The Tragic Sense of Levinas’ Ethics

Arthur Cools
University of Antwerp, Belgium

ABSTRACT. This article examines the dimension of the tragic experience in Levinas’
ethics, a dimension that seems at odds with his claim to define justice in a new
way: no longer as a relation of reciprocity between members of a community,
but according to the individual and asymmetrical relation to the other. On sev-
eral occasions, Levinas expresses the intention to overcome the fatality of being
and to break with the totalitarian effects of the State logic by revealing the
ethical meaning beyond being. His philosophy has therefore been interpreted as
an ethics of transcendence, based on the reference to the idea of the Good, but
which is unable to account for the tragic dimension of conflicting values and
for the finitude of the subjectivity’s capabilities for doing good. In the present
contribution, however, I argue that Levinas does not ignore a dimension of the
tragic in the ethical relation to the other. Reconsidering the notion of the ‘there
is’ (the il y a) within the relation to the other, I demonstrate how Levinas’ ethics
of transcendence enables us to consider a new sense of the tragic experience,
given with the responsibility for the other. I go on to examine how this sense
of the tragic experience relates to Levinas’ understanding of justice. Confronting
Levinas with Ricoeur’s approach to tragic action in Oneself as Another, I point to
a gap between Levinas’ ethical concept of justice and the political realisation of
justice, the articulation of which also reveals several major problems in Levinas’
understanding of justice.

KEYWORDS. Levinas, ethics, justice, the tragic, action, Ricoeur

I. INTRODUCTION

L evinas’ ethics is generally accepted as an original contribution to con-

temporary philosophy for having provided a new foundation for the
condition of justice. In opposition to a long tradition, Levinas does not
define the just society in terms of equality and reciprocity in social relations,
but according to the unique and asymmetrical relation of responsibility

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 21, no. 3(2014): 345-369.

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towards the neighbour. Based on this relation, Levinas launches severe

critique against any kind of rationality that subordinates the ethical mean-
ing of subjectivity to the universality of the State. He also invites us to
reverse the relations between subjectivity and universality, presenting the
former as a condition for the appearance of the latter.
According to Levinas, justice can make sense only within the non-
reciprocal relation of responsibility to the other. “Justice consists in again
making possible expression, in which in non-reciprocity the person pres-
ents himself as unique. Justice is a right to speak. It is perhaps here that
the perspective of a religion opens. It diverges from political life, to which
philosophy does not lead necessarily” (1969, 274). Within the limits of
the State, justice “[...] resigned to tradition, continuity, institutions, despite
their very infidelity” (2003a, 76), runs the risk of losing its ethical mean-
ing, being reduced to relations of reciprocity in which the partners are
interchangeable, and in which the asymmetrical relation of my responsibility
to the other is enclosed and taken over by an abstract and impersonal logic
of a well-organised totality. It is the infinite beyond totality that reveals
the ethical meaning, “[...] necessary to (the) justice” and therefore the task
of philosophy consists in “[...] manifesting to thought – albeit in deform-
ing it – the beyond of being itself” (2003a, 76).
The relation between ethics and politics has been the subject of
extensive debate among Levinas scholars.1 Whether considered as an essen-
tial separation (Critchley 2004) or as a necessary inclusion (Fagan 2007),
the ethico-political relation is problematic. According to Simon Critchley,
the question of politics entails “a critical point” and “a disquietude” that
invites him to articulate five main problems with regard to Levinas’ pas-
sage from ethics to politics (2004, 173). Madeleine Fagan speaks in terms
of “[...] the aporia within the concept of the ethico-political” (2007, 21).
In my view, the problem originates in a preliminary displacement of the
concept of justice in Levinas’ philosophy, which begins by ceasing to
define its meaning in political terms, defining it instead in an ethical way,
based on the non-reciprocal relation between the self and the other.

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As indicated in the previous quotation, this displacement implies that the

concept of justice “diverges from (s’éloigne de) political life” and that phi-
losophy, according to Levinas, does not necessarily culminate in political
theory.
In my contribution, I question this conceptual displacement and
evaluate its consequences by focusing on yet another issue in Levinas’
philosophy: the relation between the ethical and the tragic. The primary
and essential contribution of an ethics of responsibility to a theory of
justice is supported by an argument that plays a central role in Levinas’
entire philosophy: only ethics is capable of interrupting the tragic dimen-
sion of existence. The experience of the tragic – whether it concerns the
irresolvable conflict between the universal and the individual, the existential
opposition between destiny and liberty, or the political tension between
the law and ancestral traditions – has traditionally been interpreted as a
suspension of justice or as the impossibility of justice. On several occa-
sions throughout his work, Levinas defines the project of his philosophy
as an escape from the tragic experience of existence, made possible by
the ethical relation to the neighbour. Even in one of his earliest works,
On Escape, he considers that “[i]t is a matter of getting out of being by
a new path” for “[e]very civilization that accepts being – with the tragic
despair it contains and the crimes it justifies – merits the name barbarian”
(2003b, 73). At the end of his analyses of the temporal dimension of
fecundity in Totality and Infinity, he states that “[...] it [fecundity] lifts from
the subject the last trace of fatality, by enabling him to be an other”
(1969, 301). A similar rejection is repeated in the main argument of
Otherwise than Being: “To conceive the otherwise than being we must try
to articulate the break-up of a fate that reigns in essence […]” (1998, 8).
From the start, Levinas understands the tragic dimension as the fatal-
ity of being riveted to oneself. The ethical meaning of transcendence
beyond being opens the possibility to break-up this fatality. However, one
may doubt whether this opposition is a sufficient condition to define
justice in an ethical way. Is it possible to overcome the tragic experience

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by referring to the ethical meaning beyond being ? The answer to this

question obviously depends upon how the tragic is already understood.
Can the tragic have a meaning outside the poetic dimension of Greek
tragedy? Is it possible to define a common trait of the tragic experience
without referring to this art form? Alternatively, is this experience con-
tingent and dependent upon a context and a history that are inevitably
singular and personal, that cannot be shared and that cannot be univer-
salised? These questions are relevant to Levinas’ philosophy, even when
he was neither writing nor intending to write a philosophy of the tragic.
In order to articulate the relation between ethics and the tragic in
Levinas’ philosophy, I draw upon Ricoeur’s reflection on this relation in
the short note “Tragic Action” introduced into his hermeneutics of self-
hood at the beginning of the second last chapter of Oneself as Another,
“The Self and Practical Wisdom” (1992, 241). In a few pages (which he
dedicated to his son Olivier, who had committed suicide), he presents an
interpretation of the tragic experience within the framework of Greek
tragedy (with particular reference to Antigone), and he explains the role
of this reference within his own ethics.2 The reference to the tragic does
indeed constitute a true case of a differend between Ricoeur and Levinas.
While the latter relates the primacy of the ethical significance to an irre-
ducible transcendence, the former refers to the tragic in order to highlight
a finitude of the ethical meaning that appeals for a practical wisdom.
According to Ricoeur, this wisdom, which is never given at once and
which must be invented anew in different contexts, is required in order
to prevent political commitment to a just society from becoming stranded
in the paralysing blindness that results from a one-sided focus on moral
principles and abstract ideals. Moreover, Ricoeur relates the tragic exclu-
sively to the problems raised when action is required. In contrast, Levinas
denounces the tragic in the fatality of being riveted to oneself.
The aim of this article is not to bring Levinas and Ricoeur into debate
with each other on the basis of their differend. My intention is more lim-
ited: I will point to a problem in Levinas’ ethical understanding of justice

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by showing that the ethical meaning of the transcendence beyond being

cannot undo the persistence of the tragic dimension in relation to the
other, even though this relation reveals the tragic experience in a new
way. In my argument, I take two different, but complementary approaches.
In the first part, I examine Levinas’ understanding and rejection of the
tragic, demonstrating that his analysis of the ethical relation to the other
does not avoid all references thereto, but implies a new interpretation of
the experience of the tragic. To this end, I recall the importance of the
notion of the ‘there is’ in Levinas’ description of subjectivity, and I argue
that this notion also remains present in Levinas’ account of the relation
to the other. It confronts my being-for-the-other with the finitude of the
other and challenges in this respect my capability to act otherwise than
by self-interest. In the second part, I turn to Ricoeur, examining how and
to what extent Levinas’ ethics is concerned with (and called into question
by) Ricoeur’s reflection on tragic action. My main point here is that Levi-
nas agrees with Ricoeur’s main assumption that justice requires action:
it  is not possible to respond to the other ‘empty-handed’. But Levinas
lacks a pluralistic view on action, which he considers as an expression of
the virility of the self, being unable to derive the ethical meaning of
acting from subjectivity’s condition of passivity. Combining these two
approaches, I am able to show that Levinas’ ethical understanding of
justice is not without ambiguity, entailing a new experience of the tragic
which it is unable to overcome.

II. THE TRAGIC DIMENSION IN LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHY

The experience of the tragic is far from absent in Levinas’ thought. He

tends to identify it with being as such. Especially in Otherwise than Being,
Levinas unambiguously defines the essence of being as a fate, as a des-
tiny or as a dramatisation of the otherwise than being: “[...] the inescap-
able fate in which being immediately includes the statement of being’s
other” (1998, 5; italics original). Throughout his work, he quotes Cain,

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Oedipus, Hamlet, Macbeth and other tragic figures in order to evoke the
vicissitudes of being and to reject from the outset the dominant alterna-
tive in western philosophy: to be or not to be. According to Levinas, the
priority assigned to the question of being in Heidegger’s philosophy
actually enables us to measure the extent to which the tragic is intrinsi-
cally related to the experience of existence. In Heidegger’s existential
analysis, the tragic of existence appears as a way of being in a drama in
which the dice have already been thrown and in which the destiny of
being has already tied the human characters to a strange intrigue that
they could not choose themselves, although it tells the story of the vic-
tories and defeats of their will, as submitted to an impersonal force.
While it is impossible to step out of this being in a drama and to escape
its fatal concatenation of events, it remains possible to assume it and to
confirm it as its own being. At the end of his contribution “Ontology in
the Temporal” in which he discusses the renewal of ontological thinking
in Heidegger’s philosophy, Levinas states: “In this regard, the ontology
of Heidegger has reached its most extreme tragic accents” (1967, 89).3
Levinas sees two reasons for this interpretation. First, Heidegger sub-
ordinates all relations with the other to the examination of the under-
standing of being, which remains within the limits of a reductive logic of
the Same (i.e. within the limits of “[...] this selfhood which is, by the fact
of existence, related to being that is its own being” [1967, 89]). Moreover,
he defines all relations with being in terms of a temporality of being-
towards-death (Sein zum Tode), transcending the relation to my own being
towards a nothingness that withdraws from being. The temporality of
being-towards-death is thus explicitly interpreted as a destiny (Geschick) of
my being in relation to that which withdraws from being. I can assume
– and even claim – this destiny as my own, or I can try to escape it and
to refuse it. All of these possibilities express my relation to being. Para-
doxically, therefore, Levinas explains the equivalence between being and
the tragic by referring to the choice ‘to be or not to be’ in Heidegger’s
philosophy, and by referring to death as a possibility that limits my rela-

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tion to being – a finitude of my being that resolves into nothingness.

Levinas thus remarks, “[m]y death is insignificant – unless I drag into
my death the totality of being, as Macbeth wished, at the hour of his
last combat” (1998, 3). It is evident that his interpretation of the tragic
was largely influenced by existentialist philosophy, according to which
absolute freedom is the principle of the adventure of destiny.
According to Levinas, this understanding of being ignores the tran-
scendence of an otherwise than being. “To be or not to be is not the
question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of beings’
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” (1998, 3; italics original).
This opposition between being and transcendence has given rise to the
interpretation that the ethics of Levinas, by connecting the condition of
subjectivity to a beyond being, liberates us from the burden of existence
and jumps by a curious leap beyond its own tragic dimension. In the
Dutch translation of Levinas’ work, for example, the face of the other
is called “the face of liberation” (Burggraeve 1986). Because of this inter-
pretation, Levinas was accused of neglecting the finitude of transcen-
dence. In the view of Rudi Visker, this is precisely the problem of Levi-
nas’ ethics, which overestimates the ethical dimension of subjectivity and
which is unable to account for “the inhuman condition” (Visker 2005).
The incapability of conceiving of the tragic dimension is an essential trait
of Levinas’ thought, given its central reference to the idea of the Good,
which is confirmed as a goodness that has chosen me before I was in a
position of being able to chose and without submitting me to its power.
Face-to-face with the other person, I cannot not hear the injunction of
the Good. It is only for this reason that Levinas can state that the face
liberates me because it elevates and humanises me. The face breaks open
my egocentric self-relatedness and redefines my subjectivity as responsi-
bility for the other.

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This interpretation nevertheless implies the assumption of that

to  which Paul Davies (1990) refers as “a linear narrative” in Levinas’
philosophy, which describes and analyses subjectivity as a progressive
overcoming of (and liberation from) the experience of the ‘there is’, the
“[...] impersonal, anonymous, yet inextinguishable ‘consummation’ of
being, which murmurs in the depths of nothingness itself” (Levinas 2001,
52). This assumption, however, is based on several unexamined presup-
positions. First, it assumes that the ‘there is’ defines the meaning of the
tragic experience in Levinas’ philosophy. Second, it assumes that the
return of the ‘there is’, which Levinas repeats time and again, is insig-
nificant with regard to the ethical meaning of subjectivity. Finally, it
assumes the possibility of delineating, surmounting and eliminating the
‘there is’ in the relation to the other person. Only by accepting these
presuppositions is it possible to describe the presence of the other as a
miraculous instance that liberates me from the burden of being by invit-
ing me to do good. Only by accepting these presuppositions is it possible
to ascribe to Levinas – for whom, however, the presence of the other is
related to the experience of being threatened with death – the conviction
that the other person is good, and that he or she intervenes in such a way
that the idea of the Good chooses me. Such ascription is not possible
unless we fail to consider different concrete analyses of sensibility, cor-
poreity, suffering and experiences of otherness in Levinas’ account of the
relation with the other, thereby reducing Levinas’ argument to an abstract
and ultimately very classical metaphysics of the idea of the Good, which
can do none other than communicate itself.
It is therefore important to try another approach and to examine how
the tragic is related to a condition that reveals the priority of ethics. In this
approach, the ‘there is’ is not a kind of rest for an impersonal presence
that is being overcome by subjectivity and that is progressively being
replaced by the meaning of the Good. On the contrary, it exists as an
insurmountable presence that continually recurs in Levinas’ analyses of
the other and of subjectivity, and even in his references to God and the

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idea of the Good, thus undermining the objectivity of this idea and the
possibility of a non-ambiguous intellectualism of reason. In “God and
Philosophy”, Levinas explicitly mentions this ambiguity: the possible
confusion between the otherness of God and the ‘there is’ (1992, 115).
This raises the question of how the persistence of this notion changes the
understanding of the tragic.
The notion of the ‘there is’ is a crucial starting point in a philo-
sophical discourse that aims to reject the primacy of ontological thinking
(Heidegger) as well as the primacy of the principle of absolute freedom
(Sartre). First of all, it enables Levinas to disentangle the temporality of
destiny and to disorder the logic of being and nothingness. This is already
at stake in the analyses of the ‘there is’ presented in Existence and Existents.
If nothingness is not an option, the possibility of a choice between being
and not being reveals itself as dependant, secondary or even non-existent.
Neither being nor nothingness, Levinas refers to the ‘there is’ as a tiers
exclu (1982, 38). It breaks open the illusion that death (or suicide) signifies
an end or a solution.4 In this respect, Levinas changes the rules of the
drama: intrigue is no longer a given. The character is no longer able to
affirm its own being with regard to the presence of the impersonal, and
its will no longer possesses the evident power of deliberating its chances
by assuming its destiny. In other words, the ‘there is’ already creates a
relation of otherness before the question of my relation to being is at stake
(i.e. the experience of an estrangement that unsettles the understanding of
being).
One may wonder whether the notion of the ‘there is’ might therefore
exacerbate the experience of the tragic in existence, albeit in a completely
different sense, as found in existentialist philosophy. The fact of being
tied to it, without having the possibility of either assuming it or being
liberated from it, implies the irresolvable permanence of a suffering at the
core of existence. In this way, Levinas is perhaps returning to an ancient
concept of the tragic, which does not result from the liberty of the hero,
but from the “[...] archaic and mythical energies that are also, from time

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immemorial, sources of misfortune” (Ricoeur 1992, 241). Levinas is aware

of this connection with the ancient concept of tragedy, as evidenced in
his remark in Existence and Existents:

The fatality of the tragedy of antiquity becomes the fatality of irremissible

being. Spectres, ghosts, sorceresses are not only a tribute Shakespeare
pays to his time, or vestiges of the original material he composed with;
they allow him to move constantly toward this limit between being and
nothingness where being insinuates itself even in nothingness, like
bubbles of the earth […]. Hamlet recoils before the ‘not to be’ because
he has a foreboding of the return of being […]. In Macbeth, the appa-
rition of Banquo’s ghost is also a decisive experience of the ‘no exit’
from existence, its phantom returns through the fissures through which
one has driven it (2001, 57).

The notion of the ‘there is’ also introduces an ambiguity into Levinas’
philosophy. On the one hand, it reduces any sense into insignificance; it 
depersonalises all my relations to being; it implies “[...] the disintegration
of the hypostasis” (2001, 68). On the other hand, its presence continues
to return in corporeity: in sensibility, joy, fatigue and boredom, as well as
in such affects as anxiety, horror, nausea and shame. The detailed analyses
of these different phenomena share the fact that they reveal the indigence
and dependency of the body in a particular way, as it is riveted to being.
In other words, the ‘there is’ simultaneously conditions and ruins the pos-
sibility of giving sense. This ambiguity, however, implies that the ‘there is’
is neither a power nor a sense that refers to archaic or mythical energies.
The impersonal presence of the ‘there is’ even neutralizes these references,
which still occupy a central place in the tragedy of antiquity.
Because of this ambiguity, the ‘there is’ cannot be a sufficient con-
dition for highlighting a tragic dimension in Levinas’ philosophy. Although
there is certainly no suffering without the invading and threatening
insistence of the ‘there is’ in the body, the mere experience of pain or joy
is not necessarily tragic as such. Nevertheless, the references to a tragic
dimension of existence reappear in Levinas’ description of the encounter

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with the other person. Between the experience of the estrangement,

which is characteristic of the ‘there is’ and the experience of the otherness
of the other, Levinas primarily refers to a close proximity. Both establish
a relation to a strangeness that has the power to unsettle the pre-given
comprehension of being. Time after time, therefore, Levinas describes
the encounter with the other in terms of an act of violence, an imminent
threat or the approach of death. In the analyses of Otherwise than Being,
Levinas is perhaps more explicit with regard to this threatening violence,
using such terms as wounds and outrages, persecution, haemorrhage and
penetration. Nevertheless, the sense of this analysis has already been
given in Totality and Infinity, with the statement: “The Other, inseparable
from the very event of transcendence, is situated in the region from
which death, possibly murder, comes” (1969, 233). It is precisely this
approach that receives a tragic meaning  in Levinas’ description: “The
unwonted hour of its coming approaches as the hour of fate fixed by
someone.” Levinas explains this reappearance of the tragic dimension by
referring to “[...] the alienation of my will by the Other”. It is only in
(and because of) the relation to the other, that I run the risk of figuring
in a drama in which my will is exposed to impersonal, archaic forces:
“Hostile and malevolent powers, more wily, more clever than I, abso-
lutely other and only thereby hostile, retain its secret.” Levinas continues:
“This unknown that frightens, the silence of the infinite spaces that ter-
rify, comes from the other, and this alterity, precisely as absolute, strikes
me in an evil design or in a judgment of justice” (1969, 233).
In other words, the encounter of the other is a necessary condition
for the experience of the tragic in existence. This seems to be Levinas’
point, a view that differs from the existential understanding of the tragic
because it does not define the tragic by referring to the possibility of a
choice between being and not being. It also does not imply the idea that
I can assume my destiny by accepting my death as my own possibility.
On the contrary, face to face with the other, my will is exposed to a
strangeness that it cannot assume and from which it cannot be released,

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whereas the possibility of resolving the intrigue is not given, and it is not
in my own hands. As such, the other is far from a miraculous instance
that liberates me from the burden of existence. On the contrary, it con-
fronts me with a tragic condition from which I am unable to escape.
It is hardly convincing, however, to state that the mere encounter
with the other has a tragic dimension. Some interpersonal relations cer-
tainly do have a tragic aspect, but such a statement implies that one is
already involved in a relationship. Let us thus try to develop and sharpen
the connection that Levinas establishes between the other and the tragic.
As is well known, Levinas describes the relation with the other in terms
of an irreducible asymmetry: the other escapes all initiatives that have
their point of departure in my own self-relatedness. It makes no sense
to define this asymmetry as tragic. Levinas is not the first to state that
the other is inaccessible in a principle way. Husserl did this in the fifth
Cartesian meditation, without introducing a notion of the tragic in his
description of inter-subjectivity. If the relation with the other becomes
tragic, it is necessary to say that the presence of the ‘there is’ returns in
this relation in an insurmountable way, regardless of whether it reveals
destructive violence (exposure to wounds and outrages) or dependence
on an impersonal, destructive presence (suffering). It is important to
notice that both have a bodily meaning in Levinas’ analyses: it is the
dependency of the body on that which remains indifferent towards its own
sensibility (the elemental, the skin, the blood, exposure to violence). In short,
it is the body’s essential vulnerability. This dependency creates another
asymmetry in the relation with the other, which differs from the first.
The distinction between the two asymmetries becomes obvious when
we consider the case that the other has been exposed to a serious disease
(e.g. life-threatening cancer). The gap between me and the other that has
been created by this disease is as irreducible as is the asymmetry given
with the relation to the other. Nevertheless, the meaning of the first is
not the same. Threatened by cancer (or facing a pain that he or she can
barely endure), the other is separated from me in a way that makes it

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impossible to narrow the gap by a word or an injunction. We could say

that the other is beyond any relation of friendship or of responsibility –
that he or she is at a distance that refuses proximity. That which intro-
duces a tragic sense is the fact that the disease belongs to the other, thus
isolating him or her in a radical way, eliminating the possibility of giving
and receiving. At the same time, that which belongs to the other in this
non-reciprocal way dispossesses him or her from within, but nevertheless
as something that remains exterior. Cancer is not just a momentary ill-
ness. It is even possible to say that different types of cancer do not have
a similar meaning for the patient. Philosophically speaking, however, all
cancers can be considered as a presence of the ‘there is’, an anonymous,
increasing presence in the flesh of the body, which disseminates by anni-
hilating living flesh. It blocks the process of transformation that Levinas
describes in Totality and Infinity, in which he analyses the dependency of
the body in terms of joy and corporeity: the transformation of the anon-
ymous and the elemental being into food and energy from which the
body lives. Cancer blocks this transformation and turns it against the
living body. Beneath the limit of the sensible, it disseminates in the body,
reducing the tissue of the living body to an undefined and threatening
increase of globules and cells. With regard to this process, it is not possible
to speak of ‘substitution’, as Levinas does, in order to define subjectivity.
It is not possible to substitute oneself for the other who is suffering from
cancer without misunderstanding the meaning of this suffering. In its
radical singularity, this suffering cannot be attained by a responsibility
defined as a responsive account of and to the suffering of the other.
In this case, assuming responsibility within the face-to-face is at risk of
becoming a non-intended act of aggression against the patient. The other
is separated by the fact of his or her illness: nobody can touch it, nobody
can have a claim on it, nobody can put him or herself in the relation that
the other has to his or her cancer. Nevertheless, the response given to
the other already touches this relation without the possibility of assuming
it. As a third party without a face, taking away the human time – the time

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to deliberate – the serious illness or suffering of the other can disturb the
straightforwardness of the exchange at any time, physically manifesting
the nakedness and vulnerability of the body.
It is not possible to make an abstraction of this dependency on the
‘there is’ in the relation with the other. On the contrary, it conditions the
sense of nakedness and indigence as revealed in the face of the other who
is exposed to indifferent, destructive forces. It is not possible to undo this
dependency or to resolve the process of annihilation that is inherent in
it. Levinas’ detailed analyses of corporeity are not at odds with the ethical
injunction of the face, but they are the main access to it: the asymmetry
given within the bodily indigence complements and ethically transforms
the asymmetrical relation between me and the other. From the outset,
substitution is confronted with a finitude that the ill or suffering body
reveals. This finitude is given with the dependency of the body, with the
difference between the sensible and the insensible within the indigent
body. In other words, it would be a misunderstanding of Levinas’ concept
of subjectivity to attribute the finitude of my responsibility for the other
to a certain shortcoming that is due to the egoism of my self-relatedness.
It would also be wrong to state the reverse, arguing that only the presence
of the suffering other is able to break open the finitude of my self-relat-
edness. On the contrary, it is necessary to articulate the asymmetrical
relation with the other differently, as an awareness of a tragic condition
with which the other confronts me. The response given to the other, fac-
ing that which remains indifferent to this response, reveals the finitude
of the response. The sense of charity takes it power from this finitude:
the care given to the other can neither undo nor take away the presence
of a threat that destroys the other from within. The response given to the
other, however well intended, can be powerless with regard to this kind
of otherness.
It follows from the preceding reflections that Levinas’ ethics actually
introduces a new sense of the tragic experience, which is no longer cor-
related to the awareness of a destiny of my own being, that I can assume

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or reject. Instead, it finds its expression in the awareness that my being-

for-the-other is not sufficient to do justice to the other. The ethical
injunction to do justice has its origin in the relation with the other, but
the possibility to realise this injunction is not guaranteed by this relation.
In the second part of this discussion, therefore, we must examine the
extent to which a reflection on action is able to complement the ethical
injunction of justice and to overcome the persistence of the tragic experi-
ence in the relation to the other.

III. THE TRAGIC ACTION

That to which Ricoeur refers as the tragic action primarily requires a

completely different kind of analysis. It clearly belongs to existence also,
but the experience of existence – the relation to my being – is not con-
sidered ‘tragic’ as such in this context. Ricoeur thematizes the tragic
dimension within a reflection on moral judgment. The decisions taken in
an institutional and inter-personal context can create conflicts between
different values, which are at risk of becoming insoluble and unmanageable.
According to Ricoeur, the tragic thus reveals a true finitude of ethics,
insofar as morality, understood in the Kantian sense of practical reason,
engenders conflicts because of its rigorous universality when confronted
with the complexity of life. For this reason, Ricoeur refers to the experience
of Greek tragedy, which he does not take as a philosophical source, but
which can be instructive: the tragic experience indirectly reveals the
importance of practical wisdom.
Following Hegel, Ricoeur considers action the central theme of the
tragedy. He refers to Antigone as the prototype of all tragedies. “The tragedy
of Antigone touches what [...] we can call the agonistic ground of human
experience, where we witness the interminable confrontation of man
and woman, old age and youth, society and the individual, the living and
the death, humans and gods” (1992, 243). This case is exemplary because
it reveals the reasons why the tragic experience “[...] has maintained an

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 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER 2014

ineffaceable permanence” in the human condition. Antigone’s decisions are

determined by family obligations, as well as by the insistence of archaic
forces: “The bond between sister and brother, which knows nothing of the
political distinction between friend and enemy, is inseparable from the
service of divinities of the underworld and transforms the family bond
into a sinister pact with death” (1992, 242). The passion of her behaviour
cannot be fully understood in terms of a deliberate choice and of the
responsibility that she claims with regard to her own deeds. It also implies
obscure motivations, which are intrinsically interwoven with fatal con-
straints from the past. Neither the affirmation of liberty nor the affirmation
of nothingness is able to shed light on the tragic development. The inter-
personal relations are able to illuminate it, however, and within these rela-
tions, the recurrence of an archaic past and the inevitable resurgence of an
antagonistic conflict in practical life. Meanwhile, Antigone indicates the
limits of political power as a vulnerable woman without a political mandate
in the Greek polis. She is an isolated individual whose only source of
authority is unwritten laws, to which she refers in order to establish a rela-
tion between death and living people: “[...] she posited the limit that points
up the human, all too human, character of every institution” (1992, 245).
Why is it important to recall this heritage of Antigone, which was
extensively commented on in the wake of a philosophical examination of
modern culture, in a reflection concerning the relation between ethics and
the tragic in the philosophy of Levinas? Levinas never mentions Anti-
gone. Does the finitude of ethics that Ricoeur thematizes when he recalls
the legacy of the Greek tragedy also apply to Levinas’ ethics? Ricoeur
does not specify when and under what conditions conflicts can be con-
sidered tragic. He appears to refer to them as tragic because they are
already ethical, in that values are in contradiction with each other in such
a way that justice given to one creates a fault and damages with regard to
another. Ricoeur refers to medical decisions at the end of life, to the appli-
cation of the law (which is general) to a case that is unique and exceptional,
to the resistance of the oppressed individual against the totalitarian regime,

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among other comparisons. From this perspective, and in contrast to what

the interpretation of Antigone has suggested, the meaning of the tragic is
delineated in terms of a deliberated choice or an insurmountable opposi-
tion between convictions. It reveals a kind of blindness at the core of this
choice or this opposition. Levinas’ philosophy, however, precedes this
kind of reflection on the conflicting implications of morality in life, as
reflected in the first sentence of Totality and Infinity: “[...] it is of the high-
est importance to know whether we are not duped by morality” (1979, 21).
As I have already observed, Levinas intends to re-define the sense of
justice starting from the subjectivity responsible for the other, and no
longer according to the norms that have already been given. What then
is the connection with Ricoeur’s examination?
This issue raises questions regarding the role of the act in a reflection
upon the ethical condition. Is it necessary to develop this notion in order
to elucidate this condition? Levinas does not think so. He relates the
ethical condition to “[...] a passivity still more passive than any passivity,”
thus accepting the consequence that the meaning of responsibility is given
with the mere exposure to wounds and outrages, with vulnerability, with
suffering by and for the other. “‘To tend the cheek to the smiter and to
be filled with shame,’ to demand suffering in the suffering undergone
(without producing the act that would be the exposing of the other
cheek)” (1998, 111) – this quotation from Lamentations at the core of
the analysis of substitution in Otherwise than Being summarizes the meaning
of subjectivity, “otherwise than essence”. In these formulas, which are
repeated time and again, Levinas explicitly rejects the ethical relevance of
the act, as is reflected on the final page of this same book:

This weakness is needed. This relaxation of virility without cowardice

is needed for the little cruelty our hands repudiate. That is the meaning
that should be suggested by the formulas repeated in this book con-
cerning the passivity more passive still than any passivity, the fission
of the ego unto me, its consummation for the other such that from
the ashes of this consummation no act could be reborn (1998, 185).

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From Levinas’ perspective, action inevitably turns into the tragic dimen-
sion of being. At this point, we are confronted with what I consider the
critical problem of his entire philosophy. What Levinas fails to consider
is that the plurality of acting also belongs to the pluralism of being (to
which he was the first to contribute by assessing sexual difference as
irreducible in Time and the Other). The meaning of being is revealed anew
in different relations of practical interactions that are irreducible to each
other. Levinas is unable to approach plurality in this regard, even though
he had the means to do so. He is unable to do so because he still has a
monolithic notion of action. Action originates in the self-relatedness of
the self, and it is therefore reductive with regard to the other. The results
of the action contribute to an interpersonal order in which the original
intention of the will loses its meaning and in which the will is exposed to
an interpretation that does not account for it. This order is already imper-
sonal. At this point, it is interesting to note that the dimension of fatal-
ity immediately and inevitably returns in Levinas’ analysis of the will:
“The absurdity of the fatum foils the sovereign will” (1969, 226-227).
Levinas, nevertheless, also gives the correct starting point for another
approach to action, because he does not consider the will as an abstract
idea, but as a bodily finitude. “The will contains this duality of betrayal
and fidelity in its mortality, which is produced or holds sway in its corpore-
ity” (1969, 232). He even mentions “the pluralism of wills” (1969, 222) in
order to avoid considering the multiplicity of the social relations as fixed
parts of a totality. In his analysis of the will, he refers to its different
activities: its positing with and against the other, its creation of works,
its  erotic relations and even, with regard to the requirement of justice,
its possibility of getting up to speak. None of these activities, however, is
able to reveal the ethical meaning of goodness within the plurality of
being because goodness is beyond “the powers of a will” (1969, 236).
The smile of a child, however, can have the meaning of a goodness that
extends beyond the being of my self-relatedness, as well as beyond the
meaning of suffering for the other.

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Levinas fails to analyse modalities of acting in bodily gestures. He

also fails to articulate how the meanings of these gestures are expressing
commitments to passivity. As long as it is not clear how the activity of
doing justice is conditioned by (and originates from) the passivity
of vulnerability, action can be considered only as a betrayal of the
ethical meaning of responsibility. At this point, Levinas is confronted
with an insurmountable paradox in his philosophy, because he also
needs to appeal to the act: it is not possible to respond to the other
‘empty-handed’ (les mains vides). Justice also requires the possibility of
deliberating and comparing. Institutions are necessary in order to realise
justice.
From this limited perspective, one may wonder whether what Ricoeur
refers as ‘the tragic action’, and what he analyses under this title before a
political philosophy is at stake, does not point towards an essential fini-
tude in Levinas’ ethics, but in yet another way as the reference to Anti-
gone in his reflections reveals. The problem with Levinas’ philosophy is
not only that the moral norms within society and the ethical meaning of
the responsibility for this singular other are opposed to each other, such
that it is not possible to be faithful to both at the same time. More impor-
tantly, it is not clear how the exceptional condition of passivity in the non-
reciprocal relation with the other can be translated in a commitment to a
just society without losing its exceptional meaning. Levinas mentions the
inevitability of a ‘betrayal’ (e.g. 2003, 76) and of a ‘limit of responsibility’
(e.g. 1998, 157) when deliberation and comparison are required. In this
respect, Ricoeur’s reflection may be helpful in order to elucidate the dif-
ficulties that appear when justice is required according to a condition
defined as “[...] a passivity still more passive than any passivity” (1998, 185).
We retain three difficulties.
First, considered from the position of a responsible subjectivity, jus-
tice can receive a social meaning only if the passive condition of my
being for the other keeps its meaning and can be expressed within my
intentions to do good for the other. The intention to do good, however,

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is not possible without being supported by what Ricoeur refers to as

‘conviction’. In addition to implying a cognitive aspect of the intention,
conviction expresses a practically orientated self-confidence. Ricoeur
uses this notion to designate a practical wisdom that is able to recognise
the universal each time in different particular contexts. It presupposes
an inter-personal order, and it starts to develop itself in “the art of con-
versation” (1992, 290). Conviction thus refers to the responsibility for
the other, but it also requires an entire learning process in order to affirm
itself. Levinas does not mention conviction as a necessary condition for
doing justice. In light of the ethical meaning of responsibility, conviction
already appears to be on this side of selfhood, always related to a self-
complaisance, already betraying the condition of passivity by taking for
granted the symmetry and reciprocity of the inter-personal relations.
Following Ricoeur’s reflection, we could ask, however, whether convic-
tion might also be a possibility of encountering the other and, even
more, whether it might be necessary in order to prevent the passivity of
the exposure of subjectivity to the other from paralysing all confidence
because of its disquietude. Even when limited and blind in its finitude,
practical wisdom, as implied in conviction, does not necessarily lead to
the objectification or injury of the other. On the contrary, it might pro-
voke a way of deliberating and interacting that creates possibilities for
doing justice to the uniqueness of the other, while avoiding the vicissi-
tudes of the tragic action.
Second, from the position of a responsible subjectivity, justice can
have a social meaning only if the ethical meaning of the passivity can be
heard in particular social contexts. “Justice is a right to speak” (1969,
274) – with this statement, Levinas seems to assert the possibility of a
social and even juridical (‘the right’) meaning for justice, which retains
the relation to the singular, irreplaceable subjectivity. This possibility
nevertheless implies that the individual, responsible subjectivity is able
to express and articulate the demand of justice each time, both before
and in discussion with others. Ricoeur refers to this articulation as a

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deliberation, because it requires both a comparison between contra-

dicting demands and a confrontation with “the public discussion” (1992,
258). Deliberation is an activity that does not depend on myself, but that
necessarily takes place within a particular community: it requires differ-
ent social skills and debate with others, as well as a certain degree of
indebtedness to the past. For this reason, the definition of justice as a
right to speak cannot make an abstraction of the distinction between the
private and the public, or between the response given to the other and
the speech given before the others. Levinas fails to consider this distinc-
tion. In what he refers to as ‘apology’ (1969, 240), in the act of speech
in the first person, the uniqueness of the subjectivity’s relation to the other
is maintained. He defines justice precisely from this position: “Justice
would not be possible without the singularity, the unicity of subjectivity”
(1969, 246). “I am therefore necessary for justice, as responsible beyond
every limit fixed by an objective law” (1969, 245). Without any limitation
of an objective law, the judgment to which I am submitted and to which
my apology responds requires an infinite increase of responsibilities,
which interminably ‘purges’ me of myself. Following Ricoeur’s reflec-
tions, however, we may wonder how Levinas can assert in the same
sentence that “the I [...] is confirmed precisely in this incessant effort to
purge itself” (1969, 244-245) if not because the meaning of the respon-
sible self has already been expressed and confirmed by a public field.
More generally, we may question the very possibility of bearing witness
to the suffering for the other as long as it does not find an expression
before the others. The public field is not only the space in which the
other is objectified and in which the meaning of my responsibility can be
lost, it is also the space in which justice can be required and confirmed.
Even the meaning of those who have given their lives for the other
depends upon a public space that memorialises their names. But as such,
the ethical meaning of the right to speak always runs the risk of being
exposed to a conflicting opposition with regard to others and of being
confused with an indebtedness to the past.

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Third, and finally, justice can have a social meaning only if there
is a commitment of the subjectivity responsible for the other, which
can be translated into an institutional field. This requires mediation
between the ethical sense of responsibility and the social sense of com-
mitment. The reference to the third party in Levinas’ philosophy does
not explain how this commitment is possible. For Levinas, the third
party can be nothing more than a betrayal of the ethical significance of
subjectivity. Nevertheless, the presence of political institutions remains
inevitably neutral with regard to the signification of responsibility.
Only subjectivity can make a difference, in relating its commitment in
the institutional field to the ethical significance of its responsibility for
the other.
Conviction, practical wisdom, conversation, deliberation, promise,
debate, conflict, testimony, commitment and mediation, as well as
respect, love and care – all of these notions refer to a differentiated
view on the sources and activities of subjectivity in which the relation
to the other and to the otherness of the other is articulated differently.
They delineate a field of interactions that is already ethical, but not yet
political. Ricoeur’s reflections on these sources of subjectivity thus
show that an ethics of passivity should not make abstraction from a
philosophy of action. Action confronts this ethics with an intrinsic fin-
itude in a dual sense: (i) in that the passivity of the subjectivity respon-
sible for the other is not a sufficient condition for doing justice and
(ii) in that the exceptional meaning of this subjectivity is at risk of being
compromised and even lost if it attempts to realise justice by acting in
a social context. While looking for an ethics beyond being, Levinas
excludes all reflection on action from the ethical meaning of my being
for the other. While defining pluralism merely in terms of the two posi-
tions of the relation between me and the other, he is unable to see the
pluralism that is given with the bodily ways of interacting. He therefore
ends up with a monolithic notion of action, which is thus intrinsically
connected to the tragic dimension of being. Precisely for this reason, his

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philosophy risks bringing us to the fatalistic conclusion that whatever we

may do, we are not able to do justice.

IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In the present contribution I have highlighted a tragic condition of

Levinas’ ethics in two ways: first, at the core of the idea of substitution
with regard to the singular meaning of the suffering of the other and,
second, in the ethical meaning of justice with regard to the question of
its realisation by acting. Both ways actually refer to the same condition:
Levinas’ concept of subjectivity and its radical passivity.
A few conclusions can be made from the preceding argument. First, we
need not choose between transcendence and finitude, nor must we oppose
them in order to consider and evaluate Levinas’ ethics. Transcendence reveals
itself in the face of the other by confronting subjectivity with its finitude. It is
thus wrong to state that Levinas’ ethics eliminate or deny all tragic dimen-
sions in existence by referring to the idea of the Good beyond being. On the
contrary, his ethics introduce a new sensibility with regard to the tragic
experience, which is no longer defined in terms of the destiny of my own
being, but in terms of the insurmountable consciousness that my being-
for-the-other is not sufficient to do justice to the suffering of the other.
Second, the ethical displacement of the concept of justice implies that
justice is a problem, never realised and always at stake in the question of
what I should do with it. In this respect, we contribute to the debate on
the ethico-political divide in the philosophy of Levinas in yet another way.
The confrontation with Ricoeur sheds a new light on this debate. The
problem is not that there is a gap between the two, nor is it that it is impos-
sible to derive one from the other. The problem is that the gap between
the two begins to coincide with an irreducible distinction between radical
passivity and the activities of the will. Goodness is beyond all powers of
the will. Levinas therefore fails to provide a positive examination and artic-
ulation of the plurality of acting in relation to the ethical meaning of justice.

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Third, I wonder whether the tragic sense that we highlight in Levinas’

understanding of justice might invite us to reconsider the relation between
ethics and religion. Perhaps we should no longer consider it as a relation
in which ethics (my being for the other) defines religion (the experience
of the otherness of the other), but in which religion functions as a sign
given to the transcendence within the tragic experience of the relation to
the other. In this understanding of the relation, there is also space for aes-
thetics, poetry or the arts to invent new presentations and representations
of the sign given to transcendence.

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NOTES
1. Cf. Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997); Simon Critchley,
The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999);
Robert Bernasconi, “The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the Ethical and the Political,”
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 30 (1999), 76-87; Howard Caygill, Levinas and the Political
(London: Routledge, 2002); Asher Horowitz & Gad Horowitz, Difficult Justice: Commentaries on
Levinas and Politics (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2006).
2. For the notion of the tragic in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of selfhood, I refer to my contri-
bution “Selfhood as the Locus of the Tragic in Paul Ricoeur’s Soi-même comme un autre,” in The
Locus of Tragedy, ed. Arthur Cools, Thomas Crombez, Rosa Slegers and Johan Taels (Leiden/
Boston: Brill, 2008), 165-180.
3. The chapter “L’ontologie dans le temporel” is not included, as are the other texts on
Heidegger, in the English translation of this book. The translation employed here is my own. Cf.
Emmanuel Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, translated by Richard A. Cohen and Michael
B. Smith (Evenston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998).
4. “The pure nothingness revealed by anxiety in Heidegger’s analysis does not constitute
the there is. There is horror of being and not anxiety over nothingness, fear of being and not fear
for being: there is being prey to, delivered over to something that is not a ‘something’” (Levinas
2001, 57-58).

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