Levinas and Schelling on the reversibility of ethical demand
The face of the Other as absolute phenomena
The potential use of Levinas’s account of the Other as a new simultaneously universal and actual absolute ground for ethical judgment hinges on the special status it bears within the realm of phenomena. As we saw in the last chapter, according to Levinas, though the Other appears as a face to an apperceiving subject within one’s daily lived experience, there is something about it which refuses to be reduced to that lived experience. To the contrary, as we saw, for Levinas the power of the face lies in the way it breaks with the apparent rules of phenomenality and presents more than it could possibly present—presents, in fact, that which is absolutely Other than and beyond the self. By his read, the face of the Other “[refuses] to be contained” by its world—it presents something which “cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed” by reason.1 In this regard, as we further saw, the face of the Other manifests for Levinas as a sort of “enigma” for subjectivity2 —something which, though apparent to the self, points to that which lies radically outside of and beyond the self, on the “hither side of consciousness.”3 Indeed, it was this enigmatic status of the Other which, according to Levinas, justified a complete revision of the traditional idealistic account of subjectivity as a closed totality, one which is only ever in contact with itself, and demanded in turn a new conception of subjectivity which placed the subject radically and inexorably in contact with that which is always already exterior to it.4 In this way, as we saw, Levinas’s phenomenological analysis of the Other opened up the possibility of discovering within lived experience something which lies absolutely beyond it—an absolute, moreover, which bears an undeniably ethical value. It was for this reason that we concluded in the last chapter that through Levinas’s phenomenology we may discover a new conception of the absolute which could be used to ground ethical judgment beyond the constraints of the post-Kantian disjunction. Indeed, as Levinas writes, in the “absolutely Other,” we not only discover “[an] absolute,” we discover that “correlation is broken,” and the possibility of a new conception of ethical responsibility is born.5
Presenting as it does that which lies outside of and beyond the limitations of not only the being of the subject, but beyond being itself, Levinas claimed that the face of the Other was “ab-solute in his manifestation.”6 Indeed, he argued, “the enigma [of the face] is the way of the Ab-solute.”7 It was for this reason that Levinas concluded that the power of the Other could not be understood nor comprehended by the powers of intellect or reason—it could in fact only be conceived of via ethics. The Other as that which is absolute is, Levinas concluded, “foreign to cognition.”8 “The unwanted intrigue which solicits the I and comes to a head beyond cognition and disclosure in Enigma is ethics.”9 It is thus only through ethics, he argues, that one can truly reconcile oneself to the absolute. This requires, he thinks, understanding properly the way in which the Other manifests to the self as a sort of infinite phenomena.
Indeed, for Levinas, the ethical status of the Other qua absolute hinges on its status as an infinite phenomena; for, he writes, it is infinity which “opens . . . the order of the Good.”10 Remember that for Levinas, the power of the face to summon the subject beyond itself and invite it into relation to that which lies absolutely beyond it lies in the unique way in which it appears in the world as something which breaks with the rules and order of the world. It was for this reason, as we saw, that he identified the face of the Other as a sort of anarchic phenomena. It is this anarchic status of the face as “both . . . non and . . . within” the world which Levinas thinks is perfectly represented in the concept of “the in of the Infinite.”11 This way in which the face of the Other appears within the realm of finite beings for Levinas as that which refuses to be contained by them signifies for him “the presence of a being not entering into, but overflowing, the sphere of the same,” and this is what, according to him, “determines its ‘status’ as infinite.”12 To further detail the strange doubleness the Other bears for Levinas as an infinite phenomena, let us turn momentarily to another place in the history of philosophy where the concept of the idea of the infinite manifests: Descartes’s third meditation.13 After all, it is from Descartes, and in constant reference to Descartes, that Levinas attempts to outline his account of the Other as absolute.
In the third meditation, Descartes aims to discover within himself the presence of some idea that he could not attribute to his own genius, proving thereby that he is not only not alone in the universe, but that he could not be the author of everything: that there must be at least one other being or thing outside of himself. What he discovers, of course, is what he calls the idea of perfection, or the idea of the infinite. Such an idea is represented for him in the concept of a number so great that he could not possibly comprehend it, though he is capable of imagining it. The presence of such an idea within him, one that we conceive precisely as that which is too great to be understood, serves as definitive proof for Descartes that there must be within him the presence of or trace of another being which preceded, exceeded, and perhaps even conditioned his consciousness—a being which was capable of understanding that idea. Such a being he calls for convenience sake God. So it is that Descartes discovers through the idea of the infinite his God, the idea of the infinite functioning for him as a modern version of Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence.14 But what interested Descartes in this move was not, as it was for Anselm, the assurance that there is some higher power in the world. Instead, what interested him was the surety that this idea gave to his attempt to ground an absolutely guaranteed understanding of himself and the world. Through the idea of the infinite, Descartes discovered the foundation for his absolute assurance that the world was not of his own making, that he was not solipsistically trapped within in a web of his own weaving, nor was he trapped within a labyrinth of lies crafted by some evil genius. What the idea of the infinite gave to Descartes was the confidence that his understanding of the world and himself was grounded on something which stood absolutely outside of and beyond his own thoughts.
For Levinas, the idea of the infinite in Descartes is “exceptional” because of the way it identifies within subjective life an “ideatum [which] surpasses its idea.”15 “In thinking infinity,” Levinas writes, “the I from the first thinks more than it thinks. Infinity does not enter into the idea of infinite, is not grasped; this idea is not a concept.”16 In his articulation of an idea which cannot be encompassed by thought, Descartes’s third meditation charts the way for Levinas to perceive in the human face more than can possibly be present: access to something which lies absolutely beyond the perceiving subject. The idea of the infinite thus operates as the perfect metaphor for Levinas of his own account of the exceptional nature of the Other—something which for him, though manifest through one’s being-in-the-world, nevertheless exceeds that being, remaining “radically, absolutely, other than” the world, something like Descartes’s God.17
In fact, Levinas makes this latter comparison explicit in his work.18 Since the face of the Other presents a phenomena that cannot be accounted for within the logic of ontology, he argues, and opens thereby a channel within being to that which lies otherwise than and beyond being, which he terms the Good, Levinas suggests we can think of the absolute made available in the face of the Other as a sort of God.19 Hence his description of the face of the Other as an “epiphany” and a “visitation.”20 The relation one has to the face of the Other, Levinas concludes, “is not therefore ontology” but a kind of “religion,” though, it must be said, a religion which is, as he puts it, “for adults”—a religion free of the mystical entities and magical happenings which populate immature religious imaginations.21
This comparison Levinas draws between the ethical relation we have to the absolutely Other and religious epiphany has led many scholars, like Dominique Janicaud, to somewhat hastily place Levinas’s work in the so-called theological turn of late-twentieth-century French philosophy.22 Of course, what Levinas means by religion is hardly contiguous with traditional faith practices. In point of fact, Levinas’s religion has much more in common with atheism than anything else.23 Indeed, I would argue that a close reading of Levinas’s oeuvre reveals that even those texts seemingly explicitly dealing with the divine all ultimately aim at what he calls in his Nine Talmudic Readings a “desacralization of the sacred”—not the attempt to discover within the finite realm of phenomena some window or pathway to the divine, but instead the attempt to strip the divine of its power, of what sets it apart, and to scatter that power among finite phenomenon, sowing it among the human, establishing it in the face.24 In this regard, Levinas’s phenomenology is a kind of promethean project—a reestablishment of the divine in determinate local phenomena. Thus, though Levinas’s phenomenology of the face works to reopen the realms of transcendence, its movement toward the beyond is not like classical theology’s Scala Paradisi. Its aim is instead to rob the divine of its fire, carrying it downward into the realm of the determinate Other. It is for this reason that Levinas insists throughout his work that transcendence, while a “trans-ascendence,” nevertheless proceeds horizontally toward the determinate Other, who, while “situated on a height,” is nevertheless in the world, and not of the heavenly realms. This explains further Levinas’s claim that ethics, the way we navigate our relations to those others, is the only “spiritual optics,” the only way of conceiving of the divine, as well as his argument that the ethical subject must exist on its own ground, “separated” from any possible divine origin, as an “atheist.”25 Such statements point to Levinas’s attempt to rid the world of the mystery of religious faith and to ground transcendence anew—not in the invisible but in the visible—in the concrete ethical solicitation of the Other. If there is any religion in Levinas at all, therefore, it is not a traditional one. It is not one which can be easily synchronized with other more traditional expressions of religious faith, Western or Eastern. Instead, it must be conceived of as an entirely new kind of religion, a kind of “religion without religion,” as some have put it.26
According to Levinas, as a desacralized absolute, the face of the Other does not demand of us some dogmatic fidelity, nor blind fanaticism, the source, according to Meillassoux, of so much contemporary evil. What the “absolutely Other” demands of us instead is wh at Levinas calls responsibility; and it is on this basis that it establishes an absolute ethical order which we can use to mount an attack against what Badiou called the “smug nihilism” of post-Kantian philosophy.27
The ethical value of Levinas’s absolute
For Levinas the infinite present in the face of the Other, operating as it does to rupture the totality of the subject’s possession of the world, introduces what he calls the possibility of the Good—the possibility of acting “otherwise than” in one’s own interest, “otherwise than” in accord with one’s own being. It presents, in other words, the possibility of perceiving beyond the mere “thingness” of objects in the world an inherent and absolute value to those things, grounded outside of and beyond their being and yet immanently and inexorably a part of them. Interrupting, as it does, the otherwise valueless survey of the world made by a subject’s gaze, the face of the Other presents for Levinas the possibility of organizing the world in a new way: one centered not around the self-interests of the ego, but around the demands of the Other. In this way, Levinas insists, the face of the Other rescues the subject from a potential nihilism, but only by traumatizing it with ethical responsibility.28
According to Levinas, the appearance of the absolute in the Other interrupts the subject’s nascent and assumed place at the center of its own being and world. As such, it invites the subject into another way of being: an ethical “relation without relation” to the world.29 For these reasons, Levinas sees in the face of the Other a presentation of a qualitatively different order, an order which breaks fundamentally with the way a subject would organize the world according to its finite categories of understanding. The new infinite order the Other introduces invites the subject beyond finitude into the realm of an infinite ethical responsibility.30 Hence Levinas’s identification of the face of the Other as a kind of “good in-finite.”31 Levinas’s identification of the infinitude introduced by the face of the Other as good is grounded in his claim that while the Other calls the subject into question, it nevertheless “is not opposed to me as a freedom other than, but similar to my own, and consequently [is not] hostile to my own.”32 Instead, he argues, the Other manifests “in a mastery that does not conquer but teaches.”33 It is for this reason, he concludes, that the new order introduced by the Other should be identified as a kind of liberation, one which carries the subject beyond a nihilistic ethos of pure utility by introducing the possibility of absolute goodness.34 Indeed, according to Levinas, the ethical solicitation of the face of the Other should be seen as an “investiture of freedom.”35 For him, the appearance of the Other signals the subject’s freedom from a world in which the only possible value is one’s own self-interest and the coming of a new world order in which all value is guaranteed absolutely by the Other.
By Levinas’s read, the Other frees us from a life of slavish self-interest by calling into question the naïve spontaneous freedom of subjectivity to survey its world; and, in doing so, he argues, the Other elevates subjectivity into a higher domain of freedom, one wherein it can choose between its self-interests and the interests of another. This is part of the pedagogical power of the Other as master and teacher for Levinas: the realization that one need not be trapped within the economy of self-interest and self-satisfaction, guided exclusively by need and hunger, but that one may give oneself over the Other and enter into a relation guided by desire and responsibility.36 Thus while the appearance of the Other may appear to limit the spontaneous freedom of the self to do as it pleases, Levinas insists that the appearance of the Other actually functions to “found and justify” the freedom of the subject.37 It is this “investiture of freedom” by the Other which Levinas thinks assures its value as an absolute good. According to Levinas, “The presence of the Other, a privileged heteronomy, does not clash with freedom but invests it” absolutely with the possibility of goodness.38 What the Other introduces to subjectivity, Levinas thinks, is this possibility to be just.39 Thus, he concludes, that the appearance of the Other “instead of offending my freedom . . . calls it to responsibility and founds it.”40 Hence his claims that such a relation is, ultimately, an invitation to “peace,” an exclusively communal possibility.41 By inviting the subject to go beyond itself and enter into relation with an Other wherein peace and justice can be realized, Levinas thinks that what the Other ultimately introduces is the possibility of discovering the “final reality” of subjectivity: the possibility of goodness.42 Hence his claim that “it is only in approaching the Other that I attend to myself.”43
As an absolute manifest within subjective life which opens up the possibility of goodness, Levinas’s Other serves as the ideal location to ground anew ethical deliberation. Indeed, in Levinas’s Other we not only discover a new way of conceiving of the absolute ground for the possibility of ethical deliberation, we discover an absolute which is both actual, manifesting as it does in the concrete face of the Other, and universally present in all faces and to all subjects. An d yet, as we have seen, this universally actual absolute does not limit our freedom through its demand of our fidelity, according to Levinas, but instead invests our freedom by compelling us with the power of the good. In this way we discover in Levinas a means of surmounting the limitations of the post-critical ethical disjunction which has haunted us since Kant. Yet, there is something intriguing about the ethical value of this new simultaneously universal and actual absolute which should give us pause; there is something about it which, despite all of Levinas’s claims, should arouse our suspicion and make us cautious to give ourselves over to it too quickly. This curious ambiguity lies in the way in which Levinas accounts for the power this Other has over us—a power which, as we will see shortly, is not necessarily always as good as Levinas would have us believe.
As we have seen, it is the impossibility of evading the absolute power of the Other and its ethical solicitation which, for Levinas, founded anew the nature of the I and assured its access to an absolute value situated outside of and beyond itself. Indeed, as we have seen, for Levinas “the uniqueness of the I is the fact that no one can answer for me.”44 The singularity of the subject is therefore founded, he argues, on its ethical responsibility to the Other. The Other is both the basis of a subject’s existence for him and the opening of its possible relation to goodness. It was for this reason, as we just saw, that he insisted that the Other not be seen as an impediment to subjectivity, but rather as a path by which the subject may come fully into its own. And, it was because the Other manifested in this way, Levinas argued, that its appearance does not really alienate the subject from itself, but instead, teaches it and invites it into justice. For these reasons Levinas names the relation we have with the absolute through the Other gentleness.45 The absolute responsibility we discover within ourselves for the Other, Levinas writes, “imposes itself without violence” in a non-offensive mode.46 Thus, he concludes, though the Other may appear to be a threat to the freedom and development of the self, the “‘resistance’ of the other” to my freedom, he assures us, “does not do violence to me, does not act negatively; [but] has a positive structure.”47 As such, the appearance of the Other does not come to enslave the subject, but to elevate and promote its freedom.48 For these reasons, Levinas argues, the absolute value introduced by the Other should be welcomed by the subject.49
In contrast to this “good infinite,” which founds and justifies the subject’s existence and freedom, Levinas does indeed identify a “bad infinitude,”50 one he sees manifest in the presentation of a quantitative excess of something “like the brute sensible datum of the empiricists.”51 This excessive “bad infinite” he examines under the guise of what he terms the il y a (there is): a mode of existence he describes as being “without limits, and thus in the form of an origin, a commencement, that is, again, as an existent.”52 “The absolute indetermination of the there is, an existing without existents,” Levinas writes, “is an incessant negation, to an infinite degree, consequently an infinite limitation.”53 As an infinitude established in and maintained through the perpetuation of a continuity within being which holds the possibility of “always still more,” the il y a expresses for Levinas not a force for good, but rather a force for what he calls “evil in its very quiddity.”54
This quantitative infinite is bad, he argues, because it can only manifest through a plena of being which, by its very nature, cannot allow any differentiation or otherness. It therefore introduces the possibility of an excess which would require a totality so complete that all difference or otherness be abolished as a challenge to its infinitude. Thus while the infinite presented in the face of the Other challenges the subject and, in his words, elevates it to its “final essence” and its “true freedom” in ethical responsibility, the possibility of the infinite presented in the il y a, he reasons, threatens to overwhelm the subject and collapse it entirely into an indeterminate morass of being.55 For these reasons Levinas argues that while the proper response to the solicitation of the infinite presented in the face is to say, “moi voici” (“here I am”), the only rational response to the all-consuming temptation of the possible quantitative infinite of being is to resist, to flee—to escape.56 Unfortunately, this distinction is not as easily made as Levinas would have it, and it is on the basis of this possible equivocation of the two orders of infinity that our suspicion of the value of the absolute present in Levinas’s Other rests.
Indeed, as a number of Levinasian scholars have noted, most famously Levinas’s close friend and earliest reader and champion Maurice Blanchot, despite his best attempts to purge the concept of a totalizing “bad infinite” from his account of the “good infinite,” a strange ambiguity nevertheless appears between the two categories.57 Indeed, Levinas himself admits that the transcendence manifest in the face of the Other is “transcendent to the point of absence, to the point of a possible confusion with the stirring of the there is.”58 And this “possible confusion” is not uncommon in his work. To the contrary, it is not hard to find Levinas describing the infinite demand of ethical solicitation presented in the face of the Other as, for example, carrying on in “perpetuity,” a word he typically reserves for the quantitatively “bad infinite” of the il y a.59 At other times he describes the absolute power manifest in the face of the Other as monstrous,60 a term more fitting it would seem to the bad infinitude of the there is.61 And this “possible confusion” is far from benign. Indeed, it was in large part what motivated Jacques Derrida to distance himself from Levinas, identifying in his “Violence and Metaphysics” how the ethical responsibility to which the subject is absolutely summoned by the Other is nothing more than an inversion of the kind of totalizing violence threatened by the undifferentiated being of the il y a.62
To grasp fully the consequence of this “possible confusion,” remember that for Levinas the face of the Other, as an infinite phenomenon, bears what he describes as an overwhelming power—a power which, he claims, cannot be shirked nor evaded.63 This power, as we have seen, operates by usurping the position of the subject and reorienting it infinitely around another pole: the demands of the Other. So it is, thinks Levinas, that the face of the Other calls the subject eternally into question and “empties [it] of [itself], empties [it] without end, showing [the subject] ever new resources” which can be reconnoitered on behalf of the Other.64 What the face as an infinite phenomenon does, in other words, is, he writes, to “obsess” the subject, “captivate” it, and take it “hostage,” demanding from it ever more attention, devotion, and service.65 Thus, Levinas argues, what we discover through a diligent phenomenological rendering of the face of the Other is an absolute which “reveals [itself] in [its] lordship. [Its] exteriority coincides with a mastery.”66 The Other appears according to Levinas, in other words, as a kind of sovereign.
Of course, as we have already seen, Levinas assures us that the sovereignty of the Other “imposes itself without violence.”67 It is therefore, he soothingly declares, “a mastery that does not conquer, but teaches.”68 Indeed, it is in this regard, he soothes, that we can think of the Other as one who comes in “peace,”69 not to “limit the freedom” of its subjects, as we just saw, but to “found and justify it.”70 But is this not a common refrain among all sovereign colonizing powers in their conquest? The problem with such assurances is that they are rarely, if ever, true, and all too quickly collapse under the weight of the harsh realities of occupation.
Indeed, Levinas’s own descriptions of the manifestation of the Other betray these evaluative claims. According to him, “The unlimited responsibility in which I find myself [before the Other] comes from the hither side of my freedom.”71 It therefore “provokes my responsibility against my will,” taking me “hostage.”72 For these reasons, Levinas thinks, the ethical subjectivity imposed by the sovereignty of the Other is experienced as a “trauma.”73 The absolute Other, he claims, hunts us down “to the point of persecution” and “strip[s us] of all protection.”74 By the Other, he claims, we are made to “suffer,” a suffering which he compared throughout his career to a kind of “obsession” and “insomnia.”75 Moreover, according to Levinas, the sovereignty of the Other, established absolutely as it is in the primal ground of the subject’s being, is “without any escape possible.”76 The demands levied by the Other are therefore, he concludes, “absolute,” “infinite,” and “can never be satisfied.”77
There is thus a real problem with the absolute ground for ethical deliberation which we gain from Levinas’s phenomenological account of the Other. While it may function to found and justify the existence and freedom of the subject anew, beyond the limitations of the Kantian critique, the power possessed by this absolute appears capable of captivating the subject completely, becoming a tyrant who threatens to destroy the very existence and freedom which it founds and justifies. In this regard we cannot help but be suspicious of the real value of this absolute. Can it be that it is truly as good and pure as Levinas would have it? Or, is it possible that this new absolute, in its perfection, is capable of inverting into its opposite: not the ground for goodness, but in fact the ground for excess and evil? The possibility of such an inversion of the ethical value of the absolute was detailed by F. W. J. Schelling in the 1809 draft of his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom.78 There, as we will see shortly, Schelling defines evil precisely as the result of an all too complacent relationship with the absolute—an absolute which, by virtue of its superiority, is capable of reversing at any time from good to evil.79 Indeed, as will become clear shortly, according to Schelling, evil is the ultimate result of any attempt to relat e oneself to any absolute good perfectly. Through an analysis of Schelling’s account of the reversibility of good and evil in the absolute we will therefore discover the true value of Levinas’s Other and uncover, thereby, the necessity of thinking ethics in relation to the absolute anew.
Schelling and the absolute reality of good and evil
Though ostensibly an investigation on the nature of human freedom, the bulk of Schelling’s 1809 Freiheitsschrift is dedicated to a detailed analysis of the nature and origin of evil, a reality which motivated Martin Heidegger to note that the word evil should in fact be seen as “the key word for the main treatise.”80 The reason for its centrality in Schelling’s investigation was his conviction that “either real evil is admitted” or “the real concept of freedom vanishes.”81 According to Schelling, if the idea of freedom is to be maintained with any real vigor, then human freedom must be understood as equally disposed toward the “possibility of [both] good and evil,” and not primarily oriented toward one or the other.82 Without the actual possibility of both, argues Schelling, human beings become something like a rat stuck in a labyrinth with only one real choice: to go forward toward its end (the good) or resist and retreat backward (toward evil). This is what was implied, he thought, in the traditional privative or negative account of evil: the idea that evil is nothing more than the failure to adequately give proper deference to the power and sovereignty of the good.
Figured thusly, argued Schelling, what appeared to be the bivalence of choice between good and evil in the classical conception of human freedom turns out to be nothing more than a kind of moral slavery. Within such a system, he thinks, human beings ultimately have only one choice: to be good. Evil within this system is nothing more than the inverse modality of goodness—the same track run backward, as it were. For a robust conception of human freedom to emerge, Schelling therefore concluded, the privative definition of evil must be overcome. By his reasoning, human freedom can only be assured if it has at least two radically distinct options, each emergent independently from its opposite. In other words, thinks Schelling, for the human to be truly free it must encounter the possibility of evil as a unique, separate, and distinct possibility from the possibility of the good. And, for this to be the case, Schelling concluded, a new conception of evil must be formed, one which grants it its own positive ontological power.83 According to Schelling, “The ground of evil must lie, not only in something generally positive, but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains.”84 With this goal in mind, Schelling dedicated the bulk of his essay on human freedom to the articulation of a new absolute ground for the possibility of evil. And, it was precisely such a ground which he discovered in what he called rather oddly the Ungrund (the non-ground) of existence.85
Schelling’s identification of the absolute ground for the possibility of evil in this unimaginable non-ground, though admittedly bizarre at first glance, is in fact, he thinks, the only logical conclusion one can draw. According to Schelling, it follows that before the actual emergence of existence, the logical possibility of that existence must exist as a virtual possibility. This logical possibility, he thinks, must contain within it the potentiality of everything which eventually will exist in actuality. It is this virtual existence which precedes every actual being which Schelling names the Ungrund. It is not a being itself, and bears no concrete actuality, nor ever did. It is instead, he thinks, a sheer virtuality, one which contains within it the infinite possibilities of existence in a purely potential state, all held together in “complete indifference and indistinguishability.”86 In this regard, Schelling’s Ungrund figures in his work in much the same way that the Hebraic Tohu va Vohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ) evoked by the writers of the book of Genesis functions as the logical ground for creation.87 Like that formless void, the Ungrund represents for Schelling the unruly chaos of the not-yet existent possibility from which all existent beings actually emerge.88 As the pure potentiality which must have logically preceded being, the Ungrund expresses for him the possibility of all beings, qua virtualities. The Ungrund can only be thought of therefore as a kind of “Being, as not having being”89 —the logical necessity of the virtual possibility of all beings prior to their actual becoming.
For Schelling, actual determinate existence emerges at the cost of this infinite potentiality or virtuality. Being thus emerges, he thinks, through a cision from the Ungrund—a cutting free which occurs when at least one being is actually asserted over and against the potentiality of an infinite number of virtual beings. So it is, Schelling maintains, that where there is at least one actual being, the infinite virtual possibilities held out in the Ungrund are abolished. It is thus from the resolution of the pure potentiality of the Ungrund into the determinate actualities of existence that the possibilities of good and evil emerge, thinks Schelling.
Accord ing to Schelling, “Each being having emerged in nature according to the manner indicated has a dual principle in itself which, however, is basically one and the same considered from both possible sides.”90 Thus, he continues, “it is entirely correct to say dialectically: good and evil are the same thing only seen from different sides, or evil is in itself, that is, considered in the root of its identity, the good, just as the good, to the contrary, considered in its turning from itself [Entzweiung] or non-identity is evil.”91 As emergent from the same ultimate ground (the Ungrund) and actualized in the same determinate existent (human beings), evil appears, according to Schelling, as the perverse virtual double of the good, both emergent from the same absolute ground of existence. In actuality, however, he insists, they exist as radically independent and distinct from one another. Nevertheless, as we will soon see, they bear the trace of their virtual heritage within one another, allowing each to revert suddenly into the opposite. So it is, he thinks, that the value of actions, whether good or evil, becomes reversible when posited as the absolute ground for existence. Indeed, it is for this reason that Schelling insists that the absolute ground of existence not be seen as either good or evil, but the radical possibility of both.
The reversibility of good and evil in the absolute
While, according to Schelling, the Ungrund is abolished in the emergence of actual existence, he maintains that an “indivisible remainder” of its virtuality remains forever within the structure of existence.92 This “indivisible remainder” manifests as the possible confusion between good and evil in being—the possibility that any attempt to achieve the good might actually result in evil.93 As Schelling writes, “Everything in the world is, as we see it now, rule, order and form; but anarchy still lies in the ground, as if it could break through once again.”94 According to Schelling, the “indivisible remainder” of this virtual possibility forever haunts actual existence, casting a dark pallor upon it and inspiring what Schelling calls the “dread of life.”95 This “dread” is experienced, in part, he argues, as the realization that all one is, all one has wrought, indeed, all that has ever been, could eventually amount to and return to nothing—that life, and all its accompanying joys, may ultimately be meaningless. This radical contingency becomes even more poignant, he thinks, when one realizes that, due to the effects of the “indivisible remainder” of the chaos which precedes and clings to existence, what one perceives to be good may in fact result in evil. The dread this possibility (qua virtuality) inspires within us, Schelling claims, has the power to “drive [us] out of the centrum” of our being; and it is this possible ex-centricity, he thinks, that grounds the ambiguity of the choice between good and evil.96
According to Schelling, in light of the overwhelming power of the absolute, one is faced with two options. One can, on the one hand, not give in to this dread and live in dynamic tension with the threat posed by the absolute, neither being overwhelmed by it nor inordinately threatened by it. One can, in other words, reject the lure and temptation posed by the irreducible remainder of the absolute power of the Ungrund and forge a kind of perpetual dynamic relation to it and to all other actualized existent beings emergent from it. Such a dynamic tension is, according to Schelling, the definition of goodness, or what Schelling calls the relation of love.97 Alternatively, Schelling argues, one can give in to what he calls the “temptation” and “lure” of the absolute intuited in the dread of life inspired by the “indivisible remainder” of the Ungrund. One can, in other words, acquiesce to the temptation of the absolute. This, thinks Schelling, can happen in one of two ways: either by giving oneself over to the idea of the absolute entirely, in attempt to lose oneself within it, a process which of course ultimately ends in the annihilation of self; or, alternatively, one may attempt to instantiate the power of the absolute within their own being, asserting their own being as its equivalent, a process which, he argues, ultimately requires the annihilation of all other beings. Both of these approaches are what Schelling defines as the source and origin of evil.98 In this regard, Schelling concludes that “evil is only evil to the extent that it exceeds potentiality,” that it exceeds the dynamic tension one being can have with all other beings and with the absolute.99
From this it becomes clear that the real source of evil for Schelling is not some failure to acknowledge or affirm the absolute. But, precisely the opposite, evil arises for him as the result of an improper relation to the power and value of the absolute. Any action established in affirmation of the absolute, argues Schelling, runs the risk of reverting into evil, however well-intentioned it may be. For, according to Schelling, the line which distinguishes good from evil necessarily collapses when considered in light of the virtual totality of the absolute, allowing for a fundamental reversibility between good and evil. Indeed, it was for these reasons that Schelling argues that any conceivable absolute good or God, as an infinite potentiality, must necessarily be implicated in any evil act. The absolute ground of existence can thus no longer be conceived of simply as an actus purissimus,100 he argues, nor as the perfect foundation of a moral order. Instead, he argues, the absolute which grounds existence and conditions ethical choice must be acknowledged “undeniably to share responsibility for evil.”101
Ultimately, thinks Schelling, goodness can only be assured through the cultivation of right relation to both the infinite demand of the universal and the particular demand of the self. Any exceedance in either direction necessarily results in evil, he thinks. Too much good, too much evil. T oo much Other, too much self. This is what he means by the reversibility of good and evil as absolute terms. Heidegger summarizes this reversibility in Schelling’s thought well. “The greater the form of good and evil,” he writes, “the closer and more oppressive the counter form of evil and good.”102 For Schelling, the attempt to diligently attend to the demands of the absolute, regardless of the intentions of the agent, is just as likely to result in evil as the attempt to ignore or reject the absolute entirely. For Schelling, any attempt to realize the absolute, even if perceived of as a good, necessarily reverts into evil. This reversibility of good and evil in the absolute is the heart of Schelling’s examination of the essence of human freedom. As such, the only way to preserve the good, argues Schelling, is to maintain an appropriate distance from the absolute. Only by maintaining oneself apart from the infinite lure of that absolute, Schelling thinks, can the continued existence of actual beings be preserved. This is, for him, the essence of goodness.
To illustrate Schelling’s conception of the potential reversibility of good and evil in the absolute, think of the relation between the sun and the earth. As the source of warmth, the sun enables in large part the very possibility of life on earth. As such, the sun has traditionally been deemed a kind of good—something we rejoice in the return of every morning and celebrate the proximity of every spring and summer. But glowing within the beneficence and seemingly inexhaustible abundance of the sun there lurks a horrible inhuman threat, a threat which Lyotard, for one, has suggested presents the ultimate challenge to philosophy.103 This threat lies in the fact that the sun is already halfway through its lifecycle, the end of which will culminate in a sudden expansion which will result in the complete annihilation of all traces of life from our planetary system.
The brutal fact we confront in this reality is that the goodness of the sun lies exclusively in the fact that it is not bigger or smaller, hotter or cooler, closer to or farther away from us than it is. Either extreme, either relation to the absolute condition of human life metaphorically present in the sun, signals the extinction of life. In this regard, our evaluation of the goodness of the sun hinges on our being a proper distance from it. Its goodness for us is assured only inasmuch as the earth remains properly within the centrum of its natural orbit, neither drawing too close to it nor straying too far from it in our yearly voyage. Were the earth to wobble a little more extremely than it does, or were its orbit elongated only slightly, that same radiant orb worshiped by the ancients for its generosity would alternatively scorch and freeze us—and would appear as a malevolent force to human life. Likewise, thinks Schelling, the absolute ground of existence. The goodness of the absolute is only assured inasmuch as we relate to it properly, neither growing too close to it in our attempts to do good nor pulling too far away from it in our attempt to maintain our independence and freedom. According to Schelling, were the infinite power of the absolute to manifest fully within our lives, it would most certainly consume us, wiping away all trace of our singular subjectivity. Alternatively, were we to attempt to reject the absolute entirely in the vain attempt to rid ourselves of its potential pernicious influence, we would find ourselves freezing in the nihilistic void of a valueless world. The absolute ground for goodness, for Schelling, thus lies in cultivating the ability to maintain one’s self in appropriate relation to the absolute ground of life, existence, good, and evil. It is for this reason that Schelling insists that while the absolute be identified as a good, we must forever recognize that the possibility of evil lies ever in its depths.
Such is the potential reversibility of good and evil in any absolute, thinks Schelling. It must be the goal of any philosophical ethics worthy of the name, he therefore concludes, to define some means by which the power of the absolute can be resisted and a healthy relationship to it may be cultivated—one which is neither too compliant to it nor too rebellious from it. The main goal of ethics for Schelling is to discover through reason the concrete steps necessary to maintain the subject at the centrum of its being, in right relationship to itself, to every other being, and to the absolute. The task of ethics must never be, he thinks, an attempt to affirm wholly or submit completely to the whim of the absolute. This is, for him, the very foundation of evil. For the good to be pursued and preserved, Schelling argues, ethical decision making must begin by recognizing the danger of the absolute and subsequently determining a way of tempering its influence in life in a way which neither removes its sway entirely nor gives in to the temptation to cave in to its demands fully.
The Other as absolute ground for good and evil
Considered in light of Schelling’s account of the reversibility of good and evil in the absolute, mustn’t we reevaluate the value of the absolute we discovered in Levinas’s account of the Other? Indeed, mustn’t we conclude that the Other, manifest in the life of the subject as the absolute ground for the possibility of ethical reasoning, functions equally to mobilize the possibility of good and evil alike? Mustn’t we conclude that, in fact, this Other functions as a ground for goodness only inasmuch as one is capable of resisting its capacity to obsess him or her infinitely; and that, on the other hand, the Other operates as the foundation of evil action when its demands are obeyed too fully, too unquestioningly, or too willingly? How else are we to make sense of the horrible violence we have seen throughout the history of the West: the various forms of fanaticism, political totalitarianism, and cultish excess which have caused so much horror? What each of these instances of evil has in common is the same attempt to realize on earth the complete order of an absolute idea of infinite perfection (e.g., the ideal society, the perfect race, a totally secure homeland)—some idea of an absolutely perfect good which, by virtue of its status, is capable of demanding the complete sacrifice of not only the life of the obedient subject, but the life of others as well.
What else drives the fanatical demand for “ethnic cleansing” manifest in the Shoah, Srebrenica, or the Albanian genocide if not some conception of a perfect and absolute good which, as such, inspires the infinite fascination and obsession of its adherents? Indeed, isn’t it a similar kind of obsession with the infinite, only in the form of a potentially quantitatively material good (e.g., wealth, land), which drives the kind of reckless consumerism and profit-motivated colonialisms that has crippled the developing world for the past two centuries? Isn’t it all too painfully obvious that any absolute position, when imbued with the powers of infinitude, no matter how innocuous, seemingly innocent, perfect, or good, is capable of demanding from its subject an excessive allegiance which leads almost inevitably to evil? Might we conclude then, following Schelling’s line of reasoning, that evil is the only likely result from a diligent pursuit of any perceived absolute good, even the good of the Other? What we discover through a rigorous phenomenological accounting of the Other as a possible absolute ground for ethical judgment is not, we must conclude, some perfect good to be obeyed. What we discover instead is the absolute ground for the possibility of good and evil alike. Indeed, in many ways what we discover in Levinas’s account of the absolute power of the Other is the ontological condition for what Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil”—a possibility which, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter, arises out of the assent of one’s will to the imperatives of another who presents himself or herself as an absolute master and authority.104
What we gain from an analysis of Levinas’s phenomenological account of the Other is a new simultaneously universal and actual absolute ground upon which we can establish and define ethical decision making outside the limitations and vicissitudes of the post-Kantain disjunction. What Schelling’s work reveals, however, is that this new absolute cannot be accepted blithely as a good to be willingly obeyed. To the contrary, what we discover in this absolute, and indeed any absolute, is a profoundly ambiguous phenomena, one which appears to ground the possibility of good and evil alike. What we discover in the Other is therefore an absolute which we must be wary of—one which we must learn to be suspicious of and contend against. The absolute ground for ethical value and action provided by the Other is one which we must learn to take an appropriate distance from—neither growing too infatuated with its power nor too complacent with its demands; neither growing too welcoming of its dominion nor too rebellious against its sovereignty; neither drawing too close to its majesty nor pulling too far away from its brilliance. What such a conception of the absolute requires is, in other words, a radical rethinking of the nature of ethical deliberation and duty—one which breaks with the traditional acquiescence demanded by the moral yea-sayers of the West. The watchword for any ethics grounded upon this concept of the absolute must be resistance. It is the aim of the remainder of this volume to detail the importance of the cultivation of such an ethics of resistance and to show precisely how it could be envisioned and developed practically within the life of a subject.