Cont Philos Rev (2007) 40:231–249

DOI 10.1007/s11007-006-9036-z

The neighbor and the infinite: Marion and Levinas

on the encounter between self, human other, and God

Christina M. Gschwandtner

Published online: 27 February 2007

Ó Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Abstract In this article I examine Jean-Luc Marion’s two-fold criticism of

Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of other and self, namely that Levinas remains
unable to overcome ontological difference in Totality and Infinity and does so
successfully only with the notion of the appeal in Otherwise than Being and that his
account of alterity is ambiguous in failing to distinguish clearly between human and
divine other. I outline Levinas’ response to this criticism and then critically examine
Marion’s own account of subjectivity that attempts to go beyond Levinas in its
emphasis on a pure or anonymous appeal. I criticize this move as rather problematic
and turn instead back to Levinas for a more convincing account of the relations
between self, human other, and God. In this context, I also show that Levinas in fact
draws quite careful distinctions between human and divine others.

Keywords Marion
Levinas
other
God
subjectivity
infinite

ontological difference
appeal

In one of his few explicit writings on the thought of his teacher Emmanuel Levinas,
Jean-Luc Marion compares his own relationship with his mentor to that between
Heidegger and Levinas. He begs indulgence for his criticism of Levinas, claiming
for himself ‘‘the same relation to Emmanuel Levinas as that which Levinas himself
acknowledged to Heidegger.’’1 And indeed, in the content of his paper and much of
his work, there is a certain logical progression presented which goes from Heidegger

1
A Note Concerning the Ontological Indifference,’’ Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 20/21 no. 1/2
(1998): 37. Henceforth cited as ‘‘Note.’’

C. M. Gschwandtner (&)
Department of Philosophy, University of Scranton, Monroe at Linden St., Scranton, PA 18510, USA
e-mail: christina.gschwandtner@scranton.edu

123
232 C. M. Gschwandtner

to Levinas to Marion. Much of Marion’s work is an attempt to get beyond ontology,

to speak of God, self and other after and against Heidegger while remaining deeply
indebted to him. Although he rarely engages Levinas’ work explicitly and directly,
it always hovers in the background of his readings and informs his concerns. He
suggests that his project is a way of making Levinas’ intentions his own and claims
Levinas as his master.2 In a later article which he writes in ‘‘Homage to Levinas,’’
he explicates again the ‘‘appeal’’ which already is an important theme in the earlier
one, yet here focuses not on ontological difference, but rather on the relationship
between father and child.3 The beginning of this essay which spells out the notion of
the appeal heavily quotes from and refers to Levinas, while the two final sections on
‘‘father’’ and ‘‘child,’’ only contain one very brief and cursory reference to Levinas.
Although clearly the theme of the father-child relationship is taken from the final
sections of Totality and Infinity, Marion interprets this relationship very differently
than does Levinas. While for Levinas paternity introduces a certain notion of
otherness already within the subject (the father ‘‘is’’ the son in some sense, and yet
the son is other: ‘‘I do not have my child; I am my child. Paternity is a relation with
a stranger who while being Other... is me, a relation of the I with a self which yet is
not me... In existing itself there is a multiplicity and a transcendence. In this
transcendence the I is not swept away, since the son is not me; and yet I am my
son.’’4), Marion claims that one becomes a father only by recognizing the mute
appeal of the child’s face because fatherhood is never clearly traceable and the
father can always choose to disregard the appeal of the infant’s face and walk away,
denying his paternity. The father’s naming of the child with his own name is a
response to this appeal that proceeds first from the child. The name given by the
father is a gift that is foreign to the child and is appropriated only as the child
separates from the parents and makes the name its own. The appeal (e.g. the naming
of the Father) is always anonymous and is only ‘‘identified’’ in some sense when one
chooses to respond to it and recognize it as an appeal.5
One might suggest that this different way of reading paternity and ‘‘sonship’’
parallels in some way the manner in which these two ‘‘sons’’ relate to their
philosophical fathers, specifically how they read Heidegger and his ontology. It
seems to me that it is not Levinas’ primary desire to escape and destroy ontological
difference completely, to do something utterly unrelated, but rather to enter within
Heidegger’s project and introduce a certain alterity or otherness into it, to subvert
and distort it from within. His sonship is both ‘‘same’’ and utterly ‘‘other,’’ both
remains faithful in some way and is very much his own. Marion, on the other hand,
needs to search first for his own identity and write his own project before he can
identify his fathers and respond to their naming. He wants to get beyond and out of

2
Note, 26.
3
‘‘The Voice without Name: Homage to Levinas,’’ in The Face of the Other and the Trace of God:
Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2000), 224–42. Henceforth cited as ‘‘Voice.’’
4
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1969), 277. Henceforth cited as TI.
5
‘‘Voice,’’ 236–40.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 233

ontological difference and only much later returns to acknowledge the gifts received
from the ‘‘father,’’ to find himself still very much a child of Heidegger, Husserl,
Levinas and Henry. In fact, Marion explicitly chides Levinas for remaining too
faithful to Heidegger and for not distinguishing his own project more fully. While
Marion is clearly informed by Levinas’ challenge to traditional subjectivity, he also
criticizes it rather sharply at times. On the one hand, he finds Levinas’ early attempt
to ‘‘overcome’’ Heidegger’s Dasein with an ethics of alterity unsuccessful because it
constitutes a mere reversal of ontological difference in his view. On the other hand,
he suggests that Levinas’ account fails also because this alterity remains ambiguous:
it can refer both to a human and to the divine other. I begin by outlining this two-
fold criticism and then go on to outline Levinas’ response (both explicitly and
implicitly). I then proceed to examine Marion’s own account of subjectivity which
he judges more successful than Levinas’ because it opens to an appeal without
determinacy, an anonymous appeal. I conclude by criticizing this move as rather
problematic and by returning to Levinas for a more careful account of the relations
between self, human other, and God.

1 Marion’s criticism of Levinas

In ‘‘A Note Concerning the Ontological Indifference’’ Marion evaluates Levinas’

progression from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being in terms of the
changing claims made about the self. According to Marion, in Totality and Infinity
Levinas conceives of the self in terms very similar to those of Heidegger and merely
inverts Heidegger’s ontological difference.6 In Otherwise than Being, Marion
admits, Levinas gets beyond ontological difference and gives a more convincing
account of the subject. Marion’s criticism of Levinas goes back to Idol and Distance
where he had already accused Levinas of merely reversing the ontological
difference and hence of remaining within it. He summarizes this claim: ‘‘According
to the evidence, the privilege, in being displaced from Being to beings, consecrates
the pre-eminence of the latter, as the Other, only by inverting the ontological
difference, thus by consecrating it... In a word, the surplus of beings over Being
certainly does not suffice to overstep ontology towards the Other because this
surplus supposes, still and in its own way, the ontological difference.’’7 Levinas
merely inverts Heidegger because he employs a particular being, the human other,
to gain access to Being as such. Privileging the other human being instead of Dasein
remains deeply indebted to Heidegger’s paradigm.
Marion asserts that Levinas responded to this challenge in his preface to the
second edition of De l’existence à l’existant by introducing a chronology in his

6
‘‘Ontological difference’’ plays an important role in Marion’s evaluation of Levinas and in his work in
general. Both Idol and Distance and God without Being seek to get beyond ontological difference and
thus to overcome the language of ontology. Ontological difference is also a prominent theme of
Reduction and Givenness where Marion first formulates his notion of a third reduction that would open
the way to a new account of subjectivity.
7
‘‘Note,’’ 25. All references within the next couple of paragraphs refer to this article, unless indicated
otherwise.

123
234 C. M. Gschwandtner

work, admitting that in Totality and Infinity ontological difference is not yet
overcome but that such is the case in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. In
this later work the ontological difference is overcome or surpassed by ethics. Ethics
goes beyond the ontological difference by proposing a new difference, a difference
of second degree. The ontological difference is destroyed by being transgressed. It
constitutes no longer a mere reversal of terms, but introduces something utterly new
in the notion of the ‘‘saying’’ which annuls the ontological difference through
something beyond it, something more ancient. The ‘‘saying’’ precedes and renders
possible signification. It inverts and replaces the primacy of intentionality. The I is
no longer prior but is addressed or summoned by the saying. The saying requires
sincerity, an open relation that makes reciprocity possible. Marion claims that such
‘‘sincerity phenomenologically destroys the terms of the ontological difference’’
(31). The self is thus not primary, but suffers reduction, is only a subject through its
response, not its domination. Marion contends that ‘‘thus, obedience to the ethical
infinite would identify, in the new phenomenological reduction, he who oversteps
the ontological difference’’ (33). By ‘‘overstepping’’ or ‘‘destroying’’ ontological
difference Marion seems to mean that a concern with Being is no longer primary,
that something even more significant than the mode of Being of beings concerns us.
That does not imply a mere ‘‘ignoring’’ or ‘‘forgetting’’ of the ontological
difference, which according to Heidegger characterizes most of Western meta-
physics, but goes even further than it in challenging the notion that the mode of the
Being of beings ought to be our most important concern.
Marion then engages in a comparison of Heidegger’s Dasein and Levinas’ me
voici. He explicates the me voici as a self that is decentered, that appears only in the
accusative (without nominative), a self that is always indebted to the other by whom
it is claimed. It is devoid of care about its own being (thus is not Dasein) because it
is utterly responsible for the other to the point of becoming its hostage.8 He suggests
that this constitution by the other is primarily a call, an address, a summons, and
concludes: ‘‘To admit that a claim can make a hostage of me, that is what, in
general, would transgress the ontological difference. But it would establish the last
difference: to surrender oneself to the claim, or not’’ (37). Already in this short
summary Marion’s interpretation has moved us imperceptibly from the other who
faces me and turns me into a hostage to an emphasis on the call or claim that ‘‘can
make a hostage of me.’’ Furthermore, Marion seems to suggest that Levinas’
important achievement consists in being able to speak of the self without the
language of being, in rupturing the ontological difference through the call of
something or someone utterly other. It is curious, however, that he reads this ethical
interruption of the same by alterity (which certainly is Levinas’ central theme) so
explicitly in terms of the problematic of ontological difference. It is much less
obvious that it is Levinas’ specific goal to destroy ontological difference with his

8
Thus, as Marion points out, for Levinas ‘‘ethics begins when the freedom to decide ceases and when the
irrevocable precedes me’’ (‘‘Note,’’ 36).

123
The neighbor and the infinite 235

project, despite his often stark criticisms of Heidegger.9 Maybe Marion’s reading of
Levinas is motivated too strongly by his own concerns regarding an overcoming of
the language of ontology?10 The context in which his argument against Levinas first
appeared seems to suggest that such is the case.
Marion’s original claim is found in his examination of difference and distance
near the end of his study Idol and Distance.11 Comparing Levinas’ and Derrida’s
notions of alterity and difference to his own preferred term of ‘‘distance,’’ he
suggests that two contradictory movements can be traced in Levinas. On the one
hand, Levinas claims to oppose Heidegger who ‘‘subordinates the relation to the
Other to ontology’’ and wishes to hear an other beyond being. On the other hand, the
other is also a being, is also within ontology. Marion then engages in a short reading
of Totality and Infinity and shows that although Levinas suggests a certain escape of
the other from the language of ontology, he is actually more concerned with a
reversal in which beings take the priority over Being. In Totality and Infinity the
relation with the other merely reverses ontological difference; it is a relation
between beings as prior to any relation with Being. In Otherwise than Being, the
relation with the other has become one in which the other calls me (appeals to me)
as his or her hostage from beyond the realm of ontology. In a sense Marion reads
both of these as relations between self and other. Yet in the first case (which he
deems insufficient) the relation between self and other is inscribed within ontology,
while in the second case ontology has been overcome by a call that comes from
beyond it.
Levinas himself does indeed speak of such a ‘‘reversal of terms’’ and suggests
that the relation with the other is a relation ‘‘within Being’’ (TI, 47). Marion asserts
that this not only constitutes a mere reversal of the ontological difference,12 but that
the Other is ‘‘insufficiently’’ and ambiguously determined (ID, 219). He finds that
Levinas has here outlined an aporia: the other must both transgress ontology and be
primary among beings. This, however, Marion suggests, relativizes beings and
makes the priority of the other unclear. Levinas does not actually transgress
ontological difference and thus cannot adequately articulate the distance necessary
between humans and God.13 He carries this argument further in the article
mentioned in the introduction, ‘‘The Voice without Name: Homage to Levinas.’’14
9
Is it indeed the ‘‘avowed ambition of Emmanuel Levinas in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence to
surpass the ontological difference by ethics’’? (‘‘Note,’’ 26.) Is it not, rather, to show the priority of ethics
over ontology, to show how ethics is ‘‘better’’ than ontology? Does that necessarily mean that ontological
difference as such has been surpassed or abolished, or that to do so is the ‘‘avowed ambition’’ of that
work?
10
Such a concern in particular motivates God without Being, but is also evident in most of Marion’s
other works, including the more recent phenomenological ones.
11
Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2001). Henceforth cited as ID.
12
This is the claim that he takes up within the ‘‘Note.’’
13
This distance between divine other and human self is, of course, Marion’s primary concern in Idol and
Distance. In Idol and Distance Marion goes on to criticize Derrida’s notion of diffe´rance which he also
judges insufficient.
14
All references within the next couple of paragraphs refer to this article (‘‘The Voice without Name’’),
unless indicated otherwise.

123
236 C. M. Gschwandtner

Although ‘‘the surprise, thus the loss of knowledge, prohibits the ‘interlocuted’ from
understanding and knowing the claim as a determined and designated object,’’ ‘‘all
knowledge of the identity of the one who appeals will be added after the fact of the
claim’’ (234). The devoted converts that which is given in the appeal into a
phenomenon. Although the appeal is a gift and at first not determined, it is
‘‘identified through and in the response’’ (240).
Marion makes far more explicit use of Levinas in this article. In fact, he opens
it by claiming that ‘‘the appeal’’ is ‘‘the most important’’ ‘‘radical innovation that
Emmanuel Levinas has introduced into phenomenology’’ (224).15 He summarizes
Levinas’ notion of the face but finds that it ‘‘raises a considerable difficulty’’
because it cannot show itself as a phenomenon in the usual sense of the term
(225). The only way in which the face can become a phenomenon is through the
notion of the appeal. He then examines the difficulty of determining the
phenomenological status of the one who makes the appeal, of identifying its
source. He regards the identity of the other as particularly problematic, because it
involves a supposed confusion between human and divine other (228).16 This is
his strongest statement regarding this confusion in Levinas and therefore worth
looking at carefully. He begins by claiming that ‘‘Levinas has not only admitted
an ambiguity but knowingly emphasized it. For the face which appeals can be
assigned equally to the Other or to God, thus avowing the indecision of its origin
as well as the necessity of questioning both identity and individuation’’ (227;
emphasis mine). The demand of the face according to Marion therefore proceeds
from an unidentifiable infinite. Both the divine and human other are represented
by the face. When Levinas mentions the face or the infinite it is unclear in
Marion’s view whether he refers to God or to the human neighbor because the
demand of the face ultimately proceeds from God. Marion explicates what he
calls ‘‘some strange ethical occasionalism’’ in Levinas, in that the call of the face
always goes back to God. He asks:
Who (or what) calls—God and his word, or the Other and his or her face? As
clarifying and magnificent as it is, does not the emergence of the theme of the
à-Dieu nonetheless hypostatize this ambiguity to the point of rendering it
exemplary and insurmountable? ... What does it mean that the appeal can and
must refer me to an Other (autre) as well as to its agent, the other person who,
however, it does not make act toward me? Does the appeal come from the
other person, or does it refer me to the Other only from an other than the other
person—no doubt God? (228)
Marion therefore makes two related claims in his critique of Levinas: First,
Levinas is unable to get beyond ontological difference in his early work because he
merely reverses it in favor of the other’s being instead of my own. Second, in both
his early and later work, Levinas confuses divine and human other. And it is

15
A rather curious claim, since Levinas is far more well known for his emphasis on the other and on
alterity, than on any notion of ‘‘the appeal.’’
16
We can see again how Marion’s confusion about the role of God in Levinas always hovers in the
background of this discussion about the other.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 237

precisely due to this confusion that he is unable to move beyond the Heideggerian
obsession with Being and why his criticism of Heidegger falls short.

2 Levinas’ response to Marion

Yet all this is not exactly what Levinas actually said. He responds to Marion’s
challenge by claiming that he was not merely concerned with reversing Heidegger’s
ontological difference as Marion ‘‘supposed,’’ but that this reversal was merely the
first step toward a reading of ethics as older than ontology, that the Infinite is indeed
beyond ontological difference. He does admit a certain development between Totality
and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, but claims that his fundamental concern has
not changed, that already in this early work he was occupied with speaking of the
Platonic ‘‘good beyond being.’’17 His early work spoke of the ‘‘relation between
beings’’ while the later spells out the ‘‘signification of the Infinite.’’ Both have always
occupied Levinas and in both the self is challenged by the other/Other. He claims that
his work has consistently remained faithful to the intention of describing ‘‘the relation
with the other as a movement toward the Good’’ beyond being.18 The difference
between his two works is therefore more a shift in emphasis, particularly in that given
to either human or divine other, not two different accounts of relation between self and
other. While the earlier work is predominantly about the relation between self and
human other, the later one emphasizes the role of the infinite somewhat more
explicitly.19 Marion, then, seems to ignore this distinction Levinas seeks to establish
between my relation to the other and my relation to the infinite.
Although it is true that Totality and Infinity does not talk as explicitly about the
divine as some of Levinas’ later works and although he does once or twice refer to
God as a being (e.g. TI, 50), he makes it very clear that it is impossible to relate to or
understand God: ‘‘The comprehension of God taken as a participation in his sacred
life, an allegedly direct comprehension, is impossible, because participation is a
denial of the divine’’ (TI, 78). Even in this work, however, he draws a clearer
distinction (than Marion indicates) between the human other and God. The
‘‘dimension of the divine’’ opens up from the human face but is not identical with it.
It makes justice possible: ‘‘God is accessible in justice’’ (TI, 78). Yet, God is beyond
the human other and any relation with God is really a relation with the other: ‘‘There
can be no ‘knowledge’ of God separated from the relationship with men. The Other
is the very locus of metaphysical truth, and is indispensable for my relation with
God.... The Other is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which
he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed’’ (TI,
78–79). The ‘‘curvature of space’’ which dislocates me and allows me to be exposed

17
He explains this in the preface to the second edition of De l’existence à l’existant (Paris: Vrin, 1998),
12–13.
18
Ibid., 13.
19
In fact, it seems that in Totality and Infinity, the ‘‘infinite’’ usually refers to the other in general (human
or divine), while later it is reserved for the Infinite beyond the human other, i.e. God. To avoid confusion,
I will use the term here only in the latter sense.

123
238 C. M. Gschwandtner

to the truth of the other, Levinas suggests, ‘‘is, perhaps, the very presence of God’’
(TI, 291). God, then, already in this work, holds open the opportunity to hear the call
of the other, underlines my responsibility to the other, but is not reducible to human
alterity. This distinction will become even clearer in Levinas’ later work.
There is indeed a certain progression in terminology between Totality and Infinity
and Otherwise than Being.20 In the later work Levinas is much stronger in his
insistence that the other is, indeed, ‘‘otherwise than being’’ and that ethics is not
only prior to ontology but also beyond it. On the very first page he insists: ‘‘To be or
not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of
being’s other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and
beyond that which separates being from nothingness – the very difference of the
beyond, the difference of transcendence’’ (OB, 3). He is explicit that relation with
alterity must be outside any ontological order and yet still refers to beings in some
sense: ‘‘The otherwise than being which, to be sure, is understood in a being, differs
absolutely from essence, has no genus in common with essence, and is said only in
the breathlessness that pronounces the extra-ordinary word beyond. Alterity figures
in it outside any qualification of the other for the ontological order and outside any
attribute’’ (OB, 16). Yet although the other is now also read as beyond being, the
distinction between other and God/Infinite is still clearly maintained. Levinas insists
that the witness of the Infinite ‘‘does not thematize what it bears witness of, and
whose truth is not the truth of representation, is not evidence. There is witness, a
unique structure, an exception to the rule of being, irreducible to representation,
only of the Infinite. The Infinite does not appear to him that bears witness to it’’
(OB, 146, also 149). He also distinguishes the manner in which he employs the word
‘‘God’’ from a theological naming of God which betrays the name by introducing it
into language (OB, 151, 156).
He names ‘‘illeity’’ this distance between the Infinite and the thought that
attempts to articulate it (OB, 147). This Infinite, ‘‘as illeity, does not appear, is not
present, has always already past [sic], is neither theme, telos nor interlocutor’’ (OB,
148). He identifies the Infinite with a kind of third, this time making a careful
distinction between the ‘‘third person’’ and the ‘‘third man’’: ‘‘It is in prophecy that
the Infinite escapes the objectification of thematization and of dialogue, and
signifies as illeity, in the third person. This ‘thirdness’ is different from that of the
third man, it is the third party that interrupts the face to face of a welcome of the
other man, interrupts the proximity or approach of the neighbor, it is the third man
with which justice begins’’ (OB, 150). Yet, that distinction is not entirely clear, as
‘‘the trace of transcendence in illeity’’ (again identified as the ‘‘passing of God’’)
makes it possible for me to become ‘‘another for the others’’ and thus allows for a
justice that includes me. Thus, he can say: ‘‘The passing of God, of whom I can
speak only by reference to this aid or this grace, is precisely the reverting of the
incomparable subject into a member of society’’ (OB, 158). God, thus, although
clearly distinguished from the relation with the human other, does circulate
ambiguously between the realm of the ‘‘face-to-face’’ and the realm of justice.

20
Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1981). Henceforth cited as OB.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 239

Marion is clearly wrong, then, in his claim that Levinas does not distinguish
carefully between divine and human Other. He is also not correct to collapse all
‘‘otherness’’ (so to speak) into one dimension, that of the human face. Rather, the
divine other – although clearly distinguished from the human face – plays
ambiguously in three different dimensions: the pre-ethical, the ethical and what
might be called the post-ethical, namely the realm of justice.

3 A pure appeal?

More significantly, however, Marion not only collapses Levinas’ distinctions

between the (divine and human) Others calling the self to responsibility, but in fact
dismisses them from the picture altogether in favor of a return to the pure call, the
claim as such. Let me return to the ‘‘Note’’ in order to substantiate this.21 First,
Marion puts a much greater emphasis on language in general, or the ‘‘saying’’ in
particular, than on the one from whom such saying proceeds. He stresses that ‘‘the I
must experience itself passively summoned’’ and that the I ‘‘becomes a respondent’’
with little concern for anything but the effects on the self and the sincerity of the I
(31). The subject is subordinated, according to Marion’s reading of Levinas, not to
an other but ‘‘to the call which summons it to expose itself’’ (32–33). Marion’s
suppression of the other in his quotations from Levinas’ text appear almost
deliberate. He interprets the me voici [‘‘Here I am’’] ‘‘as the exposure of the I
renouncing its mastery in order to offer a face submitted to the pure Saying – in
brief, as that alone which remains after the new reduction’’ (33; emphasis mine).
The emphasis is again upon the I and its relation to the ‘‘pure Saying,’’ not to the
encounter with the neighbor. Marion takes great pains to distinguish Levinas’
reduction (to the Saying) from that of Heidegger (to ontological difference).
Apparently, this is an immensely difficult task.22 It is his lack of emphasis on the
role of the other in Levinas’ account, I suggest, that causes him to read Heidegger
and Levinas in such an intensely parallel fashion that finds such great ‘‘similarities
between Dasein and here I am’’ (34). For example, he explicates this parallel as
follows: ‘‘Dasein and here I am are not interested in themselves; they do not
stubbornly persevere in their own essence, but surrender themselves, constrained or
not, to an other, anterior, unconditioned instance which deprives them both equally
of the privilege of denomination in the nominative’’ (35; emphasis mine). Levinas’
neighbor is thus reduced to a neutral, unconditioned ‘‘instance.’’ Marion admits that
the central difference between Heidegger and Levinas is that of the other who turns
me hostage, but his emphasis remains on the situation of the I that hears the call.
The important question for him is: ‘‘Whence comes the voice which says the
irrevocable? The word which summons me as its hostage, witness and stake of the
other and of his fate – how does it reach me?’’ (36). It is not enough for Marion to

21
All references within the next couple of paragraphs refer to this article (‘‘Note’’), unless indicated
otherwise.
22
He calls it a ‘‘dangerous rekindling’’ which ‘‘harbors imposing difficulty’’ because of their ‘‘basic
similarity’’ (‘‘Note,’’ 32ff.).

123
240 C. M. Gschwandtner

answer this with: ‘‘from the other.’’ Rather, the one called or hearing the appeal (the
interloque´) must recognize the call and identify its source: ‘‘he knows how to
recognize as the Saying... one must know how to recognize, admit and support a
claim’’ (36–37). The self must choose to surrender to this claiming call, this original
donation. Marion concludes that Levinas’ transgression of the ontological difference
has been successful because of this emphasis on the claim, because of the
introduction of a new difference: ‘‘to surrender oneself to the claim, or not’’ (37).
The neighbor to whom one surrenders apparently has disappeared from view.
In another text dealing with this theme of the interloque´ Marion provides an
exegesis primarily of Heidegger to guide him in an outline for ‘‘the self that
comes after the subject.’’23 The appeal or call is again for him the central measure
for challenging a notion of subjectivity. Marion claims in this article that Levinas’
critique of Heidegger’s figure of the self as haunted by ‘‘a transcendental egoism’’
is ‘‘unjust.’’ Levinas disregards that ‘‘what is at stake’’ for Heidegger ‘‘is just as
well the being of all other beings’’ (132). Marion distinguishes between
Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein which still preserves the autarchy and self-
constancy of the subject and the Heidegger of the Kehre where an appeal or call
of Being claims the human being and destroys the autarchy of the subject. Marion
wants to go beyond this ‘‘claim of Being’’ to the point where ‘‘I can hear a call or
an appeal in general.’’ A new account of the self becomes possible with this
starting point: ‘‘The claim, then, interpellates me. Before I have even said ‘I,’ the
claim has summoned me, named me, and isolated me as myself. Moreover, when
the claim resounds, the claim that hails me in my name, it is only appropriate to
respond.’’ For Marion, ‘‘the claim gives rise to a ‘here I am!’ and thus delineates a
me without leaving any place to an I’’ (137). He outlines in what sense this is a
successful overcoming of the transcendental I of metaphysics. This new self
becomes possible due to ‘‘an inconceivable, unnameable, and unpredictable
instance or agency exercised by the claim itself.’’ The pure call is able to achieve
a dislocated self that is no longer a subject: ‘‘The interpellated me ratifies the
disappearance of any I under the irremediable empire of the claim. The disaster of
the I marks the accomplishment or the completion of the claim’’ (138). In the
entire analysis of the new account of the self, not a single reference to Levinas or
an ‘‘other’’ is necessary.24 It is the claim alone, the call as such, that accomplishes
all the necessary work.25
Marion insists that the origin of the claim must remain anonymous to preserve its
purity. No evidence of the other who makes the claim is required; in fact, such
evidence would merely intrude. He asserts: ‘‘Indeed, the call or appeal is perfectly

23
Jean-Luc Marion, ‘‘The Final Appeal of the Subject,’’ in: The Religious, ed. John D. Caputo (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2002), 131–144. All references within the next couple of paragraphs refer to this article, unless
indicated otherwise.
24
In fact, Marion finds that Descartes can at times ‘‘serve as a guide’’ in his explication (Ibid., 139),
while apparently Levinas’ guidance is eschewed.
25
‘‘When the claim has taken place, the interlocuted experiences an appeal which is powerful and
conscriptive enough for it to be obliged to render itself, in the double sense of displacing itself and
submitting itself.... The pure and simple shock (Anstoss) of the claim identifies the I only by transmuting
it immediately into a me.’’ Ibid., 138.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 241

well able to exercise itself as such without displaying itself in evidence.’’ The I
‘‘recognizes itself as covered over by an unknowable claim’’ (139). Interlocution,
for him, ‘‘of course’’ does not refer to a dialogue with another person, but rather
recalls a legal procedure, an abstract law by which I am ordered to do something.
Marion finally consciously distinguishes his account of the self from that of Levinas,
which he apparently finds impure: ‘‘To determine the given as pure given demands
the suspension within the I of everything which does not directly result from the
claim itself, and therefore to reduce the I to the pure giving or donation of a myself/
me. It is no longer a question of comprehending this giving according to the
nominative case (Husserl) or according to the genitive case (of Being: Heidegger)
nor even according to the accusative case (Levinas), but rather according to the
dative case – I receive myself from the call or appeal which gives me to myself’’
(139–40).
Marion also identifies the source of the call as an important problem, proposing
as possible candidates a variety of ‘‘callers’’: God, the Other, Being, Life. Not
knowing the identity of this caller is significant. It is the very ‘‘anonymity of the one
who calls’’ that allows for its priority and the subjectivity of the self to depend on it:
To discover myself summoned would have no rigor if the surprise did not
definitively deprive me of knowing, for a time at least, in the instance of the
convocation, by what and by whom the claim is exerted. Without the
anonymity of the what and the whom, the convocation would not surprise us.
Reciprocally, if I knew in advance that Being, or indeed the Other, or indeed
God, or indeed life, summoned me, then I would immediately escape from the
full status of an interlocuted, since I would be free of any surprise; and thus,
knowing in advance (or at least immediately) to what and to whom I was
related in the speech that I heard, I would know (what) or I would respond
(who) by way of a covering over of a constitution or the equality of a dialogue,
that is to say, without the interlocuted passivity of a surprise (142; emphasis
mine).
It is far from clear, however, that the interruption by or claim of the other
deprives the encounter of any element of surprise. In fact, surprise and even shock
play an important role in Levinas’ account of the incoming of the other. Marion here
appears to appropriate several of the ways in which Levinas characterizes encounter
with the other in order to apply them solely to the anonymous appeal that
supercedes precisely this encounter with the other. Not only does he use the
language of surprise and shock, but even that of poverty and diachrony, all
important aspects of Levinas’ analysis. Marion insists that ‘‘anonymity belongs
strictly to the conditions of possibility of the claim, because it defines the
unconditional poverty of the latter: in conformity with the principle of sufficient
reason, the claim does not have to become cognized in order to become recognized,
nor does it have to be identified in order to be exerted. Only this poverty is sufficient
to wound subjecti(vi)ty and exile it outside of any authenticity’’ (142; emphasis
mine). He goes on to spell out how to be interlocuted is to be subject not just to
surprise but to a delay: I am always named before I have any understanding of the
name or my subjectivity. While he does not use the term of diachrony in this

123
242 C. M. Gschwandtner

context, he is clearly appealing to Levinas’ use of time. Marion then goes on to

argue that this indeterminacy of the appeal becomes fixed when the self responds to
this call, recognizes its own naming and assumes it as a vocation (144). While this is
also language reminiscent of Levinas, for him the appeal of the other does not seem
to become fixed but retains its elements of ambiguity, surprise, and alterity.
In his article on Levinas mentioned above, he suggests that Levinas’ ambiguity
can only be resolved by maintaining the anonymity of the call in a way already
supported by Heidegger. Anything can claim me:
the same event which, in the same form, affects and defeats the autonomous
ipseity of the I can also move the entire length of the spectrum of possible
expressions, including the gap between the finite and the infinite, and between
the non-ontological and the ontological. One thus sees clearly that the appeal
admits no fixed identity, and that it calls from wherever it wills... the working
of the appeal is such as to imply that its origin remains fluid, always
wandering; one cannot begin from the shock of the appeal and trace it back to
some univocally identifiable source (‘‘Voice,’’ 229).26
Marion goes on to spell out again the different kinds of callers that might take the
place of this anonymous ‘‘anything’’: God, the other person, being, life.27 Any of
these are able to accomplish the appeal. Marion concludes by identifying the appeal
with his analysis of the gift: ‘‘The reduced gift, the gift which has been legitimated
phenomenologically, deploys itself according to an immanent and intrinsic
givenness, which does not at all require one who gives, nor even its identity ...
from the reduced gift emerges the anonymous gift of the appeal’’ (‘‘Voice,’’ 232).
Both the appeal and the gift proceed from an anonymous place that is identified only
by the self responding to the pure call or gift. In the last lines of the article, Marion
makes his move away from Levinas explicit. While ‘‘Levinas attests that the other
person, as appeal, establishes the possibility of a phenomenology of givenness,’’
Marion rejects the idea that ‘‘this transcendence offers the only givenness’’ and
instead seeks to pursue ‘‘a phenomenology of givenness in general’’ (‘‘Voice,’’ 240;
emphasis mine). His neglect of the other in favor of a pure call is thus deliberate. I
do not become a self through substituting and expiating for the suffering other who
challenges me by the misery of his or her condition, but rather by an anonymous call
so purified that it proceeds from nowhere.

4 The neighbor and the infinite

What is troubling about Marion’s emphasis on the purity of the claim only, to the
exclusion of the other, becomes particularly evident when one examines more
carefully whether Levinas’ account really lacks all the features that Marion
presumes his dislocation of the other in favor of the pure appeal supply. Levinas’

26
If such is the case, however, one wonders why Marion always ends up insisting on the need for a
response that actually determines and names the appeal.
27
These correspond to some extent to his four saturated phenomena of event, idol, flesh, and icon.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 243

lectures on ‘‘God and Onto-theology’’ provide a particularly suitable locus for

hearing him speak on this topic, since they probably constitute the place where he is
closest to Marion in his avowed intent of hearing a ‘‘God without Being’’ and of
overcoming ‘‘onto-theo-logy.’’28 Although these lectures are supposedly about God
and ontology, Levinas constantly and obsessively returns to talking about encounter
with the (human) other, the neighbor, and always defines the self in relation to such
an encounter. In this brief summary I will particularly stress how Levinas challenges
the language of being and ontological difference (as Marion would wish for him to
do), but still always connects such a challenge and overcoming to a concrete
encounter with the other person. I will also show how he makes very clear
distinctions between the human neighbor and the divine infinite.
For Levinas, the self is defined by its responsibility to the neighbor who is always
prior to the self. This responsibility is obsessive and challenges me to the point of
turning me into a hostage.29 I am always already responsible for another, not in the
sense of a debt that might be paid off but in an infinite obligation from which I can
never escape or absolve myself. The I is split, burst, dissolved, beaten by this
irruption of the other to whom it must submit. This is not a simple ontological
reversal: while the same contains the other and thus reduces him or her to its own
being, the other is not within the same or, rather, is there only without being there.30
Yet, the I also only receives its uniqueness, only becomes an I, through this absolute
obligation to the other, through this condition of being hostage. This is not an
intentional waiting but a passivity. Levinas claims that the self has no intentionality.
Rather, it is a patience that must remain open-ended because there is no knowledge
of that for which/whom one waits. The other cannot be defined, and therefore –
against Marion – also not be identified and fixed. In a sense, the coming of the other
and his or her effect on me are prior to my noticing anything other. The other comes
into the same and destroys it. This is not mere surprise, but even a traumatic event, a
paradox (GDT, 145). The paradox is expressed by a saying not reduced to the said.
In this saying an anterior or independent signification is expressed, a responsibility

28
Levinas repeats this intent at the beginning of almost every lecture. The title of the lecture course is
‘‘God and Onto-theo-logy.’’ Dieu, la mort, et le temps (Paris: Grasset, 1993) [henceforth cited as DMT];
God, Death, and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) [henceforth cited
as GDT]. God without Being was published not long before these lectures. The editor even establishes an
explicit parallel to Marion’s work in a footnote (DMT, 190; GDT, 274–75, n.1).
29
‘‘Ethics is a relationship with another [autrui], with the neighbor. ... ‘Neighbor’ emphasizes firstly the
contingent character of this relationship; for the other [autrui], the neighbor is the first come. This
relationship is a nearness that is a responsibility for the other [autrui]. A relationship that obsesses, one
that is an obsession, for the other besieges me, to the point where he puts in question my for-me, my in-
itself [en-soi] – to the point where he makes me a hostage.’’ (GDT, 138).
30
‘‘This difference [between Same and Other through time] is a nonindifference of the Same to the Other
and, in some way, of the Other in the Same. But it can destroy the difference: if the Same can contain the
Other, then the Same has triumphed over the Other. Here, with time, the Other is in the Same without
being there; it is ‘there’ in disquieting the Same.’’ (GDT, 141).

123
244 C. M. Gschwandtner

that is not reducible to ontology and ruptures the rationality of founding.31 As

Marion would also emphasize, through the signification a radical question may be
posed: ‘‘Is the human not otherwise than being? Is Being really what interests the
human most? Is Being the sense of the sensed?’’ (GDT, 155). Through this rupture
and dislocation of the other, ontological difference is to some extent overcome and
rendered insignificant. To be human must in some sense mean to be otherwise than
being, to find meaning not primarily in being. Ethics, that is the encounter with the
face of the other, is prior to ontology.
Yet, unlike for Marion, this signification is expressed in responsibility to the
other not in a pure appeal. There is meaning here, even if this meaning or sense
is not ‘‘signification’’ in the Husserlian sense of the term. One must always be
‘‘for’’ the other; a kind of ‘‘intrigue’’ is implied. It is only in this ‘‘intrigue of
responsibility’’ that I become myself. My uniqueness is derived from this
concrete responsibility for the other (GDT, 158). This ‘‘self’’ is not well-founded,
autonomous and in control, but rather naked, open, deported. I must give to the
other by tearing the bread from my own mouth, by having compassion for the
hunger of the other, by no longer caring for the needs of my body, by suffering
starvation for the other. Thus I am substituted for the other, am ‘‘for’’ the
other.32 Subjectivity is about body, about flesh and blood, about giving my body
and my bread for a concrete, suffering other who demands something of me
(GDT, 169). The account of subjectivity which emerges in this context is indeed
one beyond being:
The subjectivity of a being that ... empties itself of its being, that turns itself
around: which ‘is’ otherwise than being. Otherwise than being, that is, dis-
inter-ested, carrying the misery of the other. ...The responsibility of the
hostage must be heard in the strongest sense of the word. For it remains
incomprehensible to me that the other concerns me... these questions are
incomprehensible in being. In the pre-history of the Self, the self is basically
hostage – more ancient than the ego. For the self, in its being, it is not a
question of being (DMT, 205; GDT, 175).
Even this explication of overcoming the language of ontology is still placed
within the concrete encounter with the Other where I literally carry the misery of the
other. Levinas challenges Heidegger’s contention that my death concerns me the
most intimately and that it is primarily about the possibility of impossibility for me.
For Levinas it is the death of the other that concerns me primarily, death refers not
to my possibility but to the impossibility of possibility.33 The responsibility for the

31
‘‘What we are seeking here is a signification that is prior to, and independent of, every content and
every communication of contents, and that can be fixed by the term ‘Saying’ as a Saying to another, as the
one-for-the-other. The ‘for’ is what we must consider; it has a meaning different from what it would have
at the thematizable level of ontology. In the thematizable it surmises a nonstatus and signifies a rupture
with the rationality of the foundation.’’ (GDT, 156).
32
And of course this does not imply ‘‘replacement’’ of the other, but rather ‘‘taking the place’’ of the
other, as in being willing to die for the other.
33
It is therefore particularly significant that Marion rejects this reformulation of Levinas and emphasizes
again the importance of Heidegger’s formulation of death as ‘‘possibility of impossibility.’’

123
The neighbor and the infinite 245

other which is expressed in the condition of hostage and the call to substitution, thus
displaces my being, empties me of my concern with my own being (and my own
death), and moves the relation between other and self beyond ontological difference.
Such responsibility does not, however, get beyond a relation between self and other
that would constitute an absolutely purified call. I substitute myself for a concrete
other, suffer for the other, expiate for the specific one who challenges me by the
misery of his or her condition, by saying me voici, by being placed in the accusative
for the other. Traditional ontology, thus, is ‘‘undone’’ by the other.34 The ‘‘famous
subject’’ is displaced from its favored and stable location and placed in the
accusative. Yet this displacement has happened not through a pure and anonymous
appeal from who-knows-where, but through the concrete encounter with the other
person confronting the complacent self-preoccupation of the subject and calling it to
radical response to the suffering face of the neighbor. Levinas’ account of the other,
then, includes all the elements of surprise, shock, unknowability (even anonymity to
some extent), lack of concern with being, poverty, and delay that Marion seeks to
emphasize as essential for an unsettling of the self. At the same time, Levinas’ self
becomes individuated and unique through ethical obligation and responsibility to
the suffering other, while any such obligation seems refused in Marion’s account of
a self who becomes individuated through the pure structure of the call alone and for
whom an account of inter-subjectivity is not essential for the constitution of ‘‘the
self that comes after the subject.’’
Furthermore, Levinas also makes clear distinctions in these lectures between
my response to the human other (the face or the neighbor) and to the divine other
(the infinite). Especially when naming the two together, God is never collapsed
into the face of the other. Rather, the divine other is more other than the human
other, beyond the other, a second other. In these lectures, we hear the word
‘‘God’’ only as a certain witness of the other of something beyond itself, thus in a
sense an other beyond the other. Levinas circumscribes the only context in which
any non-ontological notion of God is possible: ‘‘One attempts here to formulate
notions which have no meaning except in their relation with the other. And one
searches an access to a non-ontological notion of God, beginning from a certain
dis-inter-estedness; one searches an escape from ontology beginning with the
relation with the other in its difference which makes objectivity impossible’’
(DMT, 211). And: ‘‘That which we call God can only take meaning starting from
the relations with others. It is only beginning from these relations that God can
‘manifest’ himself’’ (DMT, 218, see also 226). To find access to a language that
might speak of God, one must get beyond ontology and place the question of God
within the context of the relation with the other. ‘‘God’’ will not appear or
manifest himself outside of the ethical language which Levinas has outlined. In
fact, this second other is not named, is never manifested, cannot be defined. It
points to a glory which is thus only in a distance or abyss which can never be

34
‘‘In suffering through or by the fault of the other there glimmers the suffering for the fault of the other.
It is to suffer for the others in suffering by the others’’ (GDT, 179). The reference to this accusative case is
to GDT, 161.

123
246 C. M. Gschwandtner

bridged. This gap is opened by the saying and can never be closed in a said, never
be thematized, never come to language. Yet, one must speak of it, witness to it,
but such speaking is not philosophy, can never become topic of a discourse. This
infinite always recedes from view, regardless of how much one attempts to
approach it (DMT, 223). There can be no model of transcendence, God will never
approach, can never be named. ‘‘God’’ only makes sense, only is given meaning
in my relation to the other, my response to the other and openness to the neighbor.
I never meet God, always meet only the other person. Whenever I might suppose
that I’ve had a glimpse of God’s glory, really I have only encountered the
concrete face of the other which is not usually a pleasant or welcome sight. God
can never become present, nothing is capable of holding the infinite. God has
always already passed and hardly left a trace. There is never, for Levinas,
relationship between God and the self. I cannot truly say ‘‘I believe in God,’’
cannot announce God, cannot proclaim the word because it is always too far
removed. So why introduce God here at all? Why speak of God if one cannot
speak of God? Why bring God into the relationship with the other, if ‘‘God’’ has
no sense without the other, if every encounter in the trace of God is really only an
encounter with the other?
God, Levinas says, is the only word that cannot be reduced, that always escapes
our grasp. I can reduce the other, can refuse to respond to the other’s call, can turn
my back on the responsibility that I will always owe to the other. I can reduce the
other if I so desire, can live alone in my world, can stay outside of ethics. It is God,
it seems to me, that prevents a total collapse of ethics for Levinas. I can reduce the
other, but I cannot reduce God. The word God is unique, says Levinas, ‘‘in that it is
the only word which is not extinguished or blown out or whose saying is not
absorbed. It is only a word and yet it turns upside down semantics. Glory encloses
itself in a word, it makes itself being but always already undoes its dwelling.
Immediately unsaid, this word does not marry itself to grammatical categories’’
(GDT, 204). Although (and maybe precisely because) the word ‘‘God’’ dissolves as
soon as one uses it, cannot be held, runs through our fingers as our hands attempt to
hold it, it cannot be eliminated, absorbed, blown out or snuffed out. While the other
can be reduced to the same, can be murdered, this is impossible to do with God. One
cannot ever get enough of a grasp on God that would allow to hold the divine or
squeeze it within our hands. Thus, God is the otherness behind the other that always
reiterates my responsibility even as I try to evade or subvert it. God is the third, the
illeity that stands outside my relation to the other and continually reminds me of my
obligation: ‘‘The infinite which signifies itself in the witness is not in front of its
witness and on cannot speak of it as of a name. It is attested in its excess in the
accusative of the ‘me voici!’ which responds to its call. The order which orders me
does not leave me any possibility to climb back up toward the infinite as toward a
name which is placed within a theme. In this way God escapes objectivation and is
not even found in the I-thou relationship, is not the thou of an I, is not dialogue or
within dialogue. But he/it is also not separable from the responsibility for the
neighbor who (the neighbor) is a thou for a self. God is thus the third person or

123
The neighbor and the infinite 247

illeity’’ (GDT, 203). The rationality of transcendence can never be reduced to the
rationality of philosophy, in fact, can never even enter within it. The thought of God
always ruptures the sense of the self and reminds it of something beyond it. The
infinite cannot be welcomed, cannot be received, but we are put in question by it,
traumatized by it, sent toward the other. The only thing that appears in the space of
rupture is the face of the other. The infinite affects thought only by devastating it, by
calling it outside of itself, by awakening it. The infinite can never be welcomed or
received. It does not manifest itself. This utterly separate transcendence, however,
although desired and desirable (as the ‘‘good’’ beyond being), can never be desired
directly but only sends us again toward the other, the neighbor, whom we do not
desire. Ethics is beyond ontology, precisely because it is concerned with the good,
because it is ‘‘better’’ than being (GDT, 223–24).
While the self can reduce the other to the same and ignore its call, close the doors
of the home and leave orphan, widow, and stranger outside, eat the last piece of
bread alone, kill the other despite the mute appeal of the naked face; this is
impossible to do with God/the Infinite. God is beyond any naming, beyond any
possibility of reduction, impossible to identify and thus to subsume. The alterity of
the infinite is what constantly holds open the possibility for ethics. While the self
can ignore the appeal of the other, the infinite always reminds of this appeal and
sends the self back to the undesirable other. The infinite is desirable, the other is not.
The infinite can be in me, the other is not. The infinite speaks from height and glory,
the other can be the poor and marginalized, naked and destitute. Even when the face
of the other (autre) is described as standing in the trace of the other (autrui) or even
of speaking the ‘‘word of God,’’ the distinction between the two still seems quite
clear. I cannot ever hear the infinite directly, never ‘‘believe’’ in God, relate directly
to God, but am always re-directed to the human other, always only hear the other
who stands in the trace that is always primordial, has always already passed, can
never be identified. Thus, the distinction between other and Other is far from being
as unclear and indistinguishable as Marion suggests.
Yet, Levinas’ talk about God or the infinite is, in fact, in another sense a lot more
ambiguous than Marion admits. God is not merely the other behind the human other
of the face. Rather, God can also be confused with the third, with illeity and even
with the il y a. God thus plays a role in all three of the phenomenological moments
Levinas outlines (insofar as they can be artificially distinguished even as they are
never distinct in experience): the self’s (merely ontological?) relation with the
elements or ipseity in its own home, the ethical relation with the face of the other,
and the political relation of justice which introduces the third. Marion appears to
find God only in the second (and admittedly for Levinas most significant) one.
While this is indeed where the infinite is mentioned the most, Levinas does allow for
a much greater ambiguity. God ‘‘is’’ also the third in the relation of justice and can

123
248 C. M. Gschwandtner

also be confused with the il y a, the nothingness which first makes the self tremble
before (though not in time) its relation with the other.35
Since God cannot be named and always remains beyond any grasp or definition,
the divine ultimately remains to a certain extent indistinguishable from ‘‘the third’’
or ‘‘illeity’’ or the ‘‘il y a’’ (DMT, 240). In some sense, God and il y a become
identified with each other for Levinas. He compares the religious ‘‘awakening’’ with
the insomnia closely associated with the il y a. Both refer to a certain opening before
intentionality. In both cases the soul is passive and is raised or awakened by a
formless emptiness. In explicating the Cartesian idea of the infinite within us,
Levinas practically equates the ‘‘idea of God in me’’ with ‘‘insomnia’’ (DMT, 249).
Both the experience of insomnia and the diachrony of transcendence are related to a
new and utterly different manner of conceiving of time. The idea of transcendence
disrupts conscience from within while remaining something utterly outside. He
finally concludes:
In this turning around and re-sending from the desirable to the non-desirable –
in this strange mission ordering the approach of the other – God is torn out of
the objectivity of presence and of being. He is no longer either object or inter-
locutor in a dialogue. His distancing or his transcendence turn into my
responsibility... And it is from this analysis that we have conducted that God is
not only simply the first other – but that he is other than other, an other
otherwise, a preceding alterity other than the alterity of the other, ... Different,
thus, from any neighbor. And transcendent to the point of absence, to the point
of his possible confusion with the rumbling of the il y a. A confusion where
the substitution for the neighbor gains in disinterestedness, in nobility – and
where the transcendence of the infinite raises itself to glory (GDT, 224).
A similar analysis to the lectures can be found in his article ‘‘God and
Philosophy.’’ Again, Levinas speaks of the passivity of the ‘‘idea of God in us’’ in
terms of a certain ‘‘awakening’’ and ‘‘trauma’’ which closely resemble his analysis
of the insomnia of the il y a.36 He summarizes (what sounds like a quote from the
lecture course):
To be good is a deficit, waste and foolishness in a being; to be good is
excellence and elevation beyond being. Ethics is not a moment of being; it is
otherwise and better than being, the very possibility of the beyond. In
35
See also, for example, the essay ‘‘The Idea of the Infinite in Us’’ where he connects the idea of the
infinite with both a certain plurality and the insomnia reminiscent of the il y a: ‘‘That the proximity of the
infinite and the sociality it initiates and commands may be better than coincidence and oneness, that,
through its very plurality, sociality has its own irreducible excellence which cannot be said in terms of
richness without it reverting to a statement of poverty; that the relationship or the non-indifference to the
other does not consist, for the other, in converting to the same, that religion is not a moment in the
economy of being, that love is not a demigod – this is certainly also what is meant by the idea of the
infinite in us or the humanness of man understood as theology. But perhaps it is already indicated in the
very awakening to the insomnia of the psyche before the finitude of being, wounded by the infinite, is
moved to withdraw into a hegemonic and atheistic I.’’ Entre nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other, trans.
Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 222.
36
Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 137ff.

123
The neighbor and the infinite 249

this ethical reversal, in this reference of the Desirable to the Nondesirable, in

this strange mission that orders the approach to the other (autrui), God is
drawn out of objectivity, presence, and being. He is neither an object nor an
interlocutor. His absolute remoteness, his transcendence, turns into my
responsibility—nonerotic par excellence—for the other (autrui). And this
analysis implies that God is not simply the ‘‘first other (autrui),’’ the other
(autrui) par excellence, or the ‘‘absolutely other (autrui),’’ but other than the
other (autre qu’autrui), other otherwise, other with an alterity prior to the
alterity of the other (autrui), prior to the ethical bond with the other (autrui)
and different from every neighbor, transcendent to the point of absence, to the
point of a possible confusion with the stirring of the there is. (BPW, 141.)
It seems, then, that Levinas is not necessarily guilty of the (‘‘residual’’) idolatry
of which Marion accuses him or at least not in the way in which Marion suggests it.
Yet, his notion of ‘‘God’’ is far more complicated than Marion indicates, as is his
relation to Heidegger’s ontology. Far from a neat progression from a simple reversal
to a clear surpassing, Levinas consistently introduces alterity into Heidegger’s
sameness and disrupts it from within. A faithful son, he is both same and utterly
other, playing the same game as the father and yet destroying that very game as he
emerges from its womb.

123
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.