PHIL4205 - Job and the Comforters

Today in our final class, we read the story of Job with the intention of asking what the story says about knowing the Other. The Christian tradition has often favored the interpretation that the story provides an account of how Christian faith reconciles the understanding of God as "good" with the realities of evil in the world. In a way, Job's faith through suffering gestures towards what is left when all things material have been stripped away leaving only what the soul has constituted. But is the suffering without justification an illustration of faith that is to be imitated? Who among us would choose to be tested in this way?

The description offered of the human condition by this biblical story echo many of the themes within existential philosophy. What might be called "negative" meaning attests to Job's own rational of faith that excludes the concept of reward as a basis for understanding one's relation to God. Alternatively, Job's three comforters Eliphaz the Temanite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Bildad the Shuhite urge him to search within himself for what he had done to anger God and bring upon his punishment, for indeed if God is just then there must be a reason for Job's suffering. Job dismisses his comforters views as not only offence and accusative but he sees it as ultimately empty way to understand man's relation to God.

I found it interesting that Job speaks of his obedience to the law, a fact that God agrees with and even boasts about in chapter one when he turns to Satan and says "Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil" (Job 1:8). Indeed, there is no question of Job's obedience to God and even takes extreme precautions like burning offerings for his children in case any had "renounced God in their hearts" (Job 1:5). All these descriptions of Job provide evidence of his righteousness which goes further to emphasize the fact of his innocence. Even the reader knows after reading the dialog between God and Satan that Job's suffering was for indeed for nothing, or at most a wager that neither God nor Satan had anything at sake except their pride. Though Job would have been justified to curse God having fulfilled the law only to receive punishment, he instead asks "why?". God appearing from out of a "whirlwind", emerging out of chaos, asks Job "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." (Job 38:4) This among a series of other questions posed to Job contrast the difference between omnipotent and human being. Ultimately, Job can only admit his inability to understand God and in doing so receives his praise for speaking truthfully.

I believe the story highlights may of the tensions that form our relation to the irreducible Other. While we are always seeking to understand we cannot make any claims to knowing the Other. Job's comforters merely assumed to know God, the absolute Other, and his justice as a reward system. I find it interesting the Job's comments were often directed at God posing questions and stating his grievances while his comforters only accused Job of his many unknown indiscretions. The irony is that the comforters provide no comfort to Job in his suffering who must always defend his innocence. In accusing Job the comforters sooth the anxieties about their assured salvation through obedience to the law. These are two contrasting ways of addressing the Other. To the comforter Job as the Other, who is close in proximity, receives no sympathy while Job in his regard for God, the absolute Other, treats him with the utmost compassion given the severity of the injury caused. Perhaps we can take a lesson from this story and what it has to say about the relation to the Other; one cannot truly know the Other no matter how close or separated we might be but in our relation to the Other we recognize ourselves as Others.

PHIL 3476 - On Relating to Others

Today in class we discussed the differences between Sartre's and De Beauvoir's account of the Other. While Sartre maintains a conflicted view of the relation to the Other, which he describes as "hell" in his play No Exit, De Beauvoir has a much more sympathetic view of the relation to the Other as a possibility that occurs because of our existence in the world. Despite their differences both describe the existential condition that forces us to acknowledge the existence of Others.

One could make the argument that the differences between Sartre's and De Beauvoir's regard for the Other differs in their consideration of ethics. While Sartre's radical individualism has secured him the title of the last true "Cartisian Rationalist" and concieves of the conscious "self" as seperate from the Other, De Beauvoir's consideration of the relation to an Other places ethics within the frame of existential philosophy. I am somewhat resistant to these valuations not only on the principle that doing so understates the similarities by too sharp a contrast, but that existential philosophy at its foundation is a recognition of the individual in their life that is not based on any fixed or given meaning. As such, we must recognize that both Sartre and De Beauvoir are describing different but equal perspectives in their closeness to the subject of existence.

The two thinkers share equal perspectives of the same phenomena of existence. Sartre can be said to describe it from the perspective of the "self" while De Beauvoir describes it from the perspective of a self that has been "othered". Either way you consider existence it is still the result of "being" under consideration. For Sartre the Other existing in the world places constraints on the individual will - not merely in a physical sense but in the consciousness for-itself being aggravated by the Other who makes the self notice its own separation. He describes this condition as a kind of subjegation to the Other whose "gaze" judges and makes apparent what is incalculable and external to the self. We are transformed into objects of the Other's will and have no control over how, or if, they regard us. Alternatively, De Bouvoir, from the perspective of the self that has been Othered, considers what the self is left with in its relation to Others. While there is a limit to the possibility of what the self can impose on the Other, it ultimately must accept the freedom of the Other in order for the possibility affirm its own freedom of transcendence outside itself. According to De Bouvoir, the recognition of this solidarity between the self and Other is not only the first point of departure for any transcendence but the very condition of one's own existence which originates in the ethical relation.

Unlike objects in the world, conscious beings are in a constant state of transcendence. From the Sartrian perspective this transcendence occurs in and through the resistance of an Other, while De Beauvoir recognizes the irreducibility of the Other that comes from a recognition of individual subjectivity or freedom. While I think there are notable differences in the temperament between the two philosophers, the Other still is part of the ongoing narrative of transcendence within existence - its limit or possibility. The Other is both a point of resistance and the result of a collective relational being. It is because of the irresolvable relation to the Other that the individual can have the possibility of existence as being-in-the-world.

PHIL4205 - Derrida and Levinas on Responsibility

If the word "responsibility" does not make you cringe then you probably have not had to endure the agony of being responsible. On occasion you can find me slacking off from my duties either at school or home which may give the impression that I have found a way to live comfortably indifferent to the subject. This is far from the truth. I am always conscious of the responsibilities I have failed to meet both past and present, they haunt me like the ghosts of Ebenezer Scrooge that force him to relive what he had once cast out. It can at times be overwhelming how a guilty feeling can swell up and make suspect a tranquil moment. I can never evade responsibility.

Responsibility always seems to involve an other of some sort whether they are the one who benefit, suffer, or judge my actions. Without the existence of the other could responsibility really be possible or meaningful? Is it possible to be responsible for myself in any way that didn't involve an other? What about irresponsibility? Is it merely failing to deliver on a promise? A thoughtless act at an other's expense? Or is it a lack of relating to an other?

After posing the former questions, I could not help but look towards my own life for examples of where the intention of evading actually reinforced a feeling of responsibility. For instance, when I first started this blog it was merely to get into the practice of writing on a consistent basis. It was because of my own shame as a writer, the inadequacy of my being "as such", that encouraged me to stop dwelling in disappointment of the naivety of self-denial. At the point when I felt I had finally broke-in these new shoes, I suddenly came to the realization that nothing I had written was for me but rather it was for others. It was my only critic/reader Gary Smith (a.k.a The Ontological Boy) who brought this into focus for me. He questioned first my "philosophy", as crudely sketched out as it is, and pointed out continuities between my subjects and writing style. There was often a sense of elation in our exchanges for a month. Each response was followed by a more thought provoking one until I finally withdrew to silence. I did so not because of any offence I felt in Gary reading my work, nor any fatigue from the labor involved, but because I knew that there was the real possibility that I would in the future disappoint the other - I would once again fail to live up to my responsibility to him. As I remained in silence, Gary continued to write daily and comment on my work, sometimes leaving a staggering 30 posts in one month. The comments and posts seemed to urge me to respond, but I remained in my silence. Although we never knew each other, or the many other Others who might stumble across this blog, this unlikely and impossible relationship continued to be a source of judgment that placed my contributions into perspective. One never writes to oneself but always for the purpose of addressing others. This withdrawal brought on by the tremendous debt of responsibility felt in proximity is something to this day I can never hope to repay.

I was strangely comforted by two texts from class, Levinas' Otherwise Than Being and Derrida's Gift of Death. The two essays spoke to me about responsibility, Levinas from an operational account and Derrida from an absolute account of responsibility.

Levinas in Otherwise Than Being explains that our passivity or susceptibility to an irreducible Other places us in a position of responsibility which we would have not chosen or willed for ourselves. In this relation to an Other, a relation that comes before the concept of an "I" or "self" can be formed, we are in Levinas' words "innocent" but also "accused", "persecuted", and held "hostage" by this Other. This responsibility does not come from an appeal to moral virtues such as duty or honor; rather we are responsible to the Other because it addresses us first and has priority over the "self". The relation to Other as pre-ontological separates ethics from morality which is a later phenomena formed in concepts. Levinas also describes the relation to the Other asymmetrical. In coming always before me, asymmetry of the relation to the Other comes in the way it makes demands before we respond. We only come to the point of responding when in proximity to the "face" of the Other. In such a way we are forced into a position of responsibility to respond. Though the ways we respond to the Other may vary, it is always something owed to the Other. The responsibility to the Other is a key component to what Levinas has to say about alterity and its role in the formation of self. It is because of the Other that I can have the experience of things outside of the self. In terms of transcendence and its role in being, "in the face of the Other, I always demand more of myself". This formulation of responsibility radically changes the focus on ethical philosophy away from the active, conscious, self, and places it instead with the Other who places us in the position of responsibility.

Derrida in his essay Gift of Death reinterprets the story of Abraham as an example of responsibility. We might think it is strange that Abraham is used as an example of what it means to be responsible because from most accounts he is acting irresponsibly in agreeing to murder his son. Taking off from Kierkegaard assessment of the story as confirmation of subjective truth, Derrida interprets Abraham's decision to sacrifice Isaac as illustrating the paradox of responsibility. Abraham is torn between being faithful to God and the love of his only child. No matter which he obeys he must at the same time sacrifice the other. Moreover, in committing the act of murder he is violating moral law. Our responsibility for the Other in Derrida's view, whether the absolute Other (God) or a more immediate other, is always without justification and irresolvable but it is the basis from which the foundation of ethics is laid. Proximity is not as vital for Derrida as it is for Levinas. From Derrida's perspective there is always an Other no matter how remote they may be. In choosing to feed the cat that lives in my home or the hundreds of strays, I have no valid reason to privilege one act from another. Professor Jowett often repeats a quote from Derrida that I've grown fond of from this essay: "every Other is every bit Other". At the last moment, with his arm raises to strike
Isaac, the angel of God held Abraham back. In sacrificing that which is closest and which is loved over to the Other, Abraham in return recieved Isaac. It is in giving up our entitlement to sacrifice, which is always unjustified and inadequate, we learn to be grateful for the Other in its Otherness.

In terms of what this all means for my earlier questions about irresponsible, I am never at any time without responsibility. That is however not a sentence to a predestine fate that I can inadequately address or sufficiently justify my actions but rather it is a consequence of my being here in the world. As a closing remark, I've begun the work of completing and publishing the posts from my period of silence. Thank you for everything Gary.

PHIL4205 - Levinas' Disinterest in the Invisible

Reading Totality and Infinity, within the first chapter titled "Desire for Invisible", I encountered one of the first of many stumbling blocks. The page seemed to flow steadily in waves of critical thought, but it was there at the end of the chapter, in the decent, that I most resisted the currents force.

Levinas begins the chapter with a focused account of desire and what it means in the relation to the Other. Desire in itself is never complete. As was the case in Diotima's speech in the Symposium, to obtain one's love is to no longer desire them. We must be without. We cannot possess yet the lover must always seek closeness to the beloved. Love is a bitter sweet. One is unfulfilled by the separation away, but so grateful for the hope that love provides for the future. Applied to an account of metaphysics, the desire for a radical exteriority of the self, the absolutely Other, is one that is never complete. While things in the world are not necessarily excluded from it, material things can not completed it either. What is important to note about all this talk of desire is that metaphysics does not signifies something that is non-relational or an illusion of sorts, it is a real experience of the relation to what is invisible/non-present and incalculable.

Where I began to get caught up is in the translation of this desire for the invisible into an ethical philosophy. While this desire is to remain fundamentally without satisfaction and cannot exhaust the understanding of "the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other", how is this a genuine regard for the particular Other in proximity to me? Every Other is unique and a potentiality that I cannot account for. I can never exhaust my responsibility to the other, nor can I be assured that the other will regard me as I regard the other. Rather than a set of rule or laws, as is typical of most ethical systems, Levinas provides no "ought" that will compel us to act and no way to separate ourselves from ethics. We simply exist always in an ethical relation to the other without our choosing to be. By recognizing these limitations of knowing the Other, to regard the Other is to take it away from its Otherness, it is to attempt to make visible what is invisible. Moreover, I am not responsible for the regard of the Other which I cannot satisfy, but it is the Other who encounters me in proximity. Only when we experience the closeness of the Other, the one who we can never know in a desire that only deepens, is the condition for ethical responsibility. We cannot satisfy our responsibility to the Other. My regard for and the response to the Other are always in question. This notion of ethics seems reminicent to the Kantian categorical imperative that understands ethics that is anything but categorical. In the Grounding of the Metaphysic of Morals Kant emphasizes the role of a disinterested ethics where the acting subject is not to regard the "means" but rather the "end" in itself that has not or may not be fully disclosed. In being disinterested, avoiding the error of restricting the Other to a concept is seen as the point where a pure ethics, what Kant calls the good, becomes discernible.

As an example of ethics, Levinas' description is far removed from any system that has typically represented ethics. Perhaps my confusion is a predictable response. The Other is never an answer for me - as close or finite totality - but rather I must continue infinitely to ask the question of my relation to the Other.

PHIL 3476 - Nietzsche - Nihilism as Possibility

In the lecture today, the word "Nihilism" was described as the one word which encapsulate Nietzsche's entire philosophy. But as Professor Jowett reassured us, Nietzsche himself was not "prescribing Nihilism but diagnosing it".

I considered this interpretation seriously and turned to the passages that were said to illustrate the point. In the famous aphorism 125 titled "The Madman" from the Gay Science, Nihilism only came to light when light went out. This cryptic answer of my own hand is in part a reference to the lantern that was broken by the madman. Let me first explain what brought me there. In my experience in university, and the countless reading and rereading of this same passage, I have never once heard a professor remark about how passively the people were spoken about. While this may run contrary to the "herd mentatily" and the superiority or elitism of the Übermensch morality, the people's view of God was as evident as finding one's way. As far as they were concerned, their beliefs in God were decided and the matter was settled. Nihilism is only introduced during the silence that followed the madman's speech about the death of God. The people did not witness that death themselves. They did not hear the sound of a struggle or the cry of agony as God died. Their silence was one of many possible reactions and one that the madman had come to terms with long ago. After the piercing glares and grilling questions such as "How did we do this?", "How shall we comfort ourselves?", and "Who will wipe this blood off us?", silence was the only response the people gave. It was at that moment that the madman dropped the lantern that had revealed so much. It was then that the people were cast into darkness. It was then that impossibility of God's death became possible.

The enlightenment operated under the supposition that things are discovered and brought to light. But when light is eliminated all together, when the will that seeks resigns for the night, that is when Nihilism is present. Though we might come to describe Nihilism as the belief in nothing, it is not nothing itself. It is a form of critical thinking that questions all of what we call "things" It observes how we value and categorize things. How we find a place in our lives. Nihilism simply asks questions of pragmatics and what can be said to be in existence. But we may then ask the Nihilist, is existence everything that is worth considering?

In pointing to the death of God, Nietzsche reductively suggests just how unpragmatic and dependant the faithful are. How does one, in the absence of God, begin to speak again about the enormous task of constructing the world again? How could we live without the assurance of daily reminders that God's eyes are watching from above? What are we to do with the penance and sacrifice that are offered but no longer offer redemption? It seems that with the death of God a vast possibility of being would be lost. With the death of God all have been forced to face the burden of being accountable to themselves. Would this have come to pass without the small gad flies like Nietzsche whose pestering stirred humanity out of its idleness and into another direction? Shall we crown him "anti-Christ" over all that had followed before and those to follow after him?

While I am somewhat dismissive of the death of God and Nietzsche's responsibility for it, I am compelled to at least admit that Nihilism is one way to truth among others. While Nietzsche is critical of tradition and religion he failed to recognize that the conventional knowledge he strongly opposed both supports and applies force to his own ideas - the belief in God is a mode of being that is otherworldy oriented. Moreover, not all individuals who are receptive to convention knowledge are at every moment fully committed to it and one cannot expect to be separated complete from the same patrimony that permeates many aspects of our lives.

Both Dogma and Nihilism are not absolutes.

Nietzsche himself would say that the belief in God is already a form of Nihilism, a claim that is for him absolute. And yet it is still quite profound to make the claim that "God is dead" for in doing so one opens up the possibility for it to be considered. What other God or gods will take its place? How will we fill the silence that remains? All of these questions and more can be entertained.

The only limitation to thought is having none at all.

PHIL4205 - Emanual Levinas: The Difficulty in Letting Other Be Other

In reading Totality and Infinity it is often necessary to remind oneself the impossibility of defining infinity. One could easily be tempted to follow the short handed analogies of the infinite that may come to mind like wide open spaces or of length numerical values but these are merely diversion. A reader must read then re-read the word "infinite" where ever it appears on the page rather than attempting to solve it conceptually. But while this may be a more faithful reading of Levinas (something that he is mindful of and the paradox that writing on the subject of infinity introduces) it remains ultimately unsatisfying to never arrive at any definitive answer.

This dissatisfaction, as we are told, can be attributed to the preference in the philosophic cannon towards totality. Totality is a mode of being that is based in the act of "disclosing". This emphasis on totality goes back to the Greek understanding of "logos" but it is in modern philosophy with the introduction of Cartisian subjectivism that consciousness for-itself takes on the role as the arbiter of truth in its domination of externality. Individuals from this perspective become the "bearers of forces that command them" and do not realize the extent that the self referential "I" is only possible by the Other that is given. Levinas' description of the preference for totality is not to overstate its influence but to regard it as only one possibility among other possible modes of being.

In contrast to totality, Levinas affirms that subjects are much more passive in their experience of the world, a condition he calls infinity. Rather than an active subject who discloses exteriority, Levinas understands infinity as the relational condition wherein the unintentional subject is encountered by a preexisting and irreducible Other. By describing infinity, Levinas is trying to break the subject/object binary and return to a place of origin where such divisions of the world become strange and unfamiliar again. Infinity represents that which is "signification without a context" (p.23). In describing his method, Levinas explains that phenomenologically "we can proceed from the experience of totality back to a situation where totality breaks up, a situation that conditions totality itself. Such a situation is the gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face of the Other." (p.24)

After struggling with the concept of infinity or the attempt to force it into a concept, it soon became apparent the error that was being made - an error that is faultless on my part but one that nonetheless betrays the Other. When using the term Other to refer to what opens me to the infinite I am in a sense employing the category of the Other to totalize that experience. From what I have heard this same criticism was offered by Derrida and was answered by Levinas' "Otherwise than Being" that attempted to avoid all forms of the verb "to be". But can we see this ambition to reconcile the infinite fated to failure before it starts? Should we just reserve ourselves to this radical skepticism and be satisfied with admitting our limitations?

In reading Totality and Infinity I do not believe that this is at all Levinas' intention. While recognizing that the Other is irreducible, it nonetheless interrupts us. The Other in its being-there responds and demands a response. This relation to the Other is the point where ethics is both possible and inevitable. Any form of relation is a communication with the Other, we are not "duped by morality" into thinking that relational being is an after-thought of consciousness but points towards an origin (p.21). Levinas claims "ethics is an optics" because of the condition of our relation to exteriority in the percieving of the Other.

PHIL 3476 - Subjectivism as Truth

At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, I am constantly being misunderstood. I get this impression from others when I receive blank stares, grimacing expressions, and awkward silence in response to one of my usually elaborate rants.

Today was quite typical of that. In a class on existentialism taught by Professor Jowett, I made a number of attempts to illustrate the risk of faith that Kierkegaard describes as emerging from a concern for one's individual salvation/existence that is quite contrary to a system of beliefs and practices normally associated with Christianity. Kierkegaard does not run from the paradox of faith but relies on it as a basic principle that informs one's individual orientation. In my understanding, unlike God who can be understood through reason, Kierkegaard offers a view of God that is infinitely inestimable. Rather than limit everything to the proof, which is not the basis of “faith” and limits God to a finite concept, one must try to come to terms with what is unaccounted for whether one perceives it or not. It is this condition that one is fated to an existence that is irreconcilable and it is from this condition that any existential system is impossible. For Kierkegaard limiting an infinite God to a general concept is simply a "comical" abstraction which does not relate to the individual’s relation to God in his/her existence. But for some reason as I attempted to use Kierkegaard's own justification of his faith, the comments made after mine always followed a refutation of Christianity which was not at all what I was emphasizing.

Despite my best efforts to raise the argument of Kierkegaard's unstructured Christianity, the frequent digressions occurring throughout the discussion seemed to reinforce his emphasis on subjectivity as truth. While all seemed to agree with Kierkegaard's criticism against the potential for conformity inherent in a system of beliefs, most spoke as if they were removed from such bias. As they compared the disparities of thinking in the "Western" and "underdeveloped" world, to demanding critical thinking in academia while speaking in highly technical language with non-analogous examples, the class seemed like an orgiastic assembly of biases demanding to be noticed.

But doesn't this all sounds so characteristic of a philosophy class? The intellectualism with an abundance of references with the minutest of relevance to one's practacle life is what should be expected from a room full of pulsating high-flown philosophic minds?

And yet despite my own reservations, I trudged through the fecal matter that surrounded me - its depth an inconvenience more than an impediment - trying to form some sort of relevance to bear witness to my own existence.. a "life" reflecting on philosophic study. It was at that moment that I abandoned all hope of meeting a teacher or finding an audience. They are all so full of shit in some quantity or another that one always runs the danger of being caught off guard by some stench if strolling within too close a proximity.

Perhaps I am just bitter about being misunderstood, but then again aren't we all? The effort to capture and express to others in concrete terms what is experienced subjectively seems to me to be an absurd project from its inception. And yet it is the only means of communication we have outside ourselves. The impossibility of communication is the existential condition of what has been given and that which is closest to us in the everyday facticity of life. It is not so much that we can't assemble the world into systems of understanding that make it accessible to us and others authentically or inauthentically, it is by virtue of our relation to the world that opens up onto this possibility.