Dan,

Sorry for the delay, I was not able to get to the email yesterday.

My familiarity with Levinas’ ethics doesn’t run too deep.  It has been 
this dull throb in my life which only occasionally draws my attention, 
simply to be lost to another distraction before I delve too deeply.  
But I’ll give it a shot.  I would also be grateful for any correctives 
by someone with a better grasp on his thought.

At the heart of Levinas is a critique/response to Heidegger whose 
fundamental relation in philosophy is Being, not the relation with 
others.  Levinas explicitly counters this with his 1974 text Otherwise 
than Being.  Within this schematic exegesis, I’ll try to begin here.  
Levinas speaks of the Il y a, the there is, as the hollow all 
surrounding emptiness of being.  The only escape offered from this 
emptiness is via the ‘deposition of the ego’ accomplished in the taking 
of responsibility for the Other, as being-for-the-other.  We can only 
escape the solitude of Being with in the ethical  relations toward 
Other.

We encounter the Other in the ‘face.’  The face is naked and most 
vulnerable, and the I’s encounter with this face is in the nose, 
eyebrows, chin, forehead, etc., but prior to and different from a 
perception of an entire face.  As Levinas has written,  “the best way 
of encountering the Other is not ever to notice the color of his eyes!  
When one observes the color of the eyes one is not in a social 
relationship with the other.”  It is as if in recognizing the color of 
the other’s eyes the I both fails to experience the pure other, but 
instead the mask that the face shows, and the I also exerts its ego (in 
interpretation) onto the other.  A social relationship with the face is 
not simple perception, but discourse.  The face speaks to the I, 
calling for a response— responsibility in and for the relationship.  
Yet, as the face speaks to the I, the other also calls the I into 
question.  In its inability to ever know the other, the I is powerless 
before the other;  it is within the relationship between this masterful 
(i.e. deposing the I) other that the I also encounters this the 
destitute, naked face which the I takes responsibility for.  In 
assuming the responsibility for the other, the I is attributed 
subjectivity,  not a subjectivity pre-existing responsibility, but 
precisely in taking responsibility for the other.  As such, for Levinas 
subjectivity is initially for another.

Confronted by this assumed responsibility for the other—characterized 
by Levinas as an unpayable debt-- the I must answer this asymmetrical 
discourse with generosity toward the other.  Levinas does address the 
need to moderate this generosity given that one also has neighbors,  
who are themselves unknowable others.  It is at this point that he 
introduces a notion of Justice into his thought which I can’t begin to 
speak coherently about, so I will try to move the above schema into the 
concrete example of Blier’s film  (I hope you don’t have an aversion to 
plot-spoiling, but since this film’s narrative arc is telegraphed 
fairly early I hope I won’t spoil anything for you).

Blier’s film Open Hearts is a certificate bearing member of the Dogme 
films, and in it she explores the ethical obligation we have to the 
other.  In the story, Cecile ‘s lover is stuck down by a car and left a 
quadriplegic.  The woman driving the offending auto is married to a 
physician at the hospital where the victim is taken.  The physician 
encounters Cecile at the hospital , recognizes her and decides to speak 
to her.  It is in this act that we begin out Levinasian ethical 
relationship.  What exactly is our obligation or debt to the other?  
For Levinas this is a debt we desire to cancel, but are unable to ever 
pay.

To break down the solitude of his being, he approaches this woman and 
offers to lend an ear, an act that we can describe as an encounter with 
the face.  In the physician’s life, he has already taken literal 
responsibility for another within his marriage, and likewise he also 
possesses an ethical debt to that relationship.  In an attempt to 
ameliorate his wife’s emotional state over the accident, he approaches 
Cecile and as a result takes responsibility for another.  Conversely, 
Cecile also owes an unpayable debt to her fiancée even though their 
relationship have been irrevocably changed.   As she sees it, they will 
never be able to stroll in the woods together, hold each others hands, 
or make love ever again.  Yet, Cecile’s subjectivity,and purpose are 
given to her by this debt.  The fiancée also feels the weight of debt; 
in his relation to Cecile, he wants to give her freedom from her debt, 
an emancipation from a future with a handicapped man and a opportunity 
to begin life over with another man.  Cecile finds this to be an 
untolerable option, for all she desires is to care for him, to assist 
him through recovery and rehab, and ultimately to fulfill her ‘ethical 
obligation.’  The fiancée rebukes her offers belligerently rebuffs her 
pleas.

Cecile, lost and distraught, turns to the physician for professional 
advice, and as promised he offers her an ear which over a period of 
weeks first becomes shoulder to cry on, and then finally his embrace.  
All the while the physician is cognizant of the slippery slope his 
personal life is quickly descending, but ethically he may be doing 
good.  He is trapped in the lacunae of two debts, that which is owed to 
his wife, the mother of his children and life partner, and the other 
debt , to Cecile, which he has accepted in her name.  Eventually, his 
affair becomes public and he leaves his family.  His wife asks that 
when he is done, please return to his family a plea that itself 
demonstrates her generosity toward the debt she owes him.

In such a debt economy, how does one ever know when the interest has 
been paid?  Or does this ethical example demonstrate our inability in 
responsibility?   In the instance of Open Hearts it is finally the 
primary victim, the fiancée, who significantly alters this debt cycle; 
he calls for Cecile, literally pulling her from her lover’s arms and 
back into his recovery process, and in doing so releases the physician 
from his debt to Cecile.


Dan, it is in instances such as these that my curiosity for Levinas 
comes back, but I’m almost always confronted with an inability to 
reconcile the abstract concept to the quasi-concrete example.  An 
appeal to such an example opens the analysis  onto so many variables 
that cognitively it  calls for a leap from simple diagram to 
constellation—a leap that I just don’t seem to have the focus for at 
the moment.  In the end,  hope that this explained Levinas more than it 
confused , and I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks.
Damon.



Date:    Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:48:58 -0400
From:    "Shaw, Dan" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ethics and Film

Damon:

     How about a lengthier and less vulgar account of what you mean in =
your reference to Levinas, in terms that a novice to his work (but not =
to the Continental tradition) might understand.  Though I'm also not =
familiar with the Bier film, I am with Breaking the Waves, so if you =
could expand on your thought with reference to it I might grasp your =
point.

Dan