism that remains “chez soi.”
28
The possibility of infinity and the call to responsibility are presented in the face, which “resists
possession, resists my powers” (Levinas 197). The idea of infinity exceeds its own limits for
Levinas. As such, infinity, and thereby the face of the Other, cannot be mastered or brought
down to the level of the same; the face remains transcendent and in a position of height that can
only be reached by the individual’s renunciation of egoism and desire for infinity and the
absolutely Other.
Language establishes the relation between the individual and the Other. As with the
conception of the face, Levinas specifies the purpose of language as it applies to the encounter
with the Other. He rejects the traditional idea of language as an organization of words that reflect
thought. Instead, the function of discourse is to usurp reason. Reason represents the mode of
thought bound up in a totality, to use Levinas’ terms. Reason is the territory of ontology and
epistemology, both of which contest the primacy of the ethical relation. Ethics takes the form of
a transcendental relation prior even to reason. As such, language is not produced in the
individual, which would necessarily entail interference by the faculty of reason, a regression to
psychism and the preclusion of the ethical relation. Levinas suggests that “Language is not
enacted within a consciousness; it comes to me from the Other and reverberates in consciousness
by putting it into question” (Levinas 204). In order for language to signify without recourse to
reason or pre-established linguistic rules, it becomes the “primordial event” (206). Signification,
for Levinas, is not a linguistic structure, “signification is to perception what the symbol is to the
symbolized” (207). Signification “is infinity, that is, the Other” (207). It is the event where the
individual responds to the Other. This response to the poverty of the Other compels the
individual to renounce his or her dwelling and egoism.
It is not that there first would be the face, and then the being it manifests or
expresses would concern himself with justice; the epiphany of the face qua face
29
opens humanity. The face in its nakedness as a face presents to me the destitution
of the poor one and stranger; but this poverty and exile which appeal to my
powers, address me, do not deliver themselves over to these powers as givens,
remain the expression of the face. The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as
an equal…The presence of the face, the infinity of the other, is a destituteness, a
presence of the third party (that is, of the whole of humanity which looks at us),
and a command that commands commanding. (213)
The “primordial event” of signification establishes a bond between individuals and humanity in
general. The acceptance of the ethical relation requires a renewal of the linguistic aspect of
signification freed from the bonds of totality and reason. The individual renounces his or her
previous egoistic attachments to the world as expressed and reinforced through language and
establishes relations with his or her environment through the teaching of the Other.
A meaningful world is a world in which there is the Other through whom the
world of my enjoyment becomes a theme having a signification…things are
objectified, become objects, not out of themselves or their own claim to anything
(thingness) but because of their representation in language and recognition
between I and Other. (209)
Reason is reinstituted in a nonviolent context by the Other: “In welcoming the face the will
opens to reason” (219). The Other undertakes the role of instructor, not of owner or of possessor,
and thus transforms the individual without violence or conflict.
The example that constitutes the instruction that the Other provides for the individual is
the ethical relation. Levinas states that “the idea of infinity, far from violating the mind,
conditions nonviolence itself, that is, establishes ethics” (Levinas 203). The transformation
enacted by instruction is what Levinas refers to as transcendence.
The relation with the Other as a relation with his transcendence—the relation with
the Other who puts into question the brutal spontaneity of one’s immanent
destiny—introduces into me what was not in me. But this “action” upon my
freedom precisely puts an end to violence and contingency, and, in this sense also,
founds Reason. (203)
30
The acceptance of transcendence offered by the Other eliminates any possibility for violence.
The empathy produced by the spontaneous asceticism in both the individual and the Other is the
awakening of the individual to the ethical level.
The epiphany of the face brings forth the possibility of gauging the infinity of the
temptation to murder, not only as a temptation to total destruction, but also as the
purely ethical impossibility of this temptation and attempt. If the resistance to
murder were not ethical but real, we would have a perception of it, with all that
reverts to the subjective in perception. (199)
The possibility for violence is not physical in that one can only perceive its effects, which would
be a corpse. Murder is a purely ideational datum, which is subsumed within and precluded by an
awakening to the ethical level. Ethics, from its origin “chez soi” to the response to the face of the
Other, constitutes the human, fraternal bond from which equality arises.
Lucie’s separation from her environment undergoes a sinister turn during the second
section of L’Enfant Méduse. The first section of the novel clearly demonstrates the enjoyment
and self-awareness that characterize Levinas’ conception of “chez soi,” which encourages
sympathetic coexistence with one’s environment. In Levinas’ terms, the interiority of the
dwelling allows the individual to conceive of him- or her-self as a subject, enforcing a separation
from the individual’s environment. The individual is now able to objectify his or her
environment, which Levinas designates as exteriority. He states, “The intentionality aiming at
the exterior changes direction in the course of its very aim by becoming interior to the exteriority
it constitutes” (Levinas 129). This particular type of separation is what distinguishes the violent
reductionism of psychism, characteristic of ontological conceptions of being, and the individual
who is now receptive to the invitation from the Other, or the ethical conception of being. Lucie’s
hospitality toward the Other is evident in her interactions with Lou-Fé. Her progress in selfawareness in accordance with ethical relations is suspended following her violation at the hands
31
of her older half-brother, Ferdinand. Her resistance to physical and emotional contact with others
indicates that she feels trapped within herself.
Elle se veut seule. Elle y est parvenue, elle a instauré le vide autour d’elle…Que
nul ne s’aventure à franchir les strictes limites du désert qu’elle a tracé autour
d’elle ; tout pas tenté vers elle pour la réapprivoiser est un grave faux pas qui lui
lève le cœur de colère et de dégoût. (Germain 101)
The enjoyment that previously characterized Lucie’s mode of being has been replaced by void
and illness. Now, “elle a pris sa propre chair en horreur” (109). The separation enacted in
response to the natural ease of the ethical relation has been disrupted by violence, which
produces in Lucie a disgust for food, companionship and anything that resembles the contiguity
of flesh. Germain correlates flesh and sickness in Lucie to create a clear opposition between her
and Ferdinand, who comes to be represented as an ogre with an insatiable desire to consume
flesh.
Lucie’s silence reinforces her absolute separation from her environment. Levinas
suggests that language has two opposing functions: the ethical, instructional capacity the Other
offers to the individual, and the violent, reductive capacity that perpetuates the power relations
characteristic of psychism. Lucie’s previous use of language adhered to the former category; she
was receptive to the teachings of others, which was reflected in her dialectical imagination. She
retains her dialectical imagination, although her perceptions have been transformed into images
of hatred and ugliness.
Elle rêvait les contes et les fables à rebours ; jamais, en découvrant un crapaud
dans l’herbe ou aux abords d’une mare, elle ne fabulait en songeant aux belles
histoires qui racontent comment les princes charmants se trouvent parfois
transformés en vilains crapauds par quelque sorcière malfaisante, pour mieux
ensuite se retransfigurer en splendides jeunes hommes sous le baiser d’une
princesse. Bien au contraire, Lucie souhaitait revêtir la peau gluante et
boursouflée de verrues des crapauds des marais pour pouvoir horrifier...(Germain
110-111)
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This passage illustrates Lucie’s inability to explain the change that has been forced on her, and
thus her silence. Fairy tales are the only dialect through which she can order and make sense of
her environment. However, this account demonstrates none of the redemptive qualities that
define a fairy tale. Lucie’s cynical attitude, that she prefers the power and violence of a defensive
toad to the benevolence and selflessness represented by fairy tale princesses, exposes the absence
of enjoyment in her life. This is an artistic rendering of Levinas’ conception of the face to face
encounter between the individual and the Other. The princess is the Other who, in a position of
height, reaches down to the toad and suspends her notions of cleanliness and human/animal
relations that represents the ethical relation. Lucie wishes to be the toad, who is incapable of
rising to a position of height alone, preferring instead to repay hospitality with poisonous
violence in an attempt to reduce everything to the same. Lucie, in her innocence, does not
possess adequate resources, a product of language that is taught by the Other, to understand or
express her condition. Instead, she must remain silent: “L’ogre lui a volé sa voix, il a mis sous
verrou les mots de l’impossible aveu qui la tourmente tant” (112). If Lucie maintains her silence,
then her separation will become absolute, eliminating any possibility for receptivity to the
invitation from the Other.
Lucie transforms her appearance as a means to communicate her interior, affective life
that she cannot express through language. Although her family refuses to interpret this physical
transformation as a distress signal, it serves as a means to isolate the encounter and conflict
between Lucie and Ferdinand, the Other and the same, as the central problem addressed in the
novel. Lucie observes and adopts the defensive posture of insects, reptiles and birds of prey,
much as she desires to become the toad rather than the princess in her attempts to understand her
violated condition.
33
Elle avait remarqué, près des étangs et des rivières, comment se comportaient
certains crapauds lorsqu’ils étaient attaqués par quelque prédateur. Ils se
renversaient sur les dos et simulaient la mort, exhibant leurs gros ventres aux
couleurs agressives, tandis que des glandes de leur peau exsudaient une mousse
corrosive à l’odeur âcre qui faisait aussitôt passer à leur ennemi l’envie de les
dévorer. Souvent, au cours des nuits où l’angoisse l’arrachait au sommeil pour la
jeter en alarme, l’oreille tendue, le cœur battant au moindre bruit décelé sous sa
fenêtre, elle s’était imaginé qu’elle allait parvenir à voler leur secret aux crapauds
et que soudain, lorsque le frère surgirait et viendrait lui arracher ses draps, il ne
trouverait plus dans le lit qu’un vilain petit corps raide surmonté d’un énorme
ventre ballonné, à le peau jaune et verte, luisante de cloques brunes et exhalant
une odeur aigre. (Germain 110)
Lucie’s condition, as demonstrated through her silence and altered appearance, is a regression
from “chez soi” to “the same,” or the undifferentiating, reactionary behavior of psychism. In
Levinas’ terms, she has lost the capability to distinguish between interiority and exteriority
created in the process of separation, which allows the individual to proceed to the ethical level;
Lucie is now pure interiority, incapable of acknowledging the Other as such. However, the
encounter and violation of the sovereignty of the Other must occur before this retreat. The face to
face must occur prior to the individual’s refutation of the reaching down by the Other. Germain
endows Lucie’s face, especially her gaze, with a portent of the effects that follow the violation of
the ethical imperative.
La lumière ne monte plus de l’horizon d’où tout à l’heure elle avait point. Son
cours a été détourné, sa source s’est déplacée. Elle ne sourd pas davantage de la
terre, ni des ruisseaux, ni des cailloux, ni des feuillages des arbres, ni du cœur des
roses ou des glaïeuls. Elle tire son éclat fixe de deux immenses ocelles noirs
cerclés de rouge cramoisi que rahaussent encore de larges cernes d’or…la face
bariolée d’ocelles ardents qui est penchée au-dessus de lui, et qui dispense cette
lumière d’apocalypse …La face est inclinée vers lui, en surplomb. Une face
encastrée entre deux genoux osseux. La petite est accroupie sure le sommet du
mur. Elle porte un short en toile ocre en un polo à rayures rouge vif et brun foncé.
Ses jambes et ses pieds sont nus ; ses genoux maigres sont tout marqués
d’écorchures. Sa peau est mate, brunie par le soleil. Ses cheveux, drus et courts,
sont si ébouriffés qu’ils se dressent tout autour de son petit visage comme des
ronces noires…La petite tient solidement sa posture de chimère sculptée en porte
à faux. Sa posture de gargouille aux yeux de lave ardente, à la crinière hirsute, aux
genoux maigres et saillants, et à la bouche grimaçante. Et ses grimaces sont à la
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fois colorées et sonores. Elle a barbouillé ses lèvres de rouge sombre et s’est
noirci les dents. Et elle tord sa bouche, retrousse ses lèvres comme des babines de
chienne en fureur, fait tantôt claquer ses mâchoires et tantôt grincer ses dents,
émet des sifflements aigus, des chuchotements, des gargouilles, des petits cris
syncopés. Parfois elle tire la langue, rose et horrible entre ses dents souillées de
noir. Elle la roule, la déplie, la pointe en l’air, la réenroule, la tortille. Et elle roule
aussi ses yeux, les révulse, les dilate, les referme à moitié,--pour mieux chaque
fois redarder ensuite son regard droit sur le visage du gisant. (122-127)
Germain mingles the gravity of the ethical relation with the grotesque absurdity of a frustrated
child. Lucie’s transformation from innocence to medusal vengeance corresponds to the
regression from the ethically-bound “chez soi” to the violence of psychism. Lucie has become
mute, abandoning her human identity for that of insects and reptiles. She becomes animalistic in
response to the animalism with which her innocence was devoured.
Ferdinand exemplifies psychism, an individual bound up in a totality. Germain
communicates this quality through his apathy. He is described as “lovely Ferdinand” by the local
women, but prefers the company of prostitutes to their advances (Germain 67). He is
sporadically employed in various unskilled labor positions only to support his alcoholism. It
becomes increasingly evident that “The root of his indifference is his failure to create his own
identity: he is merely the double of his father, the martyred war hero, as his doting mother
continually reminds him” (Krell 109). Germain reveals that Ferdinand’s behavior is not entirely
the result of an inexplicable, innate malice. His childhood was abruptly and prematurely wrested
from him, which contributes to his perpetual identity crisis.
Ferdinand, lui, ne gardait aucun souvenir de son père. Lorsque celui-ci était mort
il n’avait pas encore quatre ans. Mais ce qu’il avait toujours conservé dans sa
mémoire,--dans les tréfonds et les pénombres…de venue le réveiller le matin où
elle avait reçu la nouvelle. Elle avait surgi brutalement dans sa chambre, en tenue
de nuit, la chevelure dénouée, s’était jetée à genoux près de son lit et, avec une
force qui alors lui avait paru inouïe, terrifiante, elle l’avait enserré dans ses bras
pleurant puis arraché hors son li, hors du sommeil. Hors d’enfance, d’un coup.
Des bras de Titan…Puis sa mère s’était soudain redressée et l’avait hissé tout au
bout de ses bras fous, l’avait tenu en l’air au-dessus d’elle…Son regard était fixe.
35
Lui apercevait cette face inquiétante en plongée. Il voyait avec effroi, d’une
hauteur qui lui semblait vertigineuse, un masque grimaçant et tout échevelé de sa
mère d’ordinaire si soignée…Il regardait, hébété, la face plate et distordue…Et
depuis ce jour elle n’avait eu qu’une hâte : qui Ferdinand quitte au plus vite son
corps d’enfant, qu’il devienne à son tour un homme. Un homme pareil à son
père…(Germain 86-87)
Germain refers to Aloïse, Ferdinand’s mother, as having “des bras de Titan” (86). By doing so,
Germain suggests that Ferdinand corresponds to Poseidon, one son engendered by the Titans
Cronus and Rhea. Poseidon is the god who raped Medusa in the temple of Athena, according to
Greek mythology. Medusa’s beauty rivaled that of Athena, and Posiedon’s action is traditionally
interpreted as a means of transforming Medusa’s beauty to ugliness through hate and vengeance.
However, these events are not significant in isolation, but contribute to a larger teleology. The
Titans are overthrown by the Olympians, which allows for the creation of mankind. The
transition from the Titans to the Olympians also institutes a judicial, rather than vendetta, system
of justice, the same transition recounted in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Hence, Krell can say that “Like
one of the Erinyes—avengers of blood-guilt—Lucie stalks her brother, a modern and perverted
Orestes” (Krell 111). Germain thus endows the central problem in her novel with a timeless
quality, which is the ubiquity of ethics. She introduces the question of whether humans are
doomed to repeat the sins of their fathers. Levinas frames his ethical philosophy in terms of the
Halacha, part of which is the Torah that contains what is later referred to as the Ten
Commandments, specifically “Tu ne tueras point.” Both the Greek and Judaic traditions center
on the justification and retribution for violence. Ethics for Levinas, following the Judaic tradition,
and for Germain, following Levinas and the lessons of myth, center on the means by which
cycles of violence can be broken. Thus the central problem within L’Enfant Méduse emerges
through the face to face encounter between Ferdinand and Lucie, the same and the Other, the
repercussions of which will serve to evaluate the progress and relevance of ethics in modernity.
36
Lucie, as the Other who offers infinity and signifies transcendence for the individual, is
violently rejected and reduced to psychism. Lucie’s innocence corresponds to the poverty of the
Other, which serves as an encouragement to spontaneous asceticism for the individual. Germain
exploits Levinas’ use of the term “nudity,” as a term to elaborate on his conception of poverty, in
the most visceral sense; she is raped, thus the rejection of the ethical relation is effected through
violence. This is the cause of Lucie’s transformation from the innocent, hospitable Other to
violent, reductive psychism. Her transformation corresponds to Medusa’s transformation in
Greek myth. Germain, through the narrator and the description of Lucie’s perceptions,
characterizes Ferdinand in such a way that renders his actions predictable. He is repeatedly
described by the narrator as a “tombeau vivant,” an extension of his father who disappeared in
battle, swallowed by the earth with no proper burial, and who returns to life as mud in
Ferdinand’s veins. Ferdinand is described as collapsing on Lucie, who “sentir sur elle le poids de
la dalle qui pèse” (Germain 113). His association with the subterranean is completed after he
falls from Lucie’s window to the garden below. Lucie’s perceptions transform Ferdinand into an
ogre, an entity with an insatiable appetite for children’s flesh.
Les ogres sont vulnérables lorsqu’ils gisent ainsi ; dès qu’ils dorment sur l’herbe,
loin de leurs antres, ils perdent leurs pouvoirs maléfiques. Petit Poucet n’a-t-il pas
dérobé ses bottes au grand ogre pendant son sommeil ? Des bottes de sept lieues !
Des bottes pour s’en aller au bout du monde, pour fuir loin de toute douleur, de
tout peur. Des bottes à chausser à l’envers pour retourner au pays de
l’enfance…Non, jamais elle n’enfilerait les souliers de son frère. Ils avaient bien
trop de boue, et de larmes et de sang séchés à leurs semelles. Ce ne sont pas ses
chaussures qu’elle lui volera…(120)
It is significant that Lucie is looking down on Ferdinand from her window in this passage. She is
in a position of height, which is the position of the Other in relation to the individual in Levinas’
ethical philosophy. Germain suggests by orienting the characters in this way that the ethical
relation has not been irrevocably destroyed. Lucie makes the conscious decision to reject her
37
ability to offer transcendence in favor of vengeance. As such, the ethical problem aestheticized in
the novel transitions from the strict demonstration of the Levinasian system to exploring the
consequences of the rejection of the ethical imperative through the possibility for both adequate
justice and the restoration of ethical relations.
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Chapter 4- Vengeance, Justice and Transcendence
Justice resists synthesis. Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy seeks to overturn the
traditional, dialectical conception of the human condition as the individual’s reconciliation with
an oppressive or overpowering force. The resulting synthesis is always relative, whether the
individual is murdered or forced into submission by a superior physical force, or the individual is
forced to abandon beliefs opposed to those of an institutionalized ideology. As a result, the
individual is utterly incapable of overcoming the totality and loses something of his- or her-self
in the process. Synthesis is a type of vengeance, the violence of assimilation, enacted by the
totality in order to maintain power. Ethics opposes this conception of the human condition.
Levinas’ distinction between interiority and exteriority proposes an alternative to dialectics that
allows for the possibility of ethics and justice. Interiority is that which seeks to assimilate and, in
doing so, eliminates individuality. It is the domain of time and history, an enforced finitude,
which silences the individual in a kind of forcible metonymy, as in majority rule. Levinas, in one
example, classifies such strategies as political relations, in which the State speaks for the
individual. Exteriority is that which maintains the sovereignty of the individual by denying the
desire to assimilate. The individual is not bound by the totality of history, of an ideology or force
perpetuated in time, and thereby the individual approaches infinity, or eternity without time.
Exteriority grants speech to the individual, which results in the ethical relation. Infinity is to
maintain the exteriority of others, acknowledging their claim to recognition as opposed to the
finite bounds that determine the voice of individuals within the interiority of history. The Good is
produced in the maintenance of exteriority, which grants each individual the power of testimony.
In opposition to the violence of assimilation and synthesis, Levinas states that “Justice is the
right to speak” (Levinas 298). Hence, ethics produces the Good and the Just by acknowledging
39
the dignity of the individual. Sylvie Germain recognizes the allegorical potential of the
conclusion of Levinas’ philosophy as a conflict between the individual and history. She explores
the struggle of the individual against history through the encounter between Lucie and Ferdinand.
Suffering challenges the individual’s devotion to ethical behavior. Levinas considers
violence and murder to be on “the scale of human relations,” to which infinity is the antidote
(Levinas 236). The Other’s status as a more-than-human entity, as possessing qualities of the
divine, becomes increasingly evident in contrast to the hatred that characterizes humanity.
The supreme ordeal of freedom is not death, but suffering. This is known very well in
hatred, which seeks to grasp the ungraspable, to humiliate, from on high, through the
suffering in which the Other exists as pure passivity. Hatred wills this passivity in the
eminently active being that is to bear witness to it…The one who hates seeks to be the
cause of a suffering to which the despised being must bear witness. (239)
Hatred deprives the individual of his or her freedom. However, the individual’s decision to
renounce vengeance, choosing instead to imitate the passivity of the Other, resting in the
knowledge that the voice of the individual will be restored, witness borne, and justice done
thereby, is the decisive point for the maintenance of ethical relations. Levinas urges patience
when encountering evil.
The privileged situation where the ever future evil becomes present—at the limit of
consciousness—is reached in the suffering called physical…The supreme ordeal of the
will is not death, but suffering…the violence the will endures comes from the other as a
tyranny…Violence does not stop Discourse; all is not inexorable. Thus alone does
violence remain endurable in patience. It is produced only in a world where I can die as a
result of someone and for someone…In other words, in patience the will breaks through
the crust of egoism and as it were displaces it center of gravity outside itself, to will as
Desire and Goodness limited by nothing. (238-239)
Selflessness emerges as the condition of the individual who desires and approaches infinity.
Levinas identifies evil not as an intrinsic, irremediable problem common among all of humanity,
but as a result of dependent origination, a causal chain whereby hatred breeds hatred. He states
that “The mortal will can escape violence by driving violence and murder from the world” (242).
40
The possibility for justice to enter the world of human relations rests in the individual’s will to
postpone vengeance and endure suffering.
Justice enacts a restoration of the individual’s freedom, realized through the reappearance
of the voice that provides the ability to appeal to a law that transcends historical circumstances.
However, Levinas never explicitly identifies this transcendent law. It has Judaic overtones when
he describes freedom, the restoration of which is the end that justice pursues, as being “engraved
on the stone of the tables on which laws are inscribed—it exists by virtue of this incrustation of
an institutional existence. Freedom depends on a written text, destructible to be sure, but durable,
of which freedom is conserved for man outside of man” (Levinas 241). The letter of the law
becomes less important than the process of enacting justice. Individuals who emerge from the
totality of history regain their freedom by assuming responsibility through testifying for both
themselves and the dead who cannot speak for themselves, becoming the Other who speaks for
the infinite or eternal in a sense. Levinas avoids rendering justice as a sanctioned form of
vengeance by making truth contingent upon justice.
The fate and validation of Levinas’ ethical system rest in the conception of truth as
realized through judgment. In other words, if the testimony of the oppressed achieves its desired
goal, which is to reveal and eliminate violence and evil, then Levinas’ ethical philosophy is a
viable system and it is possible for the human condition to be characterized by peace instead of
suffering. Apology is the goal, an acknowledgement of the truth of testimony: “The apology
demands a judgment…in order to obtain justice. Judgment would confirm the event of the
apology in its original and fundamental movement, ineluctable in the production of Infinity”
(Levinas 240). Apology confirms the primacy of Infinity and negates dialectics. The result is a
denial of assimilation, of synthesis, and the affirmation of individual dignity. Apology also
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eliminates the relativism that condoned and encouraged violence by acknowledging that violence
is not permissible under any circumstances.
The person is thus confirmed in objective judgment and no longer reduced to his place
within a totality. But this confirmation does not consist in flattering his subjective
tendencies and consoling him for his death, but in existing for the Other, that is, in being
called into question and dreading murder more than death—a salto mortale whose
perilous space is opened forth and measured already by patience (and this is the meaning
of suffering), but which the singular being par excellence—an I—can alone accomplish.
The truth of the will lies in its coming under judgment; but its coming under judgment
lies in a new orientation of the inner life, called to infinite responsibilities. (246)
Man is only capable of apology. Levinas’ invisible judgment resorts to conscience informed by
an enduring law that exceeds the limits of totality, of history and the limitations imposed by
assimilation, and offers a glimpse of Infinity, or an enticement toward living for the Other and
transcendence.
The perpetuation of ethical relations rests in redefining transcendence. Transcendence is
classically defined as the opposite of immanence—to be outside or beyond the world. Levinas
suggests that this conception of transcendence is self-contradictory, another example of totalizing
logic. Selflessness, or the ability to become Other and in order to maintain the exteriority
necessary for the perpetuation of ethical relations, becomes another form of dialectic by
maintaining oppositions between immanence and transcendence. Levinas states that exteriority
“signifies the resistance of the social multiplicity to the logic that totalizes the multiple” (Levinas
291). The process of becoming Other and approaching Infinity engenders goodness and love in
the individual. Levinas defines love as “to fear for another, to come to the assistance of his
frailty,” which is an inversion of the poverty of the Other that produces spontaneous asceticism
in the individual (256).
That in fecundity the personal I has its place indicates the end of the terrors whereby the
transcendence of the sacred, inhuman, anonymous, and neuter, menaces persons with
nothingness or ecstasy. Being is produced as multiple and split into same and other; this
42
is the ultimate structure. It is society…Philosophy itself constitutes a moment of this
temporal accomplishment, a discourse always addressed to another. (269)
The Other, whose status rose from “the same” through transcendence, is now defined in terms of
fecundity.
Transcendence is time and goes unto the Other. But the Other is not a term: he does not
stop the movement of Desire. The other that Desire desires is again Desire; transcendence
transcends toward him who transcends—this is the true adventure of paternity, of the
transubstantiation which permits going beyond the simple renewal of the possible in the
inevitable senescence of the subject. Transcendence, the for the Other, the goodness
correlative of the face, founds a more profound relation: the goodness of goodness.
Fecundity engendering fecundity accomplishes goodness: above and beyond the sacrifice
that imposes a gift, the gift of the power of giving, the conception of the child. Here the
Desire which in the first pages of this work we contrasted with need, the Desire that is not
a lack, the Desire that is the independence of the separated being and its transcendence, is
accomplished—not in being satisfied and in thus acknowledging that it was a need, but in
transcending itself, in engendering Desire. (269)
The essential point that Levinas communicates is that transcendence is to approach the divine
through a personal realization of the ethical relation resulting from the Other’s teaching. The
individual, now transcendent Other, increasingly approaches the divine in proportion to his or
her ability to embody the qualities of the divine, as manifested in the ability to create flesh and to
create justice, truth and love in others.
Sylvie Germain challenges Levinas’ optimism. She evaluates the viability of ethics
through Lucie’s reaction and behavior following the violence, a physical and spiritual suffering
that Ferdinand imposed on her. Germain questions the possibility for relief from suffering. In
addition, she examines whether there are degrees of violence, registered either by repetition or
degree of force, which are beyond enduring. Germain suggests that an individual’s patience has
limits, which amounts to negating Levinas’ entire metaphysics. Justice is impossible under such
circumstances. However, Germain’s evaluation does not negate Levinas’ philosophy, but brings
attention to the causal chain of violence that prevents the progress and maintenance of ethics.
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Lucie’s actions reveal the obstacles humanity impose on themselves that hinder, but do not
obliterate, ethical relations.
Germain captures the vague causal genesis that characterizes suffering. Suffering does
not originate in isolation as an intention and resulting action, whereby suffering becomes
transferrable to others. One could not identify a specific type of suffering and re-trace its course
in order to determine its origin. Suffering is one commonality that contributes to the mystery of
the human condition. Germain identifies such a conception through Ferdinand’s inexplicable
illness.
Si déficience il y avait, elle ne se situait pas du côté du corps…La lésion était à chercher
ailleurs, du côté de la conscience, de la volonté, des sentiments. Du côté de l’inconscient
disaient les uns, de celui de l’âme disaient les autres. Mais c’étaient là des zones où tous
échouaient à pénétrer, faute d’en trouver l’accès. (Germain 169)
His physical condition reflects his inner turmoil.
Son âme est sous la loi des crimes qu’il a commis. Son âme est dans l’effroi. Car les
crimes toujours se retournent contre ceux qui les ont perpétrés. L’épouvante, la
souffrance et la mort qu’ils ont semées sur leur passage sont d’étranges graines qui
germent sous leurs pas, -- et pas à pas les accompagnent. (193)
Ferdinand is ignorant of his condition, which is represented by his lack of intentional awareness.
The cause of his unconsciousness can only be described in metaphysical terms. Pain is the
physical counterpart to suffering, which is a spiritual condition. The various clairvoyants that his
mother enlists to cure Ferdinand declare him to be cursed by an evil spirit and are unable to
provide more detailed diagnoses (170). Suffering is a curse shared among mankind, an
inexplicable spiritual torment that nonetheless assumes demonstrable manifestations in
individuals.
Ferdinand appartenait à cette race d’êtres qui est légion de par le monde ; la race des
hommes qui somnolent, qui vivent à tâtons, à fleur de conscience, et dont la vue est
courte. Le mal se glisse alors en eux à leur insu et va se lover jusque dans leurs cœurs
sans vigilance, sans force ni courage. (196-7)
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Germain places Ferdinand in an ideal position to be a vector for suffering. Readers must
remember that “Ferdinand n’était pas méchant” (196). His actions are the result of the trauma
and resulting suffering caused by his mother’s interruption of his childhood. He was unable to
construct a stable identity as a result of his mother’s insisting that he assume his dead father’s
identity. However, this strain of suffering did not originate with his mother. She suffers as a
result of her husband’s death during the war. War, a theme that unites Germain’s oeuvre, is the
vague cause of suffering par excellence. Wars do not begin in an instant, do not arise from an
individual cause, and force individuals who are independent from the cause of the conflict to
inflict and perpetuate suffering, affecting unknown numbers of people who are removed from the
immediate circumstances. Identity has no place in the anonymous violence of war. Germain’s
allegory emerges at this point in the text. War clearly illustrates the concept of psychism.
Suffering is the means of reduction in this case, which individuals impose on others as a result of
a common condition rather than intentional malice. Instituting a system of ethics is the means by
which the human condition may be improved, but good intentions are hardly powerful enough to
counteract the proliferating, dependently originating curses that thwart progress toward realizing
ethical relations.
Lucie’s hatred is caused by Ferdinand’s dissemination of pain and suffering. Her silence
is the result of her suffering; she communicates only through her physical appearance. Lucie is
“Une enfant muette au visage sonore,” whose anger “a pris le relais de la honte, la haine celui de
la terreur” (Germain 207). Her suffering degenerates into hatred, which is another dependently
originating metaphysical, or spiritual, condition. Hence, Lucie is unable to articulate her
condition and resorts to expressing herself by any available means.
45
Pendant un temps, -- ces deux années au cours desquels elle avait tenu ses yeux baissés,
fuyants, Lucie avait perdu toute imagination. Elle ne voyait plus rien, ni au-dehors, ni audedans. Le corps de l’ogre l’aveuglait, il lui obstruait la vue autant que la rêverie. Puis
elle avait redressé son regard parmi la faune des marais et recouvré une nouvelle vue. Et
à présent elle voit autrement, tant le monde extérieur que les choses invisibles. (209)
Lucie’s return to psychism is identified in this passage through her inability to perceive things in
terms of interiority, or “au-dedans,” and exteriority, or “au-dehors.” She becomes more
undifferentiated by incorporating the defensive posture of insects and birds of prey, praying to
Saints in the hope of damning Ferdinand and channeling the spirits of his other victims. Lucie
imagines herself to be the repository of these forces seeking vengeance in battle against the ogre,
Ferdinand. However, Lucie, like Ferdinand, suffers as the result of the illusory consolation that
violence provides.
Mais son attention était souvent déviée, son imagination venait faire écran entre ellemême et son reflet et la détournait de son projet, sans qu’elle en prît conscience. Elle
confondait sa vie avec des personnages de contes qu’elle avait lus, elle se parait de
courage et de gloire volés à des héros découverts dans des livres d’histoire, elle pétrissait
ses idées fixes dans la glaise de scènes bibliques racontées au catéchisme. Et à force de se
fixer ainsi dans le miroir en mulitpliant et travestissant sans fin son regard, elle se
dessaisissait en fait d’elle-même, elle oubliait sa haine, sa douleur, pour jouir à son insu
de ce secret qui l’obsédait. (219-220)
Hatred prevents her from conceiving of herself and her relation to the environment in terms of
separation and exteriority, previously a function of her dialectic imagination: “Il n’y a désormais
plus la moindre frontière entre la réalité et l’imaginaire” (222). The result is that “la guerre
qu’elle voulait tant livrer à l’ogre s’en prenait autant à lui qu’à elle-même” (220). Germain thus
demonstrates the mute oblivion imposed by suffering and hatred with which individuals infect
each other.
Vengeance is a type of synthesis that seeks inordinate reparation. Hatred and violence are
consumptive forces, which cannot offer adequate satisfaction when taken as motivations for
action or reasons for being. Germain’s conception of hatred and violence is in agreement with
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such a definition, as Lucie and Ferdinand both bear physical and spiritual handicaps that result
from their concession to these reductive forces. Ferdinand eventually dies, but Germain never
explicitly identifies the cause of death. The reader is encouraged to believe that Ferdinand died
as a result of a diseased soul and the weight of his conscience: “l’effroi qu’un jour il provoqua
s’irradie ensuite à rebours et revient frapper à sa source” (Germain 194). Lucie testifies to his
conscience. She stands over him as he lies prostrate, paralyzing him with her medusal gaze,
showing him pictures of the other young girls whom he victimized, and placing insects on him.
Germain mingles the serious, the comic and the pitiful again in this scene. Lucie’s position of
height evokes the orientation of the individual and the Other as seen in Levinas’ philosophy.
Lucie, the Other who throughout the novel has offered Ferdinand the opportunity to reform and
transcend, stares down at the unresponsive individual who has reduced the Other to the same.
Her behavior, especially in the use of insects, strikes the reader as overtly childlike and comic in
her belief that bugs possess the power to sufficiently shock others and can be used as a defensive
weapon. However, this sentiment also evokes pity, as she believes that she is capable of effecting
demonstrable violence in retribution for her violation, although she is powerless to do so. Lucie
did not kill Ferdinand; they each atone for their crimes in adequate and isolated measure. Lucie
nonetheless assumes responsibility for Ferdinand’s death.
A l’annonce de la mort de Ferdinand, Lucie n’a manifesté ni étonnement ni peine, elle
n’a pas même ressenti un quelconque émoi sur le coup. Cela faisait six mois qu’elle
oeuvrait en coulisse avec patience, avec acharnement, afin d’accomplir cette mise à mort.
Le décès de Ferdinand lui parut donc être le fruit mûri par sa persévérance. C’était une
fin logique, et parfaitement juste. Mais très vite la portée de cet événement lui a échappé,
sans qu’elle en prît conscience…Une sourde frayeur, mêlée de répulsion, l’avait tenue
éloignée de la chambre mortuaire. Puis elle avait refusé de suivre le convoi au cimetière
le jour de l’enterrement. Cela déjà n’était plus son affaire, avait-elle décidé en se croyant
indifférente. Vengeance était faite, justice était rendue, et cela suffisait. Mais lorsqu’elle
avait aperçu les hommes des pompes funèbres descendre le perron à pas précautionneux,
portant sur leurs épaules le long cercueil noir, qu’elle les avait vus traverser la cour avec
lenteur puis disparaître par le portail, une émotion intense s’était emparée d’elle. La joie,
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avait-elle décrété, -- mais vraiment, non, ce n’était pas cela. C’était un bouleversement
violent et trouble où les sentiments se bousculaient pêle-mêle…Mais, loin de répandre
d’un ton allègre et insolent ce qu’elle avait cru devoir être un prodigieux événement, -« Il a crevé le grand salaud, j’ai eu la peau de l’ogre ! », elle n’avait su que murmurer
d’une voix sourde cette étrange nouvelle parmi les broussailles et les roseaux : « L’ogre
est mort. Mon frère est mort. Et c’est moi qui l’ai tué. Entendez-vous ? » Non, nul ne
l’avait entendue. (278-9)
The effacement of the boundary between real and imaginary, as demonstrated through Lucie’s
dialectic imagination, is accomplished in this scene. The forces from which Lucie drew strength
are indifferent to her accomplishment. Lucie’s dialectic imagination rationalized violence by
dissociating it from the real, which produces disgust in her once the veil of imagination is
removed. Germain thus demonstrates the reductive violence, the mutually-enacted vendetta of
assimilation that dialectic imposes on individuals and ideas. By doing so, she suggests the
viability of Levinas’ ethical alternative that requires and reinforces individual sovereignty.
Patience overcomes the compulsion toward vengeance, as well as reinstituting justice and
ethics. Germain titles the last section of the novel “Patience,” which serves as an epilogue that
resolves the conflict in the novel. The “Légende” presents Lucie as an adult who is still
attempting to overcome the trauma of her childhood. Germain begins the section with an
ekphrastic passage describing Taddeo Gaddi’s “Annunciation to the Shepherds.” This fresco
depicts an angel reaching down toward shepherds and their flocks, which can also be interpreted
in the context of this novel as an illustration of Levinasian ethics. Germain incorporates the
description of this fresco to signal the reinstitution of ethics, which will conclude her evaluation
of Levinas’ philosophy. Lucie had continuing difficulty shedding her hatred, or relocating herself
“chez soi” in Levinas’ terms, in the intervening years: “A chaque fois elle aurait voulu atteindre
d’emblée la perfection, ou plus exactement trouver l’accord absolu entre ce qui criait, souffrait
en elle et l’expression de cette souffrance” (Germain 295-6). Lucie remains emotionally
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alienated until her mother falls ill. Lucie blamed her mother for not recognizing her distress as a
child, but she is motivated to comfort her mother as a result of the guilt she feels about living
when her father died.
Aloïse fut opérée… Le cancer récidiva…Cette mutilation réitérée du corps de sa mère se
répercuta en Lucie ; celle-ci fut, à mesure du déclin d’Aloïse, amputée de tous ses
ressentiments restés coriaces à l’égard de sa mère. La pitié creusait, creusait toujours plus
profond en Lucie, ouvrait d’étranges gouffres en elle, où chaviraient ses vielles rancoeurs,
ses haines devenues archaïques, ses relents de colère et ses sursauts de rage. Et le pardon,
comme une eau claire, se mit à sourdre tout au fond de ces gouffres. Une eau en crue qui
peu à peu touchait tous ceux qui l’avaient blessée, déçue ou trahie au cours de sa vie. Une
eau lustrale. (299)
Lucie is re-learning sympathy. Aloïse is the widow and impoverished Other of Levinas’
philosophy who reaches down to the individual. Lucie sympathizes, leaving Paris to return to
rural le Blanc. This action is a demonstration of spontaneous asceticism that imitates the poverty
of the Other. Lucie’s voice has been restored; she has emerged from the totality of history and
psychism to infinity, justice and transcendence. She “a pardonné à son frère, après trente ans
d’errance et de souffrance le mal qu’il a commis contre elle. Cela suffit” (303). Lucie
acknowledges that this process is a product of patience.
Alors Lucie a senti qu’il lui fallait réapprendre à regarder ; apprendre à voir. Pas
seulement le ciel, mais les arbres, les chemins dans les champs, les ombres glissant sur
les murs et les choses, et les visages enfin. Les visages surtout…Apprendre aussi à
écouter, à percevoir les inflexions des voix, des silences et des souffles. Apprendre à
effleurer le monde, à le toucher du bout des doigts pour en ressentir la douceur enfouie.
Apprendre la patience. Patience chaque jour, et chaque jour davantage. Patience pour
délier lentement le chaos des souffrances enchevêtrées dans la mémoire et celui des
terreurs nouées au profond des entrailles. Patience pour exhausser, hors du cœur
embourbé dans de vielles blessures d’amours trahis, dans le relents de haine et de
vengeance inassouvie, le frêle sourire du pardon. Patience pour parvenir au-delà de soimême…Patience immense et folle presque, pour consentir à vivre avec soi-même en
déposant les armes, pour consentir à n’être que soi-même, -- désert arasé par le vent de la
grâce. (309-310)
Lucie’s realization is expressed in terms nearly identical to Levinas’. Lucie realizes that the face,
or the way in which the Other reveals itself to the individual, is the most important visual form.
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She acknowledges that she must learn to listen, which suggests hospitality toward the language
and teaching of the Other. She realizes as well that patience is the culmination of the Other’s
teachings, which is the kind of wisdom that recognizes and maintains the sovereignty of others
and renounces violence. The “grâce” acknowledged at the end of the passage suggests
transcendence, which consists of progressive encounters with the divine, or approaching infinity.
As revealed in this passage, Germain clearly supports Levinas’ ethical philosophy, which
ultimately affirms the viability of ethics.
The evolution of Lucie’s character clearly allegorizes Levinasian themes. Her dialectic
imagination presents an obstacle to the representation of Levinas’ philosophy in Germain’s novel.
The question suggested in this analysis is the possibility for justice, and thus ethics, within a
dialectical social structure. In other words, is this type of compromise just and fair for both
parties involved, as is the case with war, or is there another kind of social structure that obviates
dialectics. Lucie’s dialectic imagination is a synthesis of two competing realities, which
ultimately renders her ill-equipped to interact with her environment and to address a violent
situation. Her mature realization, after she has discredited the claim to reality that she afforded
her imagination, demonstrates the patience, poverty, and forgiveness that make ethical relations
possible. However, there is an immediate binary opposition presented by opposing imagination
to maturity. Lucie seeks a return to innocence, which is equated with childhood: “Oui, elle avait
faim de joie, faim d’oubli et d’innocence retrouvé. Elle voulait reconquérir son enfance”
(Germain 285). The conclusion resonates with Levinas’ refrain of ethics being “beyond formal
logic.” Germain maintains Levinas’ conception of a difference between systems of logic.
Dialectics might be suitable or preferable for a given problem, but its product does not promote
the aim of ethics. The consequence that Levinas and Germain identify is the tendency for
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individuality to be lost or sacrificed to history, which is a collection of univocal statements that
do not account for individual difference. Lucie was talked about, never talking herself, after her
violation. She became an example of synthesis, a physical product of Ferdinand’s violence and a
conceptual product of other people’s language: in this regard, her fate demonstrates the univocal
tendency of history. Lucie gains autonomy and is then able to differentiate between places,
things and emotion and express herself only after she learns to sympathize with Aloïse. Thus,
Lucie demonstrates the status of the individual within the totality of history as well as the infinity
of individuality. Germain validates Levinas’ philosophy under the condition that the individuals
involved acknowledge the dependent origination that accounts for the proliferation and
maintenance of evil as well as the necessity of recognizing dialectics as a logic model
inconsistent with the aim of justice and ethics.
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Chapter 5- Conclusions
Emmanuel Levinas and Sylvie Germain contributed to the development of the human
sciences by reevaluating the roles and uses of philosophy and literature in the period of time in
European history from the rise of Nazism, in 1933, to the end of the twentieth century. The
Holocaust is perhaps the defining event of the era. It initiated a period of intellectual activity that
attempted to locate the decisive flaws in traditional ideologies and questioned the possibility of a
future that is radically separated from history. Conceptions of individual dignity, duty and
camaraderie, all of which are foundational aspects of moral and ethical systems, were employed
as means of oppression and justification for mass murder during the Holocaust. Interest waned in
hunting for prophecy in the texts of ancient Greek philosophy and German Idealism after the
Holocaust. The ethos underlying most philosophical and literary production of this period
considered the possibility for redeeming the human condition by reestablishing and
strengthening the bonds that unite mankind in general, which appeared to be illusory in contrast
to such violence. Levinas summarizes his motivation for writing Totality and Infinity in the
following statement: “Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know
whether we are not duped by morality” (Levinas 21). The consequences of the resulting answers
exceed the limits of mere decorum, posing potential threats to our conceptions of Truth, and thus
to the status of reality as represented in art and language.
Levinas acknowledged Immanuel Kant’s influence on Western philosophy by using his
metaphysics of morals as the substrate for his own ethical philosophy. However, his doing so
was not revolutionary, as reinterpreting Kant and possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of
ancient Greek philosophy were obligatory practices for contemporary philosophers of his era.
While there are similarities between ancient Greek philosophy and German Idealism, Kant
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rejects Aristotle’s definition of ethics as merely “living well.” Kant suggests that actions aimed
toward such an end will unavoidably be motivated, at least in part, by conditional and selfish
concerns. Kant attempts instead to establish a structure for morality and ethics based on “pure”
concepts. Pure, in this sense, is often synonymous with disinterested, and expressing the idea that
all humans possess common intellectual faculties that permit objective thought and action. He
identifies “duty” as what motivates ethical action, a “pure” concept that is defined by “the
necessity of acting from respect for the law,” which is to not act “from duty” or other form of
self-interest (Kant 19). The idea of “law” becomes the problematic aspect of his moral
framework, as any law made by man is necessarily interested and fallible, while Divine will is
ultimately unknowable (74). Kant suggests that the sovereignty of the individual is a moral
necessity. Ethical action, then, is “to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of
any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only” (56). Instinct opposes Reason
and is what compels individuals to use others to satisfy their own desires. Reason permits one to
conceive of objectivity, in contrast to Instinctual subjectivity. Kant suggests that there is a
categorical imperative, accessible only to Reason as it mediates ethical relations between law and
will. He defines the categorical imperative as to “[A]ct only on that maxim whereby thou canst at
the same time will that it should become a universal law” (46). In his moral system, the
individual produces a maxim, or objective law, which is reconciled with the “subjective
imperfection” of the human will. Actions without moral value result from selfishness, or
following the wishes of the imperfect, subjective will against the dictates of the maxim and
categorical imperative. An action is moral if there is an agreement between maxim and will
insofar as the motivation for action is free from self-interest. However, objective law, like
freedom and pure reason, is comprehensible only in its incomprehensibility (102). In other words,
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there is no reliable way in which causality can be established between the transcendental ideal
and the performance of an action. The Good, in this situation, is inexpressible in itself and any
statement or formulation of it will be relative. Kant suggests, in maintaining the sovereignty of
the individual, that objective law is individually determined. Every individual is a sovereign by
virtue of being capable of producing legislation in the moral kingdom (69). The kingdom, or
collective humanity, is united by the faculty of reason and adherence to the categorical
imperative. Individuals may make their own rules, or possess autonomy of will and freedom of
action and thought, provided that their thoughts and actions are governed by the categorical
imperative. This kingdom is self-governing because each member is subject to the laws of others,
which enforce adherence to the categorical imperative (62). Jean-Paul Sartre adopts this
conclusion as the basis for his conception of freedom and responsibility when developing
Existentialism. However, Levinas is decidedly not an advocate of Existentialism, considering it
to promote or open up the possibility and justification for violence. Levinas elaborates on Kant’s
metaphysical foundation for ethics, maintaining the foundational separation between the “ought”
of moral action and the self-interested “is” observable in common, daily actions. Kant’s
insistence on the sovereignty of the other has a profound influence on Levinas. However,
Levinas is less concerned with defining the union of sense and understanding in the individual
that preoccupies Kantian philosophy. Instead, Levinas maps this individual division onto social
relations; as there is an interiority and exteriority to the individual, so is there an interiority and
exteriority to social relations. Levinas does not share Kant’s disdain for empiricism, and so must
look elsewhere to develop his ideas of ethics in practice.
Søren Kierkegaard’s treatise Fear and Trembling provides an account of ethics in practice
rather than in theory. Ethics, for Kierkegaard, is a term used to signify an attitude that represents
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“the universal…which has the same character as a person’s eternal salvation” (Kierkegaard 47).
He does not follow Kant in rendering the awakening to and practice of ethics as a function of
reason, which in turn relies upon an eternal, immutable rule. He presents instead a spectrum of
experience: the particular, the universal and the absolute. Each of these kinds of experience is
identifiable by the attitudes characteristic of individuals acting within these states; aesthetics
corresponds to the particular, ethics corresponds to the universal, and faith corresponds to the
absolute. There are two types of individuals acting within this spectrum: the tragic hero and the
knight of faith. The tragic hero is bound by the ethically-based laws created by mankind. He is
tragic in being forced to sacrifice something of himself to maintain social harmony through
ethical action. The knight of faith is the “single individual” who resigns all worldly possessions
based only on “the virtue of the absurd.” The knight of faith has realized an eternal, immutable
law beyond the fallibility of mankind, obviating the need for all ethically-based laws. This
transcendent law is only perceptible between the individual and the Divine, never among humans
alone, and hence appears paradoxical or fallacious when described. Kierkegaard uses Abraham,
the Biblical patriarch, as the paradigm for the knight of faith. Abraham is commanded by God to
sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham may either adhere to ethical law and not sacrifice his son or
demonstrate his faith in God by sacrificing Isaac. Abraham cannot explain to those close to him
why he must kill Isaac, thereby demonstrating his transcendence over the particular and universal.
He knows that it is beautiful and beneficial to be the particular individual who translates
himself into the universal one who, so to speak, personally produces a clean-cut, elegant,
and in so far as possible flawless edition of himself, readable by all. He knows it is
refreshing to become intelligible to oneself in the universal in such a way that he
understands the latter, and every individual who understands him in turn understands the
universal through him, and both rejoice in the security of the universal. He knows it is
beautiful to be born as the particular individual who has his home in the universal, his
friendly abode, which immediately receives him with open arms when he wants to remain
in it. But he knows as well that higher than this there winds a lonely trail…that it is
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frightful to be born solitary, outside the universal…Humanly speaking, he is mad and
cannot make himself intelligible to anyone. (67)
Kierkegaard is elaborating here on the relationship the knight of faith has to other people and the
responsibility realized through divine law. He suggests that communication is the way to
distinguish between the knight of faith and mere humanity. Those who would keep a secret, such
as a command from God, out of vanity or false martyrdom act aesthetically. Those who reveal a
secret to satisfy or maintain society, and thereby deny divine law, act ethically. Those who deny
his or her sense of self and the arbitrary laws of man, devoting him- or her-self to divine law
instead, act out of faith.
Kierkegaard’s influence on philosophy is undeniable, but this text is decidedly a
development of his idea of faith rather than ethics (Evans xxii). Levinas appears to adopt several
ideas expounded in Fear and Trembling. He would not agree with the separation of ethics from
the infinite, absolute or divine, although Kierkegaard has difficulty resolving the problem of guilt
without doing so. Levinas nonetheless adopts a tripartite structure similar to Kierkegaard’s,
although their categories have little in common. For example, the lowest, particular category is
the aesthetic, or the beautiful, in Kierkegaard, which has no affinity with Levinas’ conception of
psychism. On the contrary, Levinas, as in the passage quoted above, also conceives of
individuals who have risen above psychism, or the particular, to exist in a metaphysical
“dwelling,” or a mediate location that grants access to the absolute or infinite. Both Fear and
Trembling and Totality and Infinity justify ethical relations by considering them to be
foundational, although Levinas does not share the common assumption that ethics is maieutical.
Levinas uses Kierkegaard’s philosophy not as a basis for elaboration, but as a counterpoint to
develop his ideas on the function and purpose of faith within ethical relations.
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The practical viability of ethics is contested by Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler’s Mein
Kampf is perhaps the most authentic chronicle of the origins, rise and tenets of Nazism. He does
not present anything that resembles analytic philosophy, but the educational system set forth in
the text bears a striking resemblance to the education of the guardians in Plato’s Republic. Hitler
suggests that the manner of contemporary education in Germany, which he does not examine
beyond condemning “parliamentarians” for sophistry, focuses too much on abstract concepts that
are quickly forgotten, which results in inhibiting students’ intellectual and physical strength. He
endorses subjects that promote “sharp, logical thinking,” such as Latin, which should be
“transmitted to the young student only in its general outlines or, better expressed, in its inner
structure, thus giving him knowledge of the most salient essence...” (Hitler 420). Education
should encourage an apprenticeship-style education, where individuals are educated only in
disciplines that pertain to their trade, thus producing a vaster skilled workforce. Reflection is not
encouraged in the masses, as in the education of the guardians in the Republic. The ideology of
the National Socialist movement, which becomes Nazism, centers on the concept of “folk.” The
workers conceive of themselves as a modern embodiment of the Teutonic warrior heritage
fighting to maintain their collective identity against the encroaching, corrupting influences of
communism and democracy.
Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic
principles—or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles—by abolishing this
religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a
grave shock to the foundations of their existence…Every philosophy of life, even if it is a
thousand times correct and of highest benefit to humanity, will remain without
significance for the practical shaping of a people’s life, as long as its principles have not
become the banner of a fighting movement… (379-380)
The formation of a mass, “folk” identity is reinforced by “psychologically sound meetings,”
where anyone who dissented at meetings was “mercilessly thrown out” (478). The “folk” identity
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is Aryan, which Hitler identifies with a pure Germanic race, mostly as a justification for resisting
the Jews, who he believed to be supporting the systems of both democracy and communism that
directly and intentionally threaten traditional Germanic society. The result of such an ideology
motivated by the law that “all the wisdom on this earth remains without success if force does not
enter in to its service” was demonstrated in the course of World War II and the Holocaust (49).
Hitler’s philosophy regards the elimination of Jewish culture as the means by which Germanic
destiny is to be realized. Hitler treats Jews as a means instead of acknowledging their individual
sovereignty, which is where his ethical conviction loses any viability or claim to truth. However,
the logical force of the dialectic, and the potential for its misuse, is readily apparent in Hitler’s
argument. Levinas’ conception of psychism appears to be derived in part from the
“psychologically sound meetings” of the National Socialists and in part from the general
conformity required by the “folkish” attitude. Psychism is dialectical; it takes an existing thesis,
or ideology, and synthesizes its antithesis, or forces it to conform to the existing ideology. Belief,
wherein the possibility for evil resides, undermines the dialectic as a logical model for ethics.
Levinas’ ethical philosophy accommodates this fact by offering an alternative that admits the
presence of psychism while offering a practical alternative that promotes, but does not depend on,
the individual’s will toward the Good and the establishment of a harmonious society.
Levinas’ contribution to ethical philosophy is to provide one means by which to
overcome the apparently irreconcilable difference between transcendentalism and empiricism, or
metaphysics and pragmatism.
It [Totality and Infinity] is basically phenomenological in character. But it is far more
than a mere elaboration or correction of past insights…It is striking out along new lines
to formulate a general position which is opposed to Husserl’s transcendental idealism as
well as to Heidegger’s hermeneutic philosophy of Being. In this way it shows the
inexhaustible richness of our lived experience and the fruitfulness of reflecting on its
forms and patterns. (Wild 12)
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Levinas’ style most closely resembles transcendental phenomenology, following in the tradition
established by Edmund Husserl. This method attempts to explain the ways in which phenomena,
or the visible world, manifest themselves to individual consciousness. However, Levinas’
philosophy ultimately suggests that the cogito, or individual consciousness, cannot grasp
everything that can be presented to it. The inadequacy of the cogito is what makes Levinasian
ethics possible. His break with ontology becomes evident in this movement as well, suggesting
that Being assumes the adequacy of the cogito and thereby negates the need for instruction from
the Other. The pragmatic dimension of Levinas’ ethics lies in this distinction. Levinas’
development of ethical philosophy places traditional formulations, most of which are
metaphysical and abstract in the strongest sense of the term, in a quotidian setting. Ethics is now
an integral part of the ways in which individuals encounter and communicate with each other, as
demonstrated through the core concepts of language and teaching, rather than relying upon
primarily intellectual constructs such as categorical imperatives. However, the community of
pragmatist philosophers has not been quick to acknowledge or embrace this practical aspect of
Levinas’ philosophy. Richard Rorty, a leader in the revival of pragmatism in the late twentieth
century, acknowledges that “without the traditional concepts of metaphysics one cannot make
sense of the appearance-reality distinction, and without that distinction one cannot make sense of
the notion of ‘what is really going on’” (Rorty 14). Rorty acknowledges the necessity for the
ideal language used in the study of metaphysics, but maintains that a system that can only be
formulated and communicated in such terms is irrelevant or removed from the community of
users. Rorty critiques Levinas by examining his influence on Jacques Derrida’s writings.
I have trouble with the specifically Levinasian strains in his [Derrida’s] thought. In
particular, I am unable to connect Levinas’s pathos of the infinite with ethics or politics. I
see ethics and politics—real politics as opposed to cultural politics—as a matter of
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reaching accommodation between competing terms which do not need philosophical
dissection and do not have philosophical presuppositions…Levinas’s pathos of the
infinite chimes with radical, revolutionary politics, but not with reformist, democratic
politics—which is, I think, the only sort of politics needed in rich constitutional
democracies such as Britain, France and the US…Politics, as I see it, is a matter of
pragmatic, short-term reforms and compromises—compromises which must, in a
democratic society, be proposed and defended in terms much less esoteric than those in
which we overcome the metaphysics of presence…I want to save radicalism and pathos
for private moments, and stay reformist and pragmatic when it comes to my dealings with
other people. (17)
Rorty’s assessment of Levinas is not incorrect, but fails to acknowledge the movement toward
pragmatism that Levinas attempts. Levinas’ legacy to philosophy, then, is aligned neither with
Husserlian phenomenology, nor with Heideggerian ontology, nor with Rortian pragmatism.
Levinas’ influence on the philosophical community is most evident in the works of
Jacques Derrida. Derrida, like Levinas, has not been entirely accepted by any intellectual
community, whether philosophical, literary, psychoanalytic or religious. Derrida interprets
Levinas’ works, especially Totality and Infinity, as texts that address and aim toward the future
of philosophy (ED 79-84). He interprets Levinas’ ethical philosophy as a means by which future
philosophical inquiry can be liberated from the ancient Greek tradition, whose language still
governs philosophical inquiry despite the connotations and distortions accumulated in the words
over centuries of use (ED 79-84). This idea is evident in many of Derrida’s writings, especially
in his essay “La Mythologie Blanche.” He develops this interest into a maxim that governs much
of his thought: “Y, the condition of the possibility of X, is also the condition of the impossibility
of X” (Rorty 16). This rather obscure formulation of simple predication is the foundation for
much of the deconstructionist movement in literary theory, which is often exercised in his name
rather than in his writings.
All that a deconstructionist point of view tries to show is that since convention,
institutions and consensus are stabilizations (sometimes stabilizations of great duration,
sometimes micro-stabilizations), this means that they are stabilizations of something
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essentially unstable and chaotic. Thus, it becomes necessary to stabilize precisely because
stability is not natural; it is because there is instability that stability becomes necessary; it
is because there is chaos that there is a need for stability. Now, this chaos and instability,
which is fundamental, founding and irreducible, is at once naturally the worst against
which we struggle with laws, rules, conventions, politics and provisional hegemony, but
at the same time it is a chance, a chance to change, to destabilize. If there were continual
stability, there would be no need for politics, and it is to the extent that stability is not
natural, essential or substantial, that politics exists and ethics is possible. (DP 84)
Deconstruction seeks a return to the elemental in language that has been effaced or lost in use
and translation. Levinas’ influence on Derrida is evident in such a movement. Derrida states that
“Dans le retour aux choses mêmes se rencontrerait le fondement de la métaphysique – au sens de
Levinas --, racine commune de l’humanisme et de la théologie : la ressemblance entre l’homme
et Dieu, le visage de l’homme et la Face de Dieu” (ED 159). Derrida interprets this return as a
means of renewal and the condition of the possibility for the future of philosophy.
Et si l’on veut, à travers le discours philosophique auquel il est impossible de s’arracher
totalement, tenter une percée vers son au-delà, on n’a de chance d’y parvenir dans le
langage (Levinas reconnaît qu’il n’y a pas de pensée avant le langage et hors de lui) qu’à
poser formellement et thématiquement le problème des rapports entre l’appartenance et
la percée, le problème de la clôture. Formellement, c’est-à dire le plus actuellement
possible et de la manière la plus formelle, la plus formalisée : non pas dans une logique,
autrement dit dans une philosophie, mais dans une description inscrite, dans une
inscription des rapports entre le philosophique et le non-philosophique, dans une sorte de
graphique inouïe, à la intérieur de laquelle la conceptualité philosophiquw n’aurait plus
qu’une fonction. (ED 163)
Levinas’ legacy, as demonstrated in Derrida’s thought, lies in opening a dialogue that addresses
the longstanding question of the “death of philosophy” as a renewal. Levinas’ critique of history
against the individual emerges as the ultimate message in his ethics. History is that which
obscures, effaces and silences the individual as realized through language. The work of ethics is
the production of a new, pure language, which is the language of the Other as opposed to “the
same.” The Other, or the renewal of the human sciences, an especially imperative duty following
the questioning of the human condition posed by the Holocaust, stands in infinity, or the future,
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that beckons individuals to transcend their conditions by stripping themselves of the limitations
imposed on them by traditional concepts. Levinas’ legacy is not an incitement to destroy
tradition, but to reexamine the legacy of the Enlightenment, a tradition that has had such a
profound influence on modern conceptions of individuality and humanism. That influence has
culminated in the destruction of entire communities is evidence for moving beyond such flawed
ideas. Levinas’ legacy is to offer a critique of modernity and a reformulation of the way in which
a distinct future built on peaceful coexistence may be realized.
Sylvie Germain’s novels demonstrate motivations and themes similar to those in
Emannuel Levinas’ philosophical writings. She consistently creates characters that are
marginalized or abandoned in social or familial relationships. These characters often develop
distinctive physical features, and each expresses him- or herself through the creation of art or
writing. As a result, her characters typically appear as if they are pursuing a quest dictated by a
voice they alone can hear, which gives the reader a messianic or mystical impression of the
character. She departs from strict adherence to Levinas’ philosophy by explicitly identifying the
religious influence on her novels. Levinas points to an eternal, immutable law without naming it,
which appears to be a convention of ethical philosophy in general, whereas Germain prefaces
chapters with quotes from the Bible. Otherwise, Levinas’ influence on the ideas expressed in her
novels is unmistakable. Ethics is necessarily brought into question in a setting where characters
are persecuted or abandoned, and is incorporated through orientational metaphors and the ways
in which communication and representation are negotiated against an oppressive force. However,
the majority of Germain’s critics either acknowledge Levinas’ stated influence on her thought
and gloss over the details or frame her style in terms of the legacy of Romantic aesthetics. Both
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of these kinds of criticism trivialize Germain’s contribution to late-twentieth century philosophy
and literature.
Alain Goulet’s Sylvie Germain: Oeuvre Romanesque is generally considered to be the
authoritative comprehensive study of Germain’s writings. The major critical currents that have
emerged in articles from various disciplines are collected and synthesized in this text. Goulet
acknowledges Levinas’ influence on Germain’s writings, but finds more compelling evidence for
this influence in the contrast between light and dark than Levinasian relationships characterized
by height. Goulet suggests that the idea of “les personnages cryptophores” adequately explains
the common movements in Germain’s writings. “Les personnages cryptophores” is essentially a
psychoanalytic concept that explains “combien souvent ils sont agis par des forces démoniaques
qu'ils ne peuvent connaître et encore moins maîtriser, disant des mots sans l'avoir voulu,
commettant des actes qu'ils ne comprennent pas” (Goulet 30). He suggests that all the central
characters endure some form of trauma that compels them to retreat within themselves, at which
point they become “cryptophoric” (27-8). Goulet relies on the reader’s sense of wit in
interpreting the connotations of “cryptophoric,” which is either serious as in the case of
Ferdinand as “un tombeau vivant” or humorous as in a place to which one travels to but where
guests are not received. Perhaps Goulet’s most significant contribution to the study of Germain’s
writings is to curtail critics tendencies to emphasize the mystical and occult qualities of her
writings.
On voit donc à quel point la problématique du mal dans les fictions de Sylvie Germain
n'est jamais une donnée abstraite ni désincarnée, mais une réalité inscrite dans la chair, la
psyché et l'inconscient des personnages, qu'elle est éprouvée dans la violence, agit dans
une effraction parasitaire, se présente le plus souvent comme une possession encryptée en
eux, de sorte que le mal est souvent provoqué par ricochet. (31)
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The characters’ sufferings are authentic, so their expression of it as a means of redemption must
not be trivialized as a kind of selfish, spiritual nourishment. The question of the ethical relation
to the Other is resolved through the characters’ artistic expression.
Cette question de l'Autre engage une conception du sujet clivé, la manière dont il est
structuré par son imaginaire (dans son rapport au semblable comme dans son illusoire
maîtrise de soi et de sa vie) et par le symbolique (les significants qui structurent
l'inconscient et la Loi); elle engage le rapport aux objets comme à la nature; elle engage
surtout, pour l'écrivain, la nécessité d'écrire et son rapport aux mots. Sylvie Germain a
constamment répété qu'écrire était pour elle une nécessité vitale: « Si je n'écris pas, je
suffoque »: « J'ai un tel besoin d'écrire que c'est vital. » (21)
Language is the means through which the division between the interiority and exteriority of the
self is regained following the traumatic experience, as well as the means by which testimony is
provided and justice is realized. Writing, for Germain and her characters, is primarily a
restoration and maintenance of ethical relations that transcends immediate, particular
circumstances. Goulet’s psychoanalytic approach introduces and makes room for such an
interpretation, which provides the idea of “les personnages cryptophores” with a practical
purpose beyond aesthetic play.
The problem of evil is examined in a survey of Germain’s writings by Mariska
Koopman-Thurlings in Sylive Germain, La Hantise du Mal. The bulk of the study is devoted to
summarizing the salient points of Germain’s novels and essays pertaining to evil. She connects
the origin of individual character’s problems and suffering to abandonment. Koopman-Thurlings
designates abandonment in Germain’s novels as “transgenerational,” as abandonment is never an
isolated incident in her novels.
Refoulée dans sa mémoire, cette scène primitive joue un rôle capital dans la maladie de
Ferdinand, car Lucie, en grimaçant au chevet de son frère, éveille sans la savoir le
souvenir de l’agression maternelle. Elle répète ainsi l’acte de sa mère, comme le fait aussi
Ferdinand, en entrant brutalement dans la chambre de sa petite soeur. La mal qui est
l’oeuvre dans ce roman est donc un mal transgénérationnel, un mal qui poursuit de
génération en génération. Ici aussi, bien que de façon moins prononcée que dans les
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premières romans, l’histoire individuelle se trouve liée a la grande Histoire, car le mal a
son origine dans la mort sans sépultre du mari, mort au champ d’honneur, comme le fut
aussi le père d’Aloïse, englouti dans les tranchées de la Grande Guerre. (KoopmanThurlings 135)
However, the term “transgenerational” refers to the duration or presence of evil through time and
does not describe the nature of evil or hatred. Germain is not contesting the temporal quality of
evil, and to suggest that its transmission is restricted to familial relations is negated in Germain’s
later novels. The term “dependent origination” used in the present study refers to and describes
hatred or evil as both an idea and in action. More specifically, “dependent origination” is a term
that originates in Buddhism that is used to describe causality. It is employed primarily in
teachings that address the realization and cessation of suffering, which corresponds well to
Levinas’ conception of evil and causality in Totality and Infinity.
Koopman-Thurlings suggests that Lucie, in L’Enfant Méduse, suffers from a “Salome
complex.”
A l’instar de Salomé, Lucie, comme tous les enfants abandonnés de l’oeuvre de Sylvie
Germain, est en éternelle quête du sourire de la mère. L’innocence et la confiance
détruites, elle mène une longue vie d’errance avant de revenir sur les lieux origines pour
accomplir le travail du pardon. (137)
Lucie’s situation is symptomatic of the more general condition highlighted in KoopmanThurling’s study. She suggests that the parent or lover who performs the abandoning corresponds
to God, and the individual who remains in a position of servitude corresponds to mankind.
Le désir, propre à la pensée mystique, de vouloir aider Dieu à trouver domicile dans le
coeur des êtres humains, est une idée à laquelle Sylvie Germain semble vouloir se rallier.
Ainsi, la quête religieuse qui s'est ouverte avec la question ontologique débouche-t-elle
sur un ralliement à la pensée mystique: il faut aimer Dieu inconditionnellement, sans
chercher de preuves, ni d'amour en retour. La croyance et l'espérance suffisent. (254-5)
Koopman-Thurlings suggests that Germain enters into the eternal theological and philosophical
dialogue addressing the problem of evil only to surrender to a foregone conclusion: evil exists
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and the only resource available to human beings as defense is unconditional love for God (255).
As such, humanity must look to artists and poets, the abandoned individuals who populate
Germain’s novels, to interpret God’s signs.
Grace a la création artistique, le poète fait participer le commun des mortels a la
transcendance qui permet de ressentir le mystère de l'invisible au coeur du visible. Il est
du pouvoir de l'écriture artistique de saisir le silence... (255)
Such a Romantic interpretation of the individual who becomes a conduit for the divine through
art runs contrary to the suffering and corrective action taken by the majority of Germain’s
characters. The individual as artist in her novels appears to reflect the artist writing the novel.
The explicit ethical dimension of her novels provides nearly overwhelming evidence for the
interpretation that art is fundamentally communication and teaching rather than a selfish,
mystical pursuit of defining God. Most of Germain’s critics identify similar themes but fail to
unite these themes under a larger context capable of explaining their reason for being.
The idea of “an aesthetic of ethics” explains how Germain’s use of Levinas’ thought in
her writings is paradigmatic of a change in contemporary literature. Aesthetics and ethics are
commonly regarded as antithetical and representative of either Classical or Romantic
conceptions of the world. Germain resists capitulating to writing within either the explicit,
woebegone philosophical examinations characteristic of postmodernist literature, which is a
direct descendent of Classical and Enlightenment thought, or the nostalgic longing for the
sublime past characteristic of Romanticism. She instead contests the apparently arbitrary division
between the two concepts through the use of allegory, identifying the apparent incompatibility of
aesthetics and ethics as a problem of representation rather than logic. However, the terms
“aesthetics” and “ethics” resist formal definition and thus must be understood in the way they
inform a specific practice rather than as pure abstractions. The ethical perspective is the most
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obvious starting point. Richard Rorty is not incorrect in criticizing Levinas’ apparently
convoluted philosophical process and language use. However, as Derrida suggests, the
development or evolution of a new form of inquiry must in some way break with tradition, and it
would seem that the difficulty of Levinas’ writings lies in the innovative form to which readers
are unaccustomed. Rorty suggests as well that ethics is something relevant to all humanity and as
such should be communicable in ordinary language. An aesthetic of ethics, in this sense, is
Sylvie Germain’s translation of Levinas’ philosophy into narrative form, which is preeminently
ordinary language. Germain writes out of an ethical responsibility, as the Other who offers
instruction to individuals, rather than proffering herself as another in a long line of artists who
perpetuate Romantic ideals. The allegory of modernity evoked in the relationship between these
writers follows from this conclusion. The indictment of history as demonstrated through the
condemnation of Nazism, the Holocaust and the Enlightenment ideology on which it is founded,
and the resulting schism between history and the individual, is a clear example of a postmodern
ethos. Levinas’ philosophy is inspired by his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War
II as well as his solidarity with the Jewish community negotiating the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Germain evidently recognizes such currents underlying Levinas’ writings, as well as her own
formative experience visiting the Struthof-Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace.
Il reste quelques baraquements et la fameuse rue de la Liberté qui arrivait droit au lieu
pendaison. Un brave guide ouvre les portes et montre des valises, des lunettes, quelques
témoignages comme cela et des photos de déportés…Je ne comprenais rien. Je n’avais
pas de repères. Je me trouvais arrachée au monde de l’enfance et propulsée dans un
monde d’horreur. Tout cela est déjà incompréhensible pour l’esprit humain. Ce l’est plus
encore pour une enfant qui n’avait aucune idée que cela ait pu exister. Ces êtres
décharnés dans des espèces de costumes-pyjamas, ces yeux décharnés…Je n’ai compris,
mais cela m’a absolument marquée. Sur le moment, je n’ai pas fait un rapport précis avec
les Juifs. (Germain 17)
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The allegory of modernity found in L’Enfant Méduse follows closely from this experience.
Childhood innocence in the novel represents the Enlightenment mentality that the world is
created by individual consciousness. The optimism characteristic of such a perspective, which is
often assumed in a Leibnizian sense as an attribute of the Good, is exploited by those who
represent evil in the world. The ancient, hereditary curse of violence, as represented by Nazism
and the Holocaust, effectively ends the period of hope and prosperity and institutes a cycle of
vengeance. Social harmony is only established later, once vengeance is sated and ethical
relations are reinstituted. This final requirement is fulfilled at the end of the novel as Lucie feels
empathy for her mother’s illness and realizes the virtue of patience and forgiveness. There is also
evidence for a bioethical allegory in the novel. The novel is set in “la France profonde,” or the
non-urban regions of France that maintain a pre-industrial way of life and maintain belief in
traditional, regional folklore. The landscape at the end of the novel has been consumed by
technology.
Ce sont de gigantesques pylônes rouge et blanc ; la nuit ils strient le ciel de longs
faisceaux de leurs rougeoyantes. Ces antennes envoient des messages vers un lointain
plus secret encore que celui avec lequel communiquait Hyacinthe. Un lointain glacé et
sourd à toute poésie. Leurs messages s’adressent à des sous-marins nucléaires rôdant sous
le banquises. Voix atomique. Voix du siècle assassin. Ces antennes ont des servants, fort
insolites en ce pays marécageux, -- des marins. La nuit Lucie aperçoit les feux lancés par
les pylôns ; ces feux glissent au-dessus des marais, ils semblent vouloir découper le ciel
en lanières. Mais ils lancèrent vraiment le ciel, la terre est coupée des étoiles dont les
scintillements sont tout embués, voilés par ces lueurs obsédantes et laides. (Germain 302)
Modernity is thus defined as the culmination of the violence enforced on the earth through the
imposition of science and technology as well as the physical and ideological violence inflicted
among mankind. The relationship between aesthetics and ethics emerges from these examples.
The triadic, Platonic relationship between the Beautiful, the Good and the Just, as well as its
implied antithesis, is the basis for this relationship. It is not controversial to suggest that what is
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ethically or morally good should be represented beautifully, or that evil and hatred should be
represented as ugly. However, what qualifies as beautiful is contestable. Germain’s conception
of beauty reflects Levinasian thought. The stars inspire the characters imaginations from the
beginning of the novel, and the stars return to them at the conclusion. Beauty, then, is that which
moves toward the infinite, which is also a traditionally acceptable definition of the sublime. The
an-aesthetic is terrestrial, as in Goulet’s “les personnages cryptophores.” Levinas’ influence and
that of ethics in general permeates every aspect of the novel. The aesthetic of ethics lies in the
awakening to and practice of moving toward the infinite, denying both ideological and ecological
violence, through the hospitality to the teachings from and in the creation of art, philosophy and
literature.
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