The Wisdom of Love

Texts and Contexts Volume 20

General Editor
Sander L. Gilman The Wisdom of Love
University of Chicago

Editorial Board

sii1a mour
David Bathrick
Cornell University
Alain Finkielkraut
J. Edward Chamberlin
University of Toronto La
Michael Fried e · O'Neill
Translat
The Johns Hopkins
University and · choff

AntonKaes
University of California,
Berkeley

RobertNye
University of Oklahoma

Nancy Leys Stepan

Welcome Unit Histoty
of Medicine, Oxford

Press
University of Nebraska

Lincoln & London

 Publication of this translation
was assisted by a grant

from the French Ministry of Culture. For Sylvie Topaloff

C Editions Gallimard, 1984. "franslation

and introduction C 1997 by the University

ofNebraska Press. All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

9 The paper in this book meets the minimum re­

quirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39-48-I984.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Finkielkraut, Alain;
[Sagesse de !'amour. English] The wisdom of love =

(La sagesse de !'amour) I Alain Finkielkraut :

translated by Kevin O'Neill and David Suchoff.
p. em.- (Texts and contexts: v. 20)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8032-1991-1
1. Civilization, Modern- 195o- 2. Civilization.
Modem - Philosophy. 3. Love. 4. Multi­
culturalism. s. Conservatism.
6. Liberalism. I. Series.

CB428.F5713 1997 3o6'.or-dcw

96-9823 CIP
 Contents

Introduction by David Suchoff ix

Preface XXV

1 The Encounter with the Other 1

2 The Beloved Face 25
3 Face and True Face 51
4 Breaking the World's Spell 69
5 T he Test of the Neighbor 85
6 W ho Is the Other? 115
Notes 135
Index 149
 Introduction by David Suchoff

To speak of love, as Alain Finkielkraut does in this book,

evokes a conservative return to values, seemingly at odds
with the critical project of modernity. But The Wisdom of
Love is a deceptively titled work. Originally published in
1984 by a major French intellectual who had already au­
thored a critique of American conservatism as well as a book
onJewish identity, and who would go on to write an icon­
oclastic work on the culture wars, this book aims to unsettle
the easy distinction between cultural liberalism and conser­
vatism that continues to shape contemporary debate. It was
written as the Marxist project lost credibility with the West­
em left and as liberalism was challenged by the claims of
cultural difference; its historical moment and its grounding
in the ethical thought of Emmanuel Uvinas make it a
unique rethinking of love as a critical ground for social
thought. T he wisdom Finkielkraut offers here is no rehash
of traditional pieties but a way of thinking about the rela­
tionship between minority and majority culture in an in­
creasingly multicultural age. The Wzsdom ofLove thus bears
on two topics crucial to contemporary cultural politics: the
problem of reconciling the right to cultural difference with
the demands of community, and how the thought ofUvinas
sketches a new position-committed to universalism but
also to preserving the particularism ofJewish and other mi­
nority cultures-in our multicultural debates.

FINKIELKRAUT AND THE CULTURE WARS

Finkielkraut diffe rs sharply from the American cultural con­

servatives in his views on the relation between minority and

ix
 .· JL.l.
l
;
'

Introduawn by DaPid Suchoff Introduction by DaPid Suchoff

majority cultures. The Wisdom of Love supports neither the with
kielkraut' on the other hand, might be said to agree
nostalgic, universalist traditionalism represented by E. D. in The Souls
w. E. B. nu Bois's famous dictum, pronounced
Hirsch or William Bennett nor the partisanship for the eth­
ofBlack Folk, that"the problem of the Tw�ntieth Century is
nic or racial Other that is often labeled"politically correct" ? ther
the problem of the color-line?'3 The claims of the
by its opponents. Rather than view multicultural diversity kraut argues here, but only m the
must be address ed Finkiel
as antithetical to Western ideals or as a destructive challen
ge spirit ofDu Bois r ; the cultura l Zi � nist A ��
a Ha-am : with
to cultural tradition, Finkielkraut sees cultural differe
nce as a critical view of any racial or ethnic essentialism.
the rightful claim that the Other makes to be includ , or
ed as How can one love the Other without essentializing
different, within the tradition of universal rights
. This � ­ thereby reducing, Otherness? The questio n of"l � ve" posed
versalism led Finkielkraut to sometimes hy perbo
lic attacks in this book is the pressing question faced by sooal thoug
� t
on the multicultural movement in a subsequent of UVI­
boo
k, The in the postcolonial age. T hrough a clear exposition .
Defeat of the Mind.' But American readers would les
be mis­ nas's notoriously rich and difficult thought, usmg examp
taken to ally Finkielkraut with American , Finkie lkraut shows
opponents of mul­ from Proust, Henry James, and others
ticul � m. To make the point quite bluntly, The Wisdo
m how love of others is both a romantic and a profou
ndly
oJ_ Ltwe IS far more concerned with preserving The Wisdom of Love asks
the Other's ethical and political question. How,
difference than is American neoconse e-enc ounter and
rvatism, which tends us to consider, can one-or one's cultur
to s�� multiculturalism as a threat leadi ng, or even de­
ng to "TheDecom­ value Otherness without fetishizing, reduci
posm n of America" and the fraCturin
? g of our universal stroying it in love's name? All the crucial issues faced
in � e
Amen
� valu�. Finkielkraut's universalism, by contrast,
2
twentieth century, this book reminds us in its prefac
e, bnng
� ��
grounds 1 elf mmanuel Uvinas's theory of the Othe
r, us to speak of love.
whose anti-assimilationist root .
s in Jewish sources make the to liberal­
Finkielkraut's answer has been a critical return
p�eservation of the Other's diffe on.
rence the central impulse of ism through a rethinking of its assimilationist traditi
his thought.
�e Other's claim for inclusion, Finkielkraut argues here Lik� many of the"new philosophes," the post-M arxist group
liberal
. a nghtful cl · ' of French intellectuals who have sought to theorize
1s aim to Justi· ce. The West beg
·
an to bemoan its democracy anew since the 198os, Finkielkraut has been � s­
lo� of universal concepts,
he suggests, at precisely the his­
appointed by Marxism's quest for the"other" who
expl �s
to�cal moment that non
-Western cultures began to claim
the dialectic of world history. .. In The Wzsdom of
Love, F�­
� err shar of them: that is,
e: when "Other'' cultures called the partic­
mto quesnon the Europea kielkraut argues that the"other" is reduced when
n"center" and its stable sen the eroti c objec t-is eleva ted to
self as the decolonization mo se of ularity of the ethnic self-or
vement too k hol d m
. the 1950s. wisdo m, as Finki elkra ut de­
InAmerican cultural deb . become a fixed essence. Love's
ate, this decentering has often been keep ing the ques­
blamed on "theory" and velops it from Uvinas's thought, m�� .
its supposedly baneful effe of a left � de­
Academy, for the loss of ct on the tion of the Other open. This book's cntique
great authors or for the loss trous brutality of
sure sense of the universal of a cline, however, represented by the disas
truths of Western culture. not be confused
Fin- Europe's Red Brigade of the 198os, should
x xi
 Introduction by David Suchoff
with a merely rightward turn For Finkielkraut, "Lo " does
Introduction by David Suchoff
1
I
I
·
and patronage of the Other that is still able to present itself
not mean selfless moralism and universal "know!eve as "protecting" minorities and their cultural difference, but
sorne cultural c�nservatives recommend; but the accedgptan e," as
that ends up denying them the universal human rights en­
of the Other's likeness and right to exist within the Wiestern ce
joyed by members of the majority. I .
tradinon· as rrred
. ucibly different. Th'C Wisdom The project of liberating cultural difference, Finkielkraut
mands respect for ethnic and racial particularity ofas Llrn'C a
de-
points out incisively, began to join hands in th� 1980s with
e�ce opposed to any totalizing ideological national eth-r­ diffe
, or a viewpoint that conceived the West and its tradition as an
ruc scheme. ' overwhelming and totalizing source of social control. In the
•
One contribution of Th'C Wisdom or
• 'J .LAJP.. t"s therefcore Its
T �, . general press, this point of view was simplified as the "po­
cnnque of the logic that stands behind liberal versiO. ns of litically correct'' view that the Western tradition was strictly
multiculturalism. That criti a source of repression . In late cold-war America, such po­
que is offered by a writer com-
mit. ted to a c�ntral European tradition that kno
ws firsthand sitions were often called "containment" arguments and were
the falstty. of liberal promises of cultural m. cluston . launched specifically against the idea of America's liberal
Jews, as Finkie.J Maut noted m Th'C Imaginaw . E urop
n._
•
. ean "consensus" to correct its narrow view of the role of minor­
"./J''em, "£eII m 1ove
T
Wit. h theRights fMan,, only to discover the ities in American history and culture or to indicate the false
�
sion to be self-h�tred d : atr�d of the price of inclu-
to subside. Multicul� usIOn, for ?�er that refused
promises of social justice that American liberalism had made.
American proponents of multiculturalism or liberal cen­
sents the postmodem '-'10rm of libe Finkielkraut, repre- trism, in other words, have carried on their arguments
. ral · 1USI· VIty, .
on the praise of and pn"de m. dif. ef ren me now based against the cultural right and its exclusion or neglect of mi­
rrT:
lation. Th'C tsdom oflim'C, however, sus ce rath er tha n assimi- nority cultures. Th'C Wtsdom ofJ.qp'C, by contrast, carries out
. vv

clustv. eness: for as humanism takes peCts this new in- its debate with the excesses of France's left, whose postmod­
.mto th e Oth er, as diff
. erent, ern and adolescent identification with Otherness Finkiel­
its loving embrace, this liberal center
also patr oni zes the kraut would later come to parody in the chapter entitled ''We
�
objeCts- of its "acceptance," offering wh . n par­
lance might sound like the "victim at m. enca Are the World, We Are the Children" in Th'C Dqeat of th'C
cultural cnn
. " status that nght-leaning Mind. What worries Finkielkraut in this book is the absence
•
· ·cs on the center and
"Since the society you mn n"ght h�ve often decried. of any position between the "love" for the Other, which
. rnaliz
have mte .
kraut writes, "you are · ocent·thi ed Is guilty," Pinkie!- trivializes, patronizes, or manufactures cultural difference,
·
modern humanism " What must s sums up the credo of
· ·
and repression of the Other, the conservative claim for a
ference between Finki"elkraut's .be. nonced here is the dif- cultural universality that leaves the Other unheard. In U­
and right-wingAmenc. an van. ants cnnque f libera! humanism
0 vinas's terms, the Other makes a claim on us based on like­
does not rail ., ::tl>"!>in the "
-.st
of this therne. p·inki.elkraut ness, while remaining different to the categories we apply.
cult ure of VI·ctimiza
· · tion a term Sustaining this tension, for Finkielkraut, defines the crucial
often used in the Amenca . n context as a kind of "bl,"ack lash" task of the cultural centrism, given the failures of universalist
to decry the advances women · · ·

Th'C Wrsdom oflim . 'C

and mmonnes have made. s liberalism to recognize the claims of cultural difference in
mstead argues against the trivia the past.
lization
xii xiii
 -'+'-_+;o:___;,;cc�c--�"-'-"-C"- iLl
t _

Introduction by David Suchoff Introduction by David Suchoff

Rather than dissect the right, The Wudom oflqpe therefore sition to Moslem women being permitted to wear the fou­
invests much of its energy in detailing the limitations of lib­ lard or head covering in French schools-or Jewish students
eral h��sm, for it i� a book concerned with constructin the kipa or skullcap-provides a controversial case in which
the �dinon o�republican universalism anew. European rec­g

I
The Wisdom of Lave and Finkielkraut's role as a prominent
ogrunon of this effort came in the Prix Europeen de ai public intellectual meet. Schooled in diversity and lacking
Chari� Veillon, which was awarded to this book in l'Ess the tradition of an established church, an American audience
i �cceptmg that prize, Finkielkraut made quite clear his19s4 cri­
.
might well consider such French universalism as threatening
! nque of �versalis� notions of a culture that migh underlie a right to difference that most Americans take for granted.
i;
a new CIVIC republicanism. There he defined cultut re- It is a position that certainly indicates the depths, and some
I haps the most crucial, if inadequately debated, term in con­ per­
would say the limits, of the position of The Wisdom oflqpe
� temporary intellectual discussion-as that in cultural practice.
the "life of a people, group, or collectivity."7whic Thi
h expresses
s Yet the position cannot be fairly evaluated unless the crit­
spe� clearly points to his criticism of that prog part of his ical value of such universalism is seen. It is "a strange anti­
eralism that would swallow the other's cultural ressive lib­ racism;' as Finkielkraut put it during the controversy, "that
The �dom or?n:e makes this clear in its witty difference. reduces the Jew to Judaism, the Moslem to Islam, the black
Ho�ats, the Idionc progressive of Madame Bov critique of to Black is beautiful, which, in a general way, says every
CUSSion that relies on Sartre but that also r .ary. In a dis- . g
cnn. .que ematns a cutnn individual possesses no being but that of the species."8 A
�f�, Finkielkraut shows how the "rev critical cultural universalism, as Finkielkraut has suggested
progresstve thinker cancels the particularity olutionary,"
would save. By eIevatmg .
of the Other he elsewhere, makes critical use of universal values to criticize
.
th �rogr�Ive . crea dif e
f ren ce into a "uni versal" value, the limitations of religious, national, ethnic, or racial iden­
le:gmg clatm of the Other. Liberal patr
tes a new dogma, canceling the chal - tity. It is this tension between universal and particular forms
shows, cancels the cultural particularit ona ge, Fin kiel krau t of cultural identity that marks this book's essays and the
( scious1y, achievmg the avowed progray f the Other uncon-
thr ·
0 critique of liberalism they provide. "Culture;' as Finkiel­
kraut's full definition put it in his prize-acceptance speech,
ough more "benevolent" means. m of the conservative
Finkielkraut, however, also ffers strid "and perhaps even European culture;' consists of �a� which
support for culntrai differenceothat ent criticism of any expresses "the life of a people, group, or collecnVIty, but
dams
ur: _ _,yromt·sed by the libe. ral limi ts the uru·"ersal firee­
•·
which escapes the limits of collective being."9
,..,.. z.rUQffl
tradition. "The Other.'" The "Love" for Finkielkraut thus becomes a critical concept
. e, of LirPe argues' «Is· not freed by granting him a
uruqu that splits the camps in the contemporary culture wars that
even a presti.,;ous essence." This.
o-
have taken sides across this divide. The Wudom oflqpe bears
Philosophically on U ' position relies
vinas whose Phenomeno
'
argues powerfully against reduc· logical ethics no resemblance to the implicit ethnocentrism of William
·
n>age) f the Other an .
"face" (..,;· 0
mg th e Irre duc .
ibly difef rent Bennett's The Book of VirtueS (1993): Finkielkraut's univer­
categorically abstract othemess. d Its ethi cal challen ge into a salism aims at fracturing the hold of cultural power ?ver �e
Here, Finkielkraut's oppo- individual, rather than endorsing adherence to dommant pt-
xiv XV
 Introduction by J?avid Suchoff
Introduction by David Suchoff
eties in �e's name. Love's wisdom, on the contrary, de­
European Jewish thought. 12 Finkielkraut studied intensively
�ends agamst the Other's premature absorption into
major­ withUvinas; readers interested inUvinas's Jewish sources,
tty culture, cautioning agains
. t submerging the Other's
ethical demands in universa and Finkielkraut as a "disciple" of their teachings, will ben­
l schemes of progress or cult
ural efit from Judith Friedlander's work, which provides a superb
norms. This critical universa
lism, hostile to the idea of
cul­ introduction to Uvinas as a whole. IJ
�
tural assimilatio , has attr
acted its critics on the left
, particu­ But the idea of Finkielkraut's "discipleship" needs to be
larly where Jewtsh cultural
sources and experience con
ute to multicultural tho trib­ qualified by an important difference between the two think­
ught. Paul Gilroy, for inst
ance fears ers. The signal contribution of The Wtsdom oflove is to bring
�
that
� �
as's comments on Jewish
authenn sp . city for
suffering claim too uch
Jewish culture, at the
� Uvinas's concept of the Other-and the Jewish sources that
expense of sustain it-into critical tension with the larger contemporary
other mmonty cultur
es, especially where the
Holocaust is debate on multiculturalism.Uvinas, by contrast, as Jill Rob­
concerned. Io Finkielkra
ut's use ofUvinas adh
eres neither to bins and others have pointed out, has taken great pains to
the easy universalism
of American neoconserv
atives nor to separate his work on Jewish material from his central phil­
those sections of the
cultural left critical
to cui� difference. The difficult
of Jewish claims
y one has placing Finkiel­
osophic concerns. I+ His contributions in both areas have

�
kra t spnngs from
the novelty of his
been considerable.Uvinas wrote the first major philosophic
use of Uvinas and treatment of Husser! , crucial to the development of Sartre's
Jewtsh sources wit
hin the multicultural
debate. thought, and authored two landmark philosophic works,
Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence and Totality and In­
A JEWI SH P
OSI TION IN
THE M ULTIC
ULT
finity, "a bracing tract on the open-endedness of human pos­
URAL DEBATE I
Finkielkraut's diffe sibility:' in George Steiner's words, and a powerful argu­
rential model of .
"·
bmmg .
a COmmttment to
cult ural 1"denttty-com- ment for the utopian ineffaceability of cultural difference. Is
universal values kep
check by the clai t in skeptical His essays on Jewish cultural and political questions, col­
ms of cultural A:cr ·
u.�.uerence -IS
contempo
� · ·
� �
not the only lected in the volume Difficult Liberty, and his explications of

0���vmas.m
posttton t de
nd on Jewish sources
era!, and E , in gen- the Talmud, a yearly event in France, have influenced the
parti�ar. Jacques
development Derrida's study and renewal of Jewish intellectual life in France and

m
� cnon, which argu
es for the inef-
m
faceability ofA:cr beyond. Still, the separation remains. While scholars appre­
UJ.llerence t-- v+>Ud.l.
·
""'• ·-• ...erms, was als .
dialogue � th the ethical
theory for mulated
o formed ciate the connections betweenUvinas's philosophical oeUPre
which stoves by Uvinas, and his grounding in classics of central European Jewish
to preserve th
Other from fals infinite possibilities thought like Franz Rosenzweig'sStarofRedemption-a work
of the
.
vmas
, . . �
e totalizatton.
The double S tru crucial to Walter Benjamin as well-Uvinas himself has held
s work reflects cture ofU-
this dual COmm.
of Jewish partic ttment to preservation the two universes of discourse apart.
ularity Wi. thin
Wi .
the larger cult ure
Steeped in th of the West. The Wisdom of love, by contrast, brings the problems of
e estern philosop
also an exposito hical tradition, .
r and renewer Uvm " as IS multicultural identity into direct and critical contact with the
of the tradition
of Central Jewish historical experience of difference in the West. A cru-
xvi
XVll
 Introduction by David Suchoff Introduction by David Suchoff
cial case in point is Finkielkraut's use of the Dreyfus affair. '6 the culture we prize as "ours." The liberalism that sees society
Today, as Finkielkraut went to hyperbolic lengths to point at fault for all social ills must be corrected, Finkielkraut ar­
out in The Defeat of the Mind, thinkers on the cultural left gues, not to abolish concern for the other as crippling "wel­
value difference above all as a criterion for cultural authen­ fare" but to assure that the culturally different retain their
ticity and validity. Historically, however, defining a citizen cultural specificity and individual agency within the public
as culturally different was a position that belonged to the sphere.
right. Finkielkraut discusses ''The Ethnic Nose" to remind Like Uvinas, Finkielkraut reads Jewish historical experi­
us that French conservatives like Barres projected Dreyfus ence and culture for its universal contributions to our public
as a cultural foreigner in order to ground their right-wing culture, breaking with the tradition of Jewish assimilation.
sense that the cultural center possessed an organic validity. Yet The Wisdom ofLove envisions that public sphere outside
Freedom, Finkielkraut reminds us, consists in the right to the sphere of traditional religion. Finkielkraut criticizes lib­
assert one's cultural difference, as well as one's identit with eral humanism, however, for abandoning the ethical tradi­
y
the dominant culture, and asks us to balance today's tion of religion, thereby robbing the Other of the individual
"slogans
celebrating difference; which remains part specificity that makes action possible. Enlightenment hu­
of multicultur­
alism's claim to cultural justice, with the emanc manism, Finkielkraut argues, separated man from religion,
ipatory ideal
of liberal citizenship in the West, whose only to place the individual under the spell of the social.
1��
ideals refused to
the individual within the bounds cast by Uvinas, as The Wisdom ofLove expounds him, argues once
race and eth­
rucity.'7 again for individual ethical autonomy, in a reading of the
T he Dreyfus case and its imprisoning Jewish tradition that brings it closer to what is normally
figuration ofJewish
ethnicity allow Finkielkraut to offer understood as atheism. It is not God who speaks in Uvinas
a larger analysis of ha­
tred, ever more pertinent as liberal but the face of the Other, which demands justice and rec­
political sentiment in Eu­
�
ro and the United States turns
increasingly hostile to im­ ognition. Finkielkraut uses Uvinas to trace the ground be­
Illlgrant Others. Hatred of the Othe tween a liberalism, or Marxism, that collapses the Other into
r, Finkielkraut show s us,
results not so much from our the social and thus silences cultural agency and specificity of
rejection of difference but
from our recognition of the the individual, and a respect for the Other that is grounded
Other's identity with us and
� �
from ur r ection of the call
for universal justice that pre­ in religious thought but that refuses to deifY, or reif)r, the
�
s nts Itself m culturally spec
ific forms. Talk-show host Rush ethical demand. Much ofJudaism, Finkielkraut reminds us,
Limbaugh, who decries libe
ral compassion with hateful ve­ is loath to speak of the Supreme Being, since such talk-like
hemence, makes the sam
e point: rejection of the Oth the liberalism he decries-might universalize the ethical de­
er re­
s�� � n t from contempt for dif
ference but fear of the human mand to know the Other, a universal demand that can only
similanty that obligates
us to those who retain the be addressed in concrete, specific instances in the world.
ir differ­
e�ce. Attacks on multicu
lturalism also fit the pat Finkielkraut's analysis of passion's wisdom suggests that
tern Fin­
kielkraut sketches here:
the Other is hated for his
identity to the same messianic hope inheres in the difference and frus-

xviii XIX
 Introduction by David Suchoff Introduction by David Suchoff
tration that define romantic love. For Uvinas, the insight THE ETHICS OF RECOG N ITION: THE FACE

offered by passionate love is that its course never did run

The Wisdom of Love therefore rejects the alternatives in the
true because the recognition of the loved object's difference
multicultural debate that have been defined by the cultural
lies close to the wisdom of love. One does not love the image
right. As Charles Taylor reminds us, there "must be s ��e­
of the lover-the lover's beauty or any representation of it­
thing midway between the inauthentic and homogeruzmg
but the "face," whose gestures command our passionate and
demand for recognition and equal worth, on the one hand,
moral attention but also resist being fixed as an essence.
and the self-immurement in ethnocentric standards, on the
What is loved in the lover defies representation for just this
other."'• For Finkielkraut, the image of that position be­
reason, Finkielkraut argues, showing us that the idea of rep­
tween homogenized equality and nostalgic ethnic unity is
resentation and the actuality of love, which loves precisely
what Uvinas calls "the ethical relation, the face to face.'""
what cannot be fixed, are at odds: "Passion silences every­
What Uvinas analyzes as the face-to-face encounter be �een
thing adjectival." Modem skepticism, on the other hand,
The
self and Other stands behind the critical project that ts
seeks to disenchant the frustrations of love, discovering de­
Wisdom ofLove. Marked with an ineradicable specificity that
sire once more in the lover's persistence and masochism as
totalitarian rage seeks to cancel, the face of the Other is for
the secret telos of every lover on a fruitless quest.
Finkielkraut also the universal call to justice that cannot be
The Wisdom ofLove reclaims that skepticism for modernity,
evaded, and a particularity that serves as a source of national
without sacrificing its religious sources. Finkielkraut's work
and individual passions. The encounter between these alter­
makes a case for a love that belies any fusional model of .
natives and the choices they have asked us to make m the
passion, and heaves closer to the Jewish tradition in which
only respect for Others-not absorption or negation of
twenti � century, are the subject of this work. �s is a �k
that reminds us in many different ways that the rmposstble
them when they reject our embrace-can redeem the world
demand to recognize difference in our own terms and pas­
for all. The Jewish position in multiculturalism, for Finkiel­
sions, without canceling it, is both the wisdom of love and
kraut, is a position that belongs to the Enlightenment tra­
the ethical demand itsel£
dition that seeks "equal rights" but demands a recogn on
iti
of and respect for difference, admiring a passion that seeks
to attain its social, or personal, object while refusin
g to can­
cel the Otherness of passion's call. This "Jewish"
position in
multiculturalism is thus also a universalist one;
Like Walter
Benjamin's belief in an Ursprache or origin
al language, it
grounds the right to difference in the origin
al unity that
allows us to understand one another.
Such a unity sees the
encounter with the "foreign" as the messi
anic hope that such
unity might one day be regained,
while difference is pre­
served. 18

XX xxi
 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jennifer Kelley for her expert bib­

liographic help with this translation, and Colby College for
making the Hume Center available as a research site. We are
also grateful to Jon Klancher, Willi Goetschel, Stephan
Dowden, and Doris Sommer for helpful, critical readings of
the introduction. Finally, we would like to express our ap­
preciation to Karen and Dorota for their continued support.

xxiii
' �- :

Preface

In many languages there is a word that signifies both charity

and greed, generosity and avarice, the act of giving and of
taking: that word is love. In this single expression, a being's
ardent desire for all that would fulfill it merges with absolute
self-denial and becomes one. Both the heights of self-interest
and our deepest concern for the Other bring us to speak of
love.
But who believes in selflessness these days? Who still ac­
cepts benevolent behavior as legal tender? Since the dawn
of modem times, every genealogy of morality traces altru­
ism's roots back to greed and demystifies the origins of noble
action as acquisitive desire. Any shedding of the self will
reveal some debt to the self; there is no beneficence without
compensation, no generosity without its underlying, sym­
bolic gratifications, no offering, finally, that does not betray
the imperialistic need to act upon and possess the Other.
Giving is always predatory, our acts always lucrative. Such
thoughts immediately spring to mind; always on the look­
out, we seek only to unmask the ever-present reality of ego­
centrism lurking behind devotion's facade. As humans, we
are stripped of the capacity to give. Relieved of religious or
moral scruples and committed to the facts alone, positivist
thinking retains no trace of love beyond the need to appro­
priate; only normative thinking values disinterestedness over
universal voracity, the law of every man for himself: love of
his fellow man defines man as he should be, or as he one
day will be, when History has cleaned the slate of his op­
pressive past.
While our need for insight has opened this divide, it is by

XXV
 Preface

no means certain that relegating love of our fellow man to

an ideal sphere gives us better purchase on the real. On the
The Wisdom of Love
contrary: perhaps we truly need archaic concepts and a dif­
ferent storyline to understand our fundamental relationship
to others, a narrative that grasps the bond of love as fully as
it does the hatred of the other man.

:xxvi
 I

The Encounter with the Other

THE TRAGEDY OF O B LOMOV

Shortly after the Liberation, Jean Wahl founded the College

Philosophique in Paris on the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte­
Genevieve. Now forgotten, this institution was for several
years the vital center of French intellectual life. It was there
that lectures for the general public, new research, and daring
new avenues of thought could be sampled-ideas that did
not fit the mold of the universities or the major journals,
ever more absorbed in fighting the major intellectual battles
of the day.
The College Philosophique is best described as an island
preserved from every sort of conformity, an enclave at once
removed from a nascent political tyranny and liberated from
the cowardice of a sleepy philosophical tradition. Intellectual
experimentation could be pursued without compromise,
without inhibitions, and at times recklessly, answering only
.
to itsel£
The general climate of the institute was marked by uni­
versal openness and a curiosity that knew no bounds. No
topic, nothing, however trivial or subaltern it might appear,
fell outside philosophy's field of investigation. There were
no more privileged or isolated areas of thought; a priori
philosophical truths were put aside: the search for meaning
was followed wherever it led. Fundamental information was
not immediately winnowed from the insignificant: tradi­
tional distinctions were called into question. Suspending its
former criteria, philosophy compromised itself, debased itself,
visited areas of existence it had never before acknowledged:

I
 The Encounter with the Other
thought was allowed to wander in quotidian domains pre­
viously regarded as unworthy of its curiosity. The philos­
opher felt liberated: he was no longer that serious man,
imprisoned by a rigid conception of what is and is not im­
portant, condemned to a life sentence of the great questions.
He was reconciled with daily life, and all subjects drew his
attention, especially those he had not previously been able
to investigate without tumbling from his pedestal.
How can we explain this sudden bulimia? By the almost
.
smmltaneous discovery of Hegel, Husser!, and Heidegger.
After them, there was no way philosophy could blithely re­
spond to the question "What am I?" with the Cartesian re­
sponse "' am a thinking being?" Human reality could no
longer be defined exclusively as reason or understanding,
but by two fundamental plots: the encounter with the other
and the relation to being. Plots, and not knowledge, for
knowledge offers no special access to being or to others.
Such access is offered, on the contrary, by phenomena that
precede reflection, impalpable discomforts, states of being
long h�ld to be blind or merely derivative, symptoms of
�o�eth ing else. Immense upheaval: the split between "sub­
Jecnve" and "obie
1 ctive" - between the world as we perceive
•
tt, and what is only a manifestation of ourselv
es-became
hazy. ?Itimate questions were now rooted
in run-of-the-mill
expenence, and facts believed to be of
pureIy psychic st"gnif-
. .
tcance displa yed their revelatory power. Anxiety, for in-
stance, was no longer a character ·
. tratt or a momentary lapse
�to the irrational, but a direct and
irreducible route to noth­
mgness.
While Freudianism extended the
psychologt· cal method to
all of human expenence,
· Phenomenology (since that is the
. his tenan ts-in a word
�:e of .this method) revealed, in contrary fashio
n, the
. phystcal drama played out in the
banalities of life. Pie­
betan concerns thus open
ed up. to reveal aristocratic prob-
2 3
The Encounter with the Other
to
!ems of thought. As Uvinas put it in his introduction
Time and the Other, a collectio n of lectures delivere d at the
College Philosophique, "The words designating what peo­
ple were always concerned with, without daring to imagine
it in a speculative discourse, took the rank of categories.m
At the time, the work of Emmanuel Uvinas was known
and appreciated by only a group of specialists: his words
were heard at the College Philosophique but found little
echo in the great postwar debates. It would take more than
thirty yearsfor this subtle and demanding philosopher to
find an audience beyond philosophy's technicians, and for
his work to finally resonate in intellectual life. The intellec­
tual world, whether sure of the course history would take
or immersed in revolutionary urgency-when it was not ig­
noring the existence ofUvinas's thought entirely-had long
considered such meditations as outmoded, lacking contempo
­
rary significance or concern for our fellow men. Marxis m's
decline has eliminated this obstacle: today Uvinas is being
his
discovered and appreciated not only for the gravity of
ethical concern but even more for the unexpe cted charm
e
with which his novelistic themes have enlivened the auster
discourse of philosophy.
ques­
What is existence?Uvinas responds to this majestic
tion with an inconsequen tial drama , the very drama whose
s char­
affiiction Oblomov must bear. Oblomov, that famou
y­
from a comm on malad
acter of Russian literature, suffers
e of whole sale
laziness-that he carries to the radical extrem
aspires
revulsion toward any kind of activity whatsoever. He
his ideal.
to a�solute tranquility, and he can never quite reach
income of
Even his slothful life as a landlord, living off the
the man­
his lands, is far too consuming. He has to supervise
, live.
agement of his domain, visit
But his monumental laziness milit ates against any such con­
from anim ation into
cessions. So he shuts himself in, flees
 . ..
- �--·- -�- = ··--� �--��----�-�--- --. --- - .. ,_::
_ ..

The Encounter with the Other

The Encounter with the Other
recoil in the face of existence, dragging our feet, wishing we
apathy, even refuses to allow the light of day to penetrate
could call time-out, but escape is impossible: man is stuck
the four walls of his room. No such luck! There is always
with being.
too much going on for Oblomov, too much commotion and
hubbub in his inaction. Even if he were to stop opening his
mail, delegate the work of administering his property to oth­ FEAR IN THE DARK
ers, chase off the last seekers of favor, spend his life in bed,
break every connection with the outside world once and for In order to grasp this problem, two contradictory hin­

all in order to slip into absolute indolence, undisturbed tor­
por-this work, this weight, this duty, this inescapable un­
dertaking would still remain Oblomov's: existence. There is
no such thing as going on strike against being. Oblomov
hurdles these obstacles to his repose only to hurl himself
against this insurmountable stumbling block. His lazy sighs
drances must be overcome: a sarcasm mixed with fear and
the self-assurance that results from an inferiority complex.
Philosophy provokes such an ambivalent response in the ed­
ucated reader-once known as the honest man-and scares
him away. A skeptic, he has only a limited confidence in
those nebulous philosophic constructions that allow no ves­

are to no avail. tige of external reality within their bounds, in those systems

�o exis� as Uvinas tells us in his lectures at the College that disembody life at the very moment their proffered ex­
Philosophique, is a burden and not a gift. The self is bound planation claims to lay it bare. It bothers him to see human
act of
to itself, constantly encumbered with and mired in itsel£ experience set off in abstruse texts, transformed, in an
Existence imposes its terms with all the force of a contract high impudence, into an esoteric domain to be worked on
etched in stone. One is not: one is onesel£ The phrase echoes solely by a select group of specialists. The layperson cannot
Sartre's �o ulation in The Age of Reason: "to exist is just forgive philosophers for appropriating everyone's problems,
�
that, to for professionalizing them, obscuring them, and finally
�bibe o�es�lf without being thirsty." l
Such Is the obligation that inspires Oblomov's "impotent handing them back in a language that excludes the genera
·
andJ·oyless a¥ers·Ion."3 His Iazmess public.
stands as an a priori pro-
. But this mocking reader is also an intimidated reader: re­
t�t agamst the burden of existence. Behind
the ''I must do
this" overwhelming him each morning with its jecting speculative abstraction in favor of common sense, he
tiresome de­
mao�, Oblomov discovers an "' must be" at the same time feels too limited, too stubbornly down-to­
that is all the
more mexorable and discouraging. For this earth to be permitted entrance to these discussions of the
slothful figure is
not the possessor of a tragic flaw, nor initiated. Resigning himself to the sorrowful fact that
the victim of a past
trauma, nor the representative of a class thought has its princes, that he is not gifted with the knack
beset by impotence
�ut a being who unsuccessfully refuses the for pure thought, he gives up, sensing his inadequacy. If he
condition of be�
mg. More than a symbol of SOCiety . . . avoids or skirts philosophy, he does so piously, in a melan­
· or sign of neurosis, his
!eth:rrgy.
IS an ontological state. In flight from every kind of choly spirit of deference and resignation: he is convinced the
mtngue, �ted for grand traged task is above him Generally speaking, he is less frightened
.
ies, Oblomov bears wit­
ness to this fundamental trage . by liberal education as a whole than he is by this peremptory
dy: m f:angue. or atony, we

4 5
 The Encounter with the Other The Encounter with the Other
tranquility in an uproar, its nothingness inhabited by scat­
and sovereign discipline that confronts the essential without
mediation. Today 's prevailing impression of the philosoph­ tered rustling sounds and inexplicable explosions: nothing

ical pursuit sees it as both regal and ridiculous: philosophy is there except being in general, the inevitable murmur of

appears before us as the premier field of intellectual inquiry

and as illusion at its worst, as both the gramma r of thought
and as absolute verbal vanity. m will (isn't this really nit­
picking?) and humility (who am I to ascend that summit?)
there is. There is, always, even when there is not anything:
this is what the child discovers. What emerges is a fear, not
of the monstrous shapes or fantastic images that appear un­
der cover of darkness, but the fear of being absorbed by this

unite to divide philosophy from living, breathing culture. shapeless existence. Childish fright unmasks existence

Phenomenology, we know, has failed to heal this breach. amidst its completely impersonal, continuous aspect. It

True, phenomenology has shown that we comprehend the never stops. What never stops? T he event of being.

world not by knowledge but through our concerns, through What is fearful in the silence of night is not death but

adventures and even frivolous undertakings, and that being. We are less terrified by existence coming to an end

"things small" offer access to the "great?' All this demon­ than by this incessant existence enveloping us. There is no
strates a marked preference for minutiae, but to no avail: it intermission in this concert, not the slightest break in the
is a lost ause, and these arguments remain powerless. If the seamless continuity of being. T hus while the child in the
�
dark undergoes a Heideggerian experience, he simulta­
��rd betng appears in the middle of a text, most readers drop
It Immediately, moved by a mixture of disdain and terror. neously sets himself apart from such philosophical terms. In
�� as is indebted, h wever, to that grand Heideggerian
�
his anguish, no revelation of the void takes place: fearful, he
distinction between bemg and existence-between that discovers only its impossibility. At the heart of utter silence,
which exists (individual, species, collectivity) and the act or when daily activities are set aside and everythiilg sleeps
.
ev n of eXIStence -for his success in bringing the most around him, an almost inaudible lapping sound rises up in
� �
childish and least speculative experience of all back to life: place of the void, as an atmosphere and a material sensation.
th f Existence has not been abolished. A silly fear? What is im­
� ea: a child experiences when alone at night. Uvinas
brmgs It back to life; he does not interpret it psycho gically. portant in this feeling results, perhaps, from an experience
lo
The "new philosophical shudder;'• introduced more decisive than our anxiety before the void: the horror
by the author
of Being and Time, made it possible to go of being.
beyond the moth­
er's expl:mation of this scene: when At dawn, each thing rediscovers its allotted space; every
the child cannot sleep
and all lights are out, he starts listeni object reclaims its name. Being veils itself, scattering into
ng to the night's im­
� �
p pable w per. What he appreh
ends, in all its purity, is different realities. Even the self remrns to its identity. It rises,
existence Without any eXIstmg
· · . . emerging from indeterminacy, and assumes, side by side
ennty: bemg's anonymous
form. . with others, a being that is once again its own. Light per­
All is silence in the room,. things seem to sonifies the world once more, dispelling the nightmare of
rerum to the
VOl"d and )'et, the rum
• . ble ear hears the there is. But the victory is incomplete: to exist means to
' a strange clamor in the
. ess. Nothing
stilln is there, but the emptiness is thick, like suspend being's anonymity, to fashion one's own domain

6 7
 The Encounter with the Other
The Encounter with the Other
within existence, a universe of
one's own-which we call of being onesel£ It is not the other that imposes original
identity-but at the same time to
be unable to flee or to
avoid existence. Existence mean
s that one remains, by virtue
servti ude, but being: our first master is the self that enrum­
bers and unceasingly doubles the ego. The initial constraint
il
of selfhood's bonds, stuck in the
snare of being. Sartre says­ by which consciousness discovers itself bound is the bond
and here he is very close to Uvin
as-that existence is a bur­
� en that man cannot set aside
. This weight, this impossibil­
of identity itsel£ Deeper and more determining, perhaps,
than the need to be one's self, to find oneself, to purge the
Ity of escape, this continual prese
nce of the self to the self is self of the taint of the foreign, is the dream of separation
the tribute every one of us
pays the universality of the there from the self, of escaping identity's fated return.
is. � d this, as we have seen, is the
origin of Oblomov's
lassttude. For beyond their
circumstantial causes, laziness
�
an Weariness are metaphys
ical pouts, moments when the THE FACE

extstent begins to dislike

the existence in which he feels per­
manently trapped. He
In 1947, Uvinas published Existence and Existents, with a
realizes that the pose he assumes is book jacket that read: "Here anxiety is not the question?' In
not salvation but a new
encumbrance: an equally provocative fashion, the crucial question raised
The I always has onefoot caug by this book's grand analyses of social relations, of our en­
ht in its awn existence. Outside in
face of everything, it is inside counter with other men, does not turn on the notion of
of itself, tied to itself. It is forever
bound to the existence struggle. Provocative indeed, for along with Heidegger's
which it has taken up. This impossibility
�orthe ego to not be a selfconsti
tutes the underlying tragic element concept of anxiety, Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic-the war
m the ego, the fact tha of consciousnesses-dominated the intellectual life of the
t it is riveted to its awn bein
g. s
time. To illustrate the foundational nature of such struggle,
A tragedy of captivity
within being, not of anxiety in the Sartre chooses the most peaceful and insignificant situation
face of the void. A
tragedy of the bond
�
n t of the power tha
. t foreign force exerts
of the self to itself, for his example:

�
tutttv philosophy
sees liberty (the pos
upon it. Our in­
session of sel f) as the
I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and along
oppostte of alienatton
· . the edge of that lawn there are benches. A man passes by those
(supeno· nty or domination by the
other) BY intutttve
· · · phi·losop benches.6
hy I mean the most common-
sense m rality (bei
? ng one's own mas
ter) as well as modem The setting is neutral, suspense nonexistent. It is a scene
conceptions of libe
ration: both claim
� �
om f r the sub
ject and seek to
a permanent anton­
assure a full field for its
of absolute calm, with nothing going on. No relationship

realizatton and connects me with this unknown man walking in the same
to emanetpa· te the mdi . .
· vtdual from those ex- garden as I. What strikes me, what remains unavoidable, is
ternal forces in
. whose thrall he rem
. · . But lassitude wear-
ams the very fact of others. And this fact is a violent one. �th
mess, or tnso . '
mnia- conditton
s too often neglected-find a single glance, the gentle stroller banishes me from paradise,
little comfort in
·
this traditton
· ,m . this modernity: such feel-
mgs discover the annou nces my downfall. I am seen, and that is all it takes to
deepest kind of
alienation in the boredom change my world. I was pure freedom, a consciousness out-
8 9
 ll1j
!l
11
'I
i;

ll The Encounter with the Other

The Encounter with the Other
It
side any particular image, "a trans
ll parency without memory is not simple stroking; it is a shaping. In caressing the Other,
� �
or consequence"; then, I find that
r I have suddenly become I bring about the birth of her flesh, under my fingers. The
l' someone in particular. Observed,
1 examined, measured, or caress is the ensemble of those rituals which incarnate the
il even just perceived by a foreig
Jl n gaze, I possess a nature I Other;"9 The exquisite meeting of skin? Actually, it is a clever
!I cannot challenge, one that does
not belong to me. My being way of ambushing the other, who, by renouncing his gaze
!! is externalized, wrapped up in the being
'l of another. In other
li and his freedom, becomes a docile presence. The caress is
words, this entry of others
:1 into my surroundings produces an incitement to passivity, an attempt to force the desired

:j
a double malaise: his gaze
reduces me to the status of an state of being back into the other's flesh, so that there is no
object, an object over which
�
l
I have no control since it is "for escape, so that I no longer have to live under the othe s
another." I am mired and disp
ossessed, fallen and alienated: gaze However tender or fervent it may be, the caress IS
:I the simple fact of being .
seen leaves me frozen, trapped in
motivated by a desire to render the Other innocuous, ­ �
il
,,
and robbed of mysel£ Und
this or that, with no hol
er the gaze of the other I become armed, objectified, enclosed, to keep the Other from bemg
ij d over this petrified reality.
able to transcend me in every way, through sheer presence

'II th� Other is for me simultane

betngfrom me and the one
ously the one who has stolen my
who causes ((there to b�1 a being which
of being. lln insidious way for me to take revenge, to end
my exposure, dependence, and possession, and, instead, to
l is my being.
'I 7 finally be the boss. Through the caress, I freeze and enervate
'I
the one whose gaze entrapped me in my being. There are
llnd so, Just
. bY looking
. at me, the other gains the upper certainly no truces when the battle of consciousnesses is
hand. Sartre describe
d all forms of desire- f
rom sadistic vi­ joined The soldier on leave remains a combatant: his rest
olence to the swe .
etness of sentimental
love- as so many and relaxation a ruse of war.
tncks
. , so many ruses of war the
subject deploys to free him- What interests Uvinas, like Sartre, is the classic situation
self from this snare.
Confranted by others who posse me where we are not alone. And faithful to Hegel's example, he
�
be use they see me
as I will never see myself
ss

proJect of recoverin
, I become "the locates the subject's origin in the intrigue tying him to the
g my being.'' s
� e relation with the
other, not reflecti
other. Yet his version of this plot is unique, neither an un­

dation of self-con
on, is the foun- folding conflict nor, for that matter, an idyllic scene. To de­
sciousness. Human
fore It
expen. ence IS . be-
. social scribe the encounter with the Other, Uvinas challenges the
. IS. rational Soci"al
.
which all turns
·
and bellicase. LUe
T :c: •IS a nove .
Im pastoral and conflictual models alike. In short order he s­
:
�
on conflict: this is
Hegel's troublesome truth. patches both the foolishness of unambiguous reoprocity
E rythin� IS
ve • · combat, eve
n the sweetest mome and the pitiless image of the struggle for recognition. With­
those Idyllic gestu nts, when
caressmg.
res seem a ce1ebran
melody of transpar
.on of peace' even the out surrendering in any way to the schmaltzy lures f by­ ?
ent souls, even the me . gone utopias, without falling for an affected nostalgta that
two bodies ltmg of
. mto
. one Phenomena
·
.
merciless severity
I .
ogtc al desc npn
. .on uses optimistically awaits the return of brotherhood's golden age,
to expose the tap
estry of aggression and Uvinas refuses to grant to war the privileged status of an
rnachinanon . s behind the
innocence of the .
caress. ''The caress original state. At a time when hardheaded msig . ht m. both

IO
n
 The Encounter with the Other The Encounter with the Other
philosophy and politics seems to
the notion of conflict, here is
have been confused with
�
slips out of the forms he assumes, plays repre entation for
.
affirm : "It is by no means certain that,
a philosopher who dares to
the fool, and constantly opposes the gaze
in which I fix him.
at the beging nin ,
there was war?"o War is not
the original situation of the The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the UJe_a
encounter; nor is peace, we shou
ld add, if peace is defined ofthe other in me, we here nameface. This mode does not constSt
as hearts joined in spontaneo infiguring a theme under my gaze, in spreading itselfforth
as
us sympathy, "the happy en­
counter of brotherly souls,
who greet one another and con­ as a set ofqualitiesfonning an image. The face ofthe Other at
verse?"' The social relationsh
ip is "the miracle of moving each moment destroys and oveiflows the plastic image it leaves me,
out of oneselP,"' which only
afterward begins its alternation the idea existing to my own measure . . t.he adequate "de.a. 13
. t

between the poles of harm

ony and war. Before becoming
The face, or the narrow escape. Its detemtining charac­
the power that menaces
, attacks, or bewitches the self, the
teristic is resistance to definition, the way it never allows
other is the crucial force
that shatters the bond of self­
itself to be cornered by my most pointed questions or even
identity, that relieves,
�
itself d thus delivers
diverts- that liberates the self from
by my most penetrating gaze
The Other always is more than
.

the existent from the weight of its

own extstence. Before what I know of him, always escapes my grasp. This surplus,
it is gaze, the other is face.
this constant excess of the being that takes aim at the inten­
.
�
A face, ot a sketch, a
fleshed-out figure evoking disgust
tion that would fix him, goes by the name face. "To encoun­
or admiranon. A face
, not a text in which the sou
l's move­ ter a man is to be kept on alert by an enigma?"+
ments are inscribed
and held out for eventual
·
interpretation. The face is thus not the physical form we normally un­
"A work of ,,.,."
�., wntes u _,
vil.lery, "should always teach us that
we haven't previously derstand to be designated by this word but the resistance of
seen what we are seeing Uv
body of philosophic
?' inas's our fellow man to his own appearance, the way in which he

te� or to see it in a new

work teaches us � t to see the face bet­ absolves himself of his image, makes his presence felt as
way but to cease identifYing
With the claims of
the face something more than his shape alone, leaves nothing in my
vision. His work doe
s not awaken our hands but his skin, when I thought I had captured his truth.
�
drow perception
s, casting new ligh
t on a reality that we
grasp m merely This elusiveness and defeat are both beneficial. To move
utilitarian or mechanic
al terms, but instead beyond the self means a sacrifice of power because the Other
awakens us from
. percepnon · · 1£. Regardless of whether
Itse
such percepnon . refuses assimilation and does not become mine, because my
. IS aesthetic or discip
linary, whether it ap­ experiences do not represent inevitable steps toward a fated
� reaates the face as
a play of appearan
ces or as a richness of
Signs Whether It see
· ·
homecoming. The only thing in the world capable of truly
. ks a Sign or has
.
grace bestowed upon separating me from myself, the only thing that sends me on
��
It. Whether perc ·
. eptual passmn · Is · snrred by the countenance
secret. VISion sur adventures other than my own Odyssey, is the face of the
ely inltabits the face, ·
?
p s ould not lead
but this optical other. I approach the face; I do not absorb It: a wondrous
one astray: the face is .
that the tmage the single prey weakness' without which even the most extravagant life
-hungry hunter can
never catch. The eye al- would be as monotonous as a voyage firom the self to the
ways returns emp
ty-handed from the
face of the Other who self
'

12
13
 '

. 'i
1

1
The Encounter with the Other
P_ut on a good face. Do an abou
stratg�lt face: such expressions
t face. Save face. Keep a
highlight the two opposed
The Encounter with the Other

surface: a nakedness that resists everything attributed to it

and that no garment can clothe. The body's most inacces­
Il
l
�eatUngs the wordface carries

j
in everyday speech. Face des­ sible part, the face, is also its most vulnerable. Both tran­
Ignates both appearance-an
essence hidden and given away scendent and destitute, the face is so lofty that it escapes me, '
there the dissimulating trick
� s that prevent our gaze from while shedding its own malleable essence, and so weak that
reaching a being's truth-
and that truth itsel£ when the its weakness inhibits me when I gaze into its helpless eyes.
masks are finally tom away
. Between confession d perfor­ ':m Distinct, it exceeds my power. Unprotected, defenseless, it
�an�e, between facade and avowal,
what is peculiarly fas­ lays itself bare, making me ashatned of my cold composure.
cmatmg ab�ut the face is
the way it simultaneously offers The face resists me and calls upon me: I atn not a neutral
�d masks Itself as an object of kno
wledge, making it the observer but atn obligated by the face. Responsibility toward
smgular bodily site that
both reveals and conceals the soul. the Other precedes thought. The initial face-to-face encoun­
We make a face and invo
luntarily give a due to our most ter is ethical; the aesthetic is a secondary effect.
secret emotions· Wie pu
t on makeup to please or to rmsle . ad
�a�chful eyes, presenting The face calls out to me for help: at my mercy, exposed,
our face to the world like "an in­
VISible secret" (Sartre). infinitely fragile, and piercing as a broken cry. There is s�me­
We all hope to tame our faces, to use
thing imperious in its plea. I do not feel sorry for such misery
�
them as a weapon, to
hypnotize, or to construct an un­
reacha�le fro t; we because the face's demand that I come to its rescue is an act
� all try to hide our dirty dee beh
decepnve smile or ou
ds ind ofviolence. The face's humble nakedness not only claims my
. r disappointments beh
atr. The most adept
ind a jau nty solicitude as its due but also-as one might say, if the word
succeed; the rascal sou
reveal to the world
ls ofthe less gifted were not subject to immediate derision -demands my char­
the personal trauma they
strove to con­ ity. For my presence alone does not suffice when the O�er

;
ceal.
ut, as Uvinas tells rums his face toward me: he demands that I be therefor h:m
us, this opposition betwe
an ap�ce is en Being and not just with him.
.
� _
not the final word.
ts p�o to this dualis
�
The face's nakedness
m of exposure and con
Thus I atn not the one who determines whether I will be
at :erngmous bou cealment in egotistical or selfless: it is the face that, in its nakedness, �es
ndary zone where
The tace of the body and soul meet. me beyond self-interest. The Good comes to me from with­
. . Other Is · naked befiore It . .
thennc, mteresti 1s artificial or au- out, the ethical falls from above, and it is in spite of myself
ng or banal, seducnv .
· .
· IS either confess
It e or repu lsive ·
, before that my "own being turnS into being for anothe�·"'6
ional as if divulgmg . ulnm . •
opaque, like an . . ' . Its ate secret, or Love is not at our beck and call: that is superfioal Wisdom.
mdecipherable hier
bereft of Its . ·
oglyph: the face is naked The face of the Other makes me love's intimate or at least
most mn·mate or sali
ent features bevond lies as' makes indifference impossible. Of course, I can always look
well as truth, sep ' '
arated from its refle
.
as if Iacking ction in me, withdrawn, the other way; I can disobey or revolt against l�ve's de­
self-presence wn. �ue tac • _
Ience m whi.ch
·
· c. e IS the reality par excel- mands but it is never within my power to cease listenmg.
� bemg
" · not presented
IS
But this reality
outside my grasp ·
by its qualities."'s ili
To set e rigor of the law against the fervor oflove is there­
1s also an unprotected fore a futile affair. The face harries me, demands that I place
14
IS
 The Encounter with the Other The Encounter with the Other
:
society befo e the self, subordin
ates me to its weakness : in anescence. Though concrete and visible, such wrinkles spirit
.
short, It le�tsla:tes that I w
,_ .
ve tt . Th e tace
r. IS
. superior to me, the face away from my visual powers. By its weathering and
because It. -a
refuses to let itself be identified by the furrows gouged upon it, the face both evades me and
and is inferior to
me' because 1"t remams · '
at my mercy. But humility and commands me not to leave it alone. Precariously present, as
.
haughtiness are the two
SI"des of the supremacy it sustains if eaten away by an absence, my neighbor does not fully
of the domination it hold '
s over my being. consist of what I see: wrinkles let him evade the capturing
Thefina: tmpo
de
.
. ses ttself on me without my
gaze, carry him away, and absolve him of contact with my
being able to remain
-a to tts �ppeal, nor toforget- infact,
f life. And in this escape, the countenance asserts its force.
without my being able
to cease betng responsiblefor its Wrinkled skin beckons me and carts me off, summons and
misery. 17
abandons me, eludes me and endangers me in a way that
would not even encumber me if the face were not, in its very
WRINKLED SKI presence, about to disappear.
N
As everyone knows, "there are only young faces?' For
To age isgradually to retire
from what is old age, after all, but inevitable deterioration, the
the world ofappearances.
Goethe loss of distinctive traits, the ravages time wreaks upon be­
ings, leaving them unrecognizable in the end? Age, for us,
The face is not a land
"ghtfulscal pe. 1l0 scrutu. uze
. .
It, no matter how means the devastation of the face. Uvinas takes the opposite
patiently and ms
·
t y you take up the task, is already to point of view. Whatever its chronological age, he implies,
have missed . t, to h
�
face with w ch the
ave co fused the face
n
Other turns t0 me ·
with its effigy. "The the face is always old, not disfigured but defined by age. An
imperceptible hint of failure dims the fullness or grace of the
IS not reabsorbed in
a representation .
of the face'"s 0ne
·
.
most youthful profiles. The wrinkles that spoil the beauty of
exception eXIsts, never-
theless to this reso
' 1utely nonfigurative approach the face at the same time grant it that evasive and necessary
for once, sets asid . Uvinas,
e his procliVI. .ty for abstraction. reality that becomes my responsibility. Wrinkled skin: the
The other man comman Other is not the adversary of the self but rather the obliga­

�
ds throurgh hts. face whtch . .
in :
verythe form of b-at � ears, nak
ts not enclosed
ed, stripped of his shape, of his
tion conferred upon it.
presence t � mt,EJ t
.
� ll disg uise him as his own portrait
'·
wrinkled�ktn, t.he trace o"'
'J ttsel�'
· ':/J ar- · at each moment
m.rsence whicb
is a ran-at tnto de ' '
SHAME
· the hollow of . the
-at.h Wtth
return. 19
possibility of no The Talmud contains the following passage: A sage says to
his son, "What a poorly written document?' The son replies,
Wrinkled skin : it
is the only dis . . "I didn't write that, it was Judah the tailor." The father re­
only observable tmgwsh ing feature, the
.
the reader. But
mark that th
far from em ��osopher of the face allows
ymg the Other, this
sponds, "Don't slander him!" Another time, while reading
a chapter from the Psalms, the same sage exclaims, ''What a
material feature singular
only underscor
es once more the Other's ev- model of good writing! " "I didn't write it, it was Judah the

16 17
 The Encounter with the Other The Encounter with the Other
�
tailor, said the son. "Don't sland
er him! " the father again person, is truly "the nastiest word in the language;'"o We
cu � him off. And it is explained: one should never
say good talk about our neighbor for all sorts of good reasons but also
things about others, for that is
how we end up speaking ill to avoid responding to him. We heap predicates over the
of them.
nakednes11 of his face to avoid hearing his call. We categorize
A cursory reading of this story
teaches the moral that all him rather than respond to his summons: such is the essence
r:u
p se carries within itself
the seeds of its opposite. Man of calumny, and lies are nothing but an intensified version
bemg what he is, with envy reign
ing supreme over the com­ of this fundamental evasion.
plex of human passions, we
exalt the merits of another even Our sage, we can be sure, would chalk up today's gener­
while we delight at the thou
ght of those treacheries that will ous slogans celebrating difference-the new value placed on
s n cut him down to size.
� The more the other distinguishes ways of life or ethnic traits that were once spurned and dis­
himself, the more I resent him
for the admiration his exploits dained-as so much more calumny. True, there is nothing
force me to feel: he will have
to pay up later for the adulation worse than elevating one's own mode of being into the uni­
I h ve heaped upon his
� successes and talents. My words of versal norm and thereby denying the humanity of those
pr:use call out for vengeanc
e. And so prudence demands that whose customs are foreign to us or who sport a different
we suppress praise so
. as not to succumb later to the skin color. And cultural diversity must be ceaselessly de­
temp­
tattoo to malign.
fended against ethnocentric arrogance. This valorization of
This lesson in disillusion
ment, however, hardly exhausts difference, however, and the rejection of difference share a
the wealth of meanmg · m ·
the Talmudic tale. The sage re- common thread: the assigning of difference, the process of
sponds twi.ce to his son
. in exactly the same term mar confusing one's neighbor with his attributes. Considerable
s, king
an eqmvalent as we
7 :m
d sl der. Whether we
ll as a causal re1anon . between apology
bow before his craft or ridi
cule his
progress has been made in moving from the scorn or fear of
blacks to the formula "Black is beautiful"; but in both cases,
c um m ss, Judah
� � the tailor always reassu the countenance remains chained to its manifestations, sen­
mes his status as
descnpnvely qualified
. That is the fundamental violence of tenced to the uninterrupted expression of an unequivocal
the scene not the
' narne-calling or flatte .
nng terms that are message. Idolatry perpetuates slander.
deployed. To resp
ond to the most ofth If the Other is what he is, he ceases to be other. His ex­
. . anded compliment
teriority is annexed, and his commanding power is dissol:ed
WI·th a deCISIVe "D0 not s1ander', ts
. · to denounce the aggres-
SIVeness of this inn
ocent gesture: to spe to benefit his image. The Other is not set free by grantJ.ng
ak of a being is to
infli
Ifct upon . the
him treatment as a third him a unique, even prestigious essence: this frees you, not
person singular.
we were to follow . .
the Td.UUU
:-'- dic ffiJu
. netJ.on to the letter him. In short, a face that is defined by its difference is a face
we would no dou . '
bt be re duced to silence or to
. . language stripped of its otherness. It no longer accuses ; it no longer
of pure mvocan
on: to say "he" .a
speaking ill of so
would effceetJ.ve1y mean implores: it ceases to shame us. Through calumny, order has
� eone. But this .
. . . moral is not meant to be been restored.
applied ngtdly: It
stmply reminds us
·
be Just another
. that the Other can never Our difficulties before the Other, in effect, go deeper than
toptc, and that "h
e," pronoun of the non- our notions of him. Whether trUe or false, full of praise or
18 19
 The Encounter with the Other
The Encounter with the Other
malignity, such notions prob
ably originate in the selfsam
e being swallowed up and at the same time diffused into the
desire: to escape the fund
amental fact of moral chal
lenge. world, fomiing an unhappy but inseparable couple with the
"Out of shame, we confer
on the Other an unquesti
�
pr ence;' Sartre writes.
And Uvinas could certa
onable self, but also a being that remains for itself, sovereignly in­

� �
c aun to uch a formulati
on, which defines our prim
inly lay different to all else. This double mode of Being gives a nov­
ary so­ elesque flavor and ethical content to the face and the tangled
Cial expenence as one of
malaise. Yet the other, con
ceived of
by s a:rr
e as the gaze that freezes me
into objectivity, locking
web it weaves. By shaming the subjecr's devastating dyna­

� y rumble liberty up within

being, is described by Uvinas
mism and self-interested motives, the face commands: it at­

m terms of the face, the tains the power of an imperative. By turning the self from
countenance of the Oth
er that con­ itself, the face soothes and seduces: with its adventurous
tests my tranquil self-ass
ured right to Being.
�
m to a halt, petrifyin
g my spontaneity, is not
What brings attraction, the face is "a fine risk to be run?"'

,I
!
fying gaze of the Other
but his isolation, naked
the objecti­

� ess. What suddenly ma

and defense­

I
;I
IS not the alienation of
kes me flush, what em
my liberty but my libe
barrasses me,
THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE

rty itself: it is Uvinas's originality consists not so much in his emphasis

not that I feel attacke
d but that I am the atta
cker. My neigh­
�
bor's f ce ac �
es me of egotistically hol
ding on to Being,
on morality, in the midst of a political century, as in his
of tossmg aside any transposition ofmorality into a new schema. He locates Good
consideration for all
that is not me. The
�
timidi that result
s is the moral uneas
iness welling up in
not at the end, in the Utopian horizon, the glorious future
me. This shame bri of historical fulfillment, but at the beginning, in the age-old
ngs us neither to open
conflict nor to the
· experience of the encounter with Others. Not struggle but
death Struggle of tw ·
o consc10usnesses but
awareness of my to scruples: the ethics becomes the fundamental meaning of Being for oth­
natural injustice.
. In this way, the face ers. The face-to-face encounter with the other man evokes
ofthe Other proves
It frees the self fro doubly beneficial : responsibility rather than conflict. The face calls to me as if
m self-concern and
defla
and � gance. Uvinas gives
tes its smugness
the simple words "I
I were involved with it in a way that precedes any self­
the tragic meanin am" either confrontation. "The ethical relation is anterior to the op­
. · nso
g ofImp · nment or the triu
�
of a t� force.
Boredom and imp
mphant sense
erialism. Fatality and sav-
position of freedoms, the war which, in Hegel's vie , in­ �
age VItality. "The . augurates History?"3 This does not mean that peace reigned
· encham · ment to Itself, wh
focates m . . ere the ego suf- before war, but that ethical violence precedes the contest be­
. Itsel f."u th e selfh0!ding fast to
� .
�
whi the ego
'
-comprehending
Being, a condition tween consciousnesses and the adversarial relation. The
the foolishness of its de­
�
Sire r Its prefe
rence for the
wisdom of self-inter
Good seizes me, holding on without my consent. It chooses
�
re ams conc m
�
ed with itself alon
est-still me before I have chosen it: I can disobey, but I cannot escape
� nence of alienatio
n, is both a con
e. B eing, that orig
inal ex­ it. Evil is incapable of eradicating shame, of breaking with
nveted to onesel
f and a state
of origm
dition in which one is
. �
or repudiating subjection to the face of th ?�e . "E � �
one charges mto . ' al VIoIence m which
. manifests its sinfulness, that is to say responsibility m spite
the world wit
hout hesitation.
Being means of its own refusal of responsibilities. Neither next to, nor
20
21
 � -- -
�- ----�-----

The Encounter with the Other The Encounter with the Other
facing Good, but in second place, underneath, lower than In one of his finest short tales, Henry James tells the story
Good." 24 of the life, or rather the nonlife, of John Marcher, a man
What is loving your neighbor? One aspect of subjectivity, haunted by the strange feeling of having been chosen to live
a modality of the human condition. Not a program but a out an extraordinary something, a something he knows
drama; not a quality but a matter of fate. Under the influ­ nothing about except that it will appear without notice,
ence of the face, goodness approaches the subject like deliv­ turning his world upside down: "Something or other lay in
erance or destiny. Morality does not spring from the active wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months
"I want to;' where the virtuous outlook is traditionally and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle?"'7
rooted: distinct from any exercise of will, morality anchors This something, John Marcher hopes, at the risk of being
itself in a passivity we are not accustomed to regarding as crushed, will change his completely inactive life into one of
ethical ground. In spite of myself, self-interest turns into true excitement. He prepares himself for the great battle. He
love, and the Other becomes my concern. Ethical concern: places himself in mortal danger. He seeks out the unex­
an involuntary wandering, the rout of a self-concern that is pected, knowing only that this spectacle will resemble an
lived as boredom or egotistically practiced. animal leaping on its prey. He thus devotes all his attention
'The most sublime act is to place the Other before the to catching sight of the shadow this beast casts on the drab
self?' Uvinas adds a crucial qualification to Blake's admirable web he weaves of his days.
aphorism: such an act results not from any magnanimous A woman, Mary Bertram, shares this extraordinary secret
resolve but from a summons that canno
t be escaped. The and agrees to watch for it with John Marcher. An exhausting
sublime makes itself felt amidst the
distraction of the will, and fruitless lookout: his monotonous existence is made still
n t in its apotheosis. In order to
� speak of Good, Uvinas worse by the petrified vigilance he takes as his task. Since
remtroduces outmoded terms such
as disinterest, saintliness, nothing lives up to expectations, "the years go by and the
org[qry, but gives them an absolu
tely unexpected location. stroke doesn't fall?"8 The long wait consumes the intimate
The language is Corneille's, the
plot from Racine. And the life of the chosen one and his confidante, until the death of
same holds true for agape and
for eros for the love of one's Mary Bertram. Visiting her tomb one day to collect his
neighbor and romantic love:
'' .
:
''No o e is not good volun- thoughts, John Marcher comes upon a man suffering the
1" It IS not out of chotc
taril" · e that we
· lose our heads let pangs of a recent loss. The minor incident has the force of
our minds stray, cast prud '
ence to the winds, reject the ad­ a revelation: he is struck by the idea of being Too Late:
Vantageous counsel and foreth
ought of utilitarian reason.
We do not decide to act
against our uwn interest. Stripped The sight that hadjust met his eyes named to him, as in letters
of our own uuna· · · nve,
· our consciousness is bound "fatally of quick flame, something he had utterly, insanely missed, and
and as ifagainst our will what he had missed made these things a train offire, made them
, for an other who attracts us all the
� ore because h
.
e seems to be outside the possibility of meet­ mark themselves in an anguish of inward throbs. He had seen
mg because he IS so beyond the scope of things that interest outside of his life, not learned it within, the way a woman was
mourned when she had been kwedfor herself; such was theforce
us."""

22 23
 The Encounter with the Other
ofhis conviction ofthe meaning ofthe stranger'sface, which still
flared for him like a smoky torch. It had not come to him, the
knowledge, on the wings ofexperience; it had brushed him, jostled
him, upset him, with the disrespect ofchance, the insolence ofan
accident. Now that the illumination had begun, however, it
blazed to the zenith, and what he presently stood theregazing at
was the sounded void ofhis life. z9
By preparing himselffor the event, John Marcher became
the man to whom nothing happened. He missed out on life
the way we miss an appointment, because he identified ad­
venture with the contest of battle, and thus avoided running
the risks of passionate love. While waiting to strike down
2
The Beloved Face
No love exists as a simple, bodily mechanism, even (or especially)
ifit is madly attached to its object, which does notprove ourpower
to call ourselves into question, offerproofofour capacityfor ab­
solute devotion, or testifY to our metaphysical meaning. Merleau­
Ponty
THE ARGUMENT

the beast, or to be struck down himself, he sidestepped the

In Sylvia, Emmanuel Bed tells the extraordinary tale of his
�
r al confrontation. Standing at the ready for the most ter­
. break with Marcel Proust. The scene took place in 1917, in
rifying hand-to-hand combat, Marcher remained blind to
the room where the novelist lived in seclusion to write R£­
the passion of the woman he could have loved' instead of
. . membrance of Things Past. Bed recounts the amazing news
mcorporatmg her into his chimerical dream as his sentinel,
to his friend: he has found Sylvia. After four years of silence,
searching for the fabulous destiny reserved to him alone.
he wrote to the young woman he had met in a hotel in Evian
What spared Marcher the violence ofthe encounter was the
�ic form in which he conceived the struggle. Willing
stereo
and asked her to marry himJust when he had given up all
.

to s b�t to s�ering without a second thought, but ex­ hope, he received an answer, in which Sylvia gave him
per­
� dear. Sylvia
�ctmg It only m a duel of legendary proportions, he was mission to join her. ''Truly everything seemed

owen .the · · of purushmen was anything but a frivolous woman. I was engaged."'
o- most rroruc · ts: the exemption from to
s�ermg, the terrifying and mocking misfortune of having Berl tries to share his happiness and, at the same time,
lived safe from all torment, of never having suffered for offer himself as living proof that some hearts are meant for
someone else. one another. For the longest while, in fact, Proust had used
There is room-between struggle and idyll, between the the time they shared together to "catechize" his interlocutor,
e
.
VIolence of adversity and the serenity of affection -for an­ instructing Bed with tireless zeal about man's solitary natur
passions are
other form of concern, another model and the ineluctably disastrous fate to which the
of encountering the
world: an �thical
model, according to Uvinas, and . an am- bound. Mercilessly, Proust had shattered every kind of sen­
orous one m James's shott story.
. All of
.
this pomts to the timental illusion: "For him it was not just a probable hy­
an­
condusmn that morality and passmn · are connected m .
ways pothesis that communication between one person and
Sylvia's
neglected by the moralists of yesterday
and by today's mili­ other was impossible; it was an article of faith." ' But
tants of desire. : a mutu al recognition
story seems to escape such pessimism

25