Session 4: Ontology vs. metaphysics; sacred vs. holy.

(Discuss pp. 307 of Guwy interview to end.)

A: Ontology vs. Metaphysics

1. Ontology. We have said that ontology is the study of being, and that it has been taken to be the basis of all philosophy. There are important connections between truth (normally considered to be in the category of "epistemology") and ontology, as even a casual consideration will illustrate. If I say that something "is" and it is not, then what I have said is false. Being is broken down into essence and existence, for the purposes of analysis, though it seems impossible for a given entity to be deprived of existence and still have an essence. Essence is the quality possessed by a thing, usually conveyed by the use of adjectives; existence or lack of it answers not the question what something is but whether it is. I is odd, but not nonsensical, to say that all unicorns have but one horn, even though there are in fact no unicorns. Levinas, as we have noted, transgresses the traditional separation of these two aspects of being, essence and existence, since he describes the existence of entities has "tenacious," and as resisting change. This notion of being that resists change is, by the way, considered by Plato as more "real" than things that change. There seems to be an element of negativity in change, and as we have seen; in the dialectic of Hegel historical change has a positive and a negative element. Contrary to Platonic thought, Hegel makes change the the motor of history. Change is history, whereas being and nothingness when they are not "mixed" to produce change are empty abstractions, and not "real" in the sense that changing historical reality is real. The empirical or physical world is ever in flux. This brings us to the notion of metaphysics.

2. Metaphysics. Metaphysics is what is "beyond" (Greeek "meta") the physical (Greek physis). The world of science is comprised of the physical, giving rise to the physical sciences. Pythagoras, the early Greek mathematician and mystic thinker, seems to have thought that "everything is numbers," i.e. literally made up of numbers. Today mathematics is looked upon as a way of describing and measuring what exists, but numbers themselves are thought to be "for us" rather than an inherent quality of nature. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason maintained that metaphysics was profoundly flawed, since it allows reason to ask questions that reason cannot answer. Incapable of solid progress, metaphysics should be abandoned. (He developed this view largely on the basis of David Hume's destruction of the notion of causality. He had originally set out to save metaphysics from Hume's doubts; he ended up finding room for what he called "categorical imperatives" and maxims for living a moral life, but moves ethical theory to his critique of "practical" reason.
Levinas's thought may be described as metaphysical speculation that has taken an axiological (i.e. ethical) turn. But rather than being "beyond" the physical it might be better to say that is is on the hither side (the side closer to us) of the physical world. Children's questions (Mummy where did I come from? or Mummy when did we have me?) seem to be naturally metaphysical. It may be said that they have not yet "reduced" experience to the physical, or even that they do not distinguish sharply between physical and psychic or even spiritual phenomena. One stumbling block to readers of Levinas is that this philosopher does not assume that all thought, all reason, all truth, is derived from our experience of the physical world.

B: Sacred vs. Holy (or Saintly)

These terms are the translation of the French sacré and saint. They constitute the title of a small collection of Levinas's Talmudic Readings (Paris: Minuit, 1977). During the later years of his life (after his encounter with the mysterious rabbi "Shushani," who also taught Talmud to Elie Wiesel and then disappeared into South America), Levinas gave public Talmudic lessons on aggadic passages every Sunday. Some have been published, notably those given at the Colloques des intellectuells juifs de langue française organized by the French section of the World Jewish Congress. The volume in question contains five Talmudic lessons, and is preceded by a short author's foreword, in which Levinas explains that the title is really only properly applicable to the third (of five) piece, titled "Desacralization and Disenchantment," which is based on a text from the tractate Sanhedrin, 67a-68a (Bavli).
The above-mentioned work was combined with another short collection (Quatre Lectures talmudiques, 1968) and translated by Annette Aronowicz as Nine Talmudic Readings (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990). This extremely reliable and readable translation chose to translate the binary opposites under consideration here as "sacred" and "holy," respectively. Her solution has become the standard one for these two key terms. I follow suit in my translations, though I believe I translate "histoire sainte" as "sacred history" simply because that is the usual expression in English. Though I concur with Aronowicz's solution, it may be useful to point out that another solution, more obvious perhaps, for "saint" would have been "saintly" rather than holy. I suspect that the term "saintly" was probably rejected because it has taken on a Catholic connotation difficult to ignore. But Edith Wyschogrod in her Saints and Postmodernism uses the term Saint in a broader context, specifically in discussing such French thinkers as Levinas and Blanchot. In any case, my point is that "saint" and "saintly" evoke the human being, however exceptional, whereas "holy" might be used in such contexts as holy ground, holy water, etc. Hence for the purposes of close scrutiny of the sacré/saint dichotomy in Levinas, I will contrast the sacred and the saintly.
Let us begin by considering this passage from Levinas's Desacralizaton and Disenchantment (Nine Talmudic Readings, op. cit., 141). "I have always asked myself if holiness [sainteté], that is, separation or purity, the essence without admixture that can be called Spirit and which animates the Jewish tradition--or to which the Jewish tradition aspires--can dwell in a world that has not be desacralized. I have asked myself--and that is the real question--whether the world is sufficiently desacralized to receive such purity. The sacred is in fact the half light in which the sorcery the Jewish nation abhors flourishes."
The sacred is the negative term, and it includes sorcery, mystery, enchantment (particularly in the strong sense of casting spells or black magic). It is also associated with place, the sacred grove, the numinous of paganism. The holy or saintly is in the domain of my idealized relation with the other, and it suggests dis-interestedness, kenosis, humility, a yielding to the other, movement toward the irenic. In a tentative way, let me conclude by saying that this distinction is essential to our understanding of Levinas's critique of certain aspects of religion, and that philosophical thought can be helpful in separating the magical, the irrational, the cruel and primitive from that aspect of the "metaphysical" that moves toward the heights, in a "transascendence," as Levinas describes it (a movement beyond and upward). It also plays an important role in Levinas's articulation of his critique of Heidegger's nationalistic romanticism, which is based on a sense of enrootedness and a mystique of "local color."