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LEVINAS: A GUIDE FOR
THE PERPLEXED

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LEVINAS:A GUIDE FOR
THE PERPLEXED
B.C.HUTCHENS
continuum
N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N

CONTINUUM
The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street
11 York Road New York
London SE1 7NX NY 10010
First published 2004
www.continuumbooks.com
© Benjamin Hutchens 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 8264 7282 6 HB
0 8264 7283 4 PB
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire

CONTENTS
vn
Acknowledgemen ts
The problem of Introduction: Criticism and
influence
Is criticism impossible?
The influences of a visionary
1 Freedom and responsibility
The three aspects of the 'ethics of responsibility'
Responsibility, consequentialism and deontology
2 Violence and the self
The violated and the violent self
The hypostasis of the self
3 Language and dialogue
Language in the face-to-face relationship
The content of the command in the face-to-face
relationship
4 Scepticism and reason
Levinas's global scepticism
The rational reduction of scepticism
The sceptical betrayal of rationality
5 Time and history
Synchrony
Diachrony
Anachrony
Death
6 Good and evil
The good in the face of others
The evil of Auschwitz
1
6
8
14
17
25
36
36
42
47
48
50
55
57
60
63
67
68
68
71
74
77
77
81

7 Suffering and obsession
The ambiguous evil of suffering
Good and bad obsessions
8 Justice and law
Justice and the resolution of responsibility
The spirit of legislation and the letter of the law
9 God and atheism
God in the face-to-face relationship
The atheistic self
Humanism and antihumanism
10 Technology and the world
11 Art and representation
12 Eroticism and gender
13 Levinas and his critics
A problem of scale
A problem of relevance
A problem of detail
Paul Ricoeur
Slavoy Zizek
Alain Badiou
Conclusion: The finer points of Levinas's thought
References
Bibliography
Index
CONTENTS
89
90
95
99
99
107
112
116
121
127
131
140
146
155
155
156
157
158
160
162
167
169
184
189
vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Composing a critical introduction to the thought of Emmanuel
Levinas involves a precarious balance of a succinct survey of a richly
hyperbolic and metaphysically dense philosophy, and detachedly crit-
ical appraisal of its most general theses. Although many Levinasian
commentators struggle to say enough, it has been my tribulation not
to saytoo much. The goal throughout has been to identify problems,
clarify language, propose basic definitions, minimize extensive
quotations and utilize sources the introductory reader might find
readily accessible at a universitylibrary. The result might be regarded
as an almost churlish lack of attentiveness to the rhetorical nuances
of Levinas's thought: this 'guide' offers few convoluted proposals
couched in vertiginous prose, few name-dropping allusions to trad-
itional readings, and few grandiloquent gestures in the direction of
the unknowable. Ultimately, it represents an inquiry into the rele-
vance of Levinas's ethics, which requires a balanced clarity ofinsight
and intuition that is much needed in the study of Levinas's thought
today. I can only hope that the result is adequate to enable the reader
to decide whether to take their curiosity to the stage of active
exploration.
Many people have contributed to this work on the 'ethics of
responsibility', to all of whom I am infinitely responsible and copi-
ously thankful.
Continuum's stellar coterie of editors - Hywel Evans, Anthony
Hayes, and Ian Price - have been staunch allies in the effort to bring
the book from the womb of obscurity.
My Oxford supervisor Graham Ward, currently of the University
of Manchester, sparked my interest in Levinas's work and occasion-
ally bolstered flagging confidence.My external advisor John Milbank,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
currently of the University of Virginia, has been kindly supportive
over the years.
Most effusive thanks to Patricia Cunningham, Betsy Chapman,
Judy Deboard and the 'End of the World' kin. Above all, to Karen
Hutchens, whose unfathomable repository of patient generosity and
compassionate perseverance is appreciated beyond words.
viii

THE PROBLEM OF INTRODUCTION
CRITICISM AND INFLUENCE
According to rabbinic wisdom, Emmanuel Levinas teaches
sagaciously,
nothing is more serious than teaching in the presence of one's
masters. The mastery of the teacher and the elevation of the stu-
dent - andthestudent's duties -begin whenever even an isolated
element of knowledge is communicated from spirit to spirit.1
It is my task in this book to teach in the presence of an absent
master who might well have been one of the superlative metaphysical
visionaries of the twentieth century. 'Spirit to spirit' with the reader,
striving to convey the message of the teacher who observes my per-
formance of duties, I am struggling with my elevation (elevation) as a
student (eleve] of E. Lev! I did not have the honour of meeting
Levinas before his death in 1995 at the age of nearly 90. However,
portraits of Levinas evoke a pained wisdom in the face of a sensitive
thinker who described his biography as 'the presentiment and the
memory of the Nazi horror'.2
While the concept of the human face is
of paramount ethical significance in his unabatedly stirring com-
position, his own face provokes a respectful desire to learn from him
and teach for him.
The reader might have seen reference to Levinas as a 'Continental'
philosopher, which is a conceptual flag unfurled in Anglo-American
literature and language departments in the late twentieth century.
Originally associated with the radical politics of the French 'gener-
ation of 1968', including Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, it has
swelled to encompass not only the nefarious iconoclasts Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud, but many other French and German thinkers
I

LEVINAS:A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
as well. In this sense, Levinas is not a 'Continental' philosopher, if
only because he was a Jewish traditionalist who may have abhorred
the Western tradition's forgetting of ethics, but abjured revolution-
ary activism. He vilified the 'death of God' antihumanism of the
radical thinkers but found it occasionally useful as a counterpoise to
the excesses of humanism. To be sure, Levinas sits uncomfortably
with other 'Continental' thinkers because of his Talmudic orienta-
tion, and confronts such exemplars as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger
with a Judaic alternative. It is more appropriate, and more impres-
sive, to speak of Levinas as a European Talmudist of startling orig-
inality who composed philosophical thoughts with the climacteric
intention of revamping the Western intellectual tradition through
discussion, not rebellion.
Like many other philosophers in the modern French tradition,
Levinas offers staunch resistance to the rolling, intellectual currents
of the West. His work does not disparage traditional philosophies
piecemeal but in sweeping, breathtaking movements. Despite its ver-
tiginous nature, it proposes a newparadigm for philosophical inquiry
that Jacques Derrida, in his funeral eulogy, claims is changing the
course of philosophical refection.3
The fact that it proposes a para-
digm indicates that a radical revision of philosophy is necessary.
Known variously as an 'ethics of ethics', an 'ethics of responsibility',
an 'ethical metaphysics', and an 'ethical transcendentalism', it
unrelentingly demands that philosophy consider massive alternative
perspectives on the ethical, religious and aesthetic nature of the self
and its relationship with other persons, the world at large and the
god. With alacrity, Levinas challenges us to recognize that there
might be precariously unstable presuppositions buried unnoticed
beneath the foundation of the traditional philosophical edifice, espe-
cially those that, as Stella Sandford has remarked, threaten to dis-
avow any thinking beyond traditional perimeters.4
Contrary to his
reputation as a benign altruist issuing saccharine platitudes about
the necessity of greater responsibility is the almost brutal violenceof
his unwavering insistence on a more ethical world-view that places
burdensome demands upon the human self and its condition in the
world. There is nothing consoling about his exhortative ethical
vision, and something genuinely sobering about his fulminatory
account of the violence Western philosophy has justified. Indeed, the
reader may be often perturbed by the cacophony of notions of
violence Levinas utilizes, including power, privilege, profanation,
2

destitution, anxiety, deception, evasion, exile, subversion, etc. To
read Levinas well is perhaps to read him largely, that is, to open
oneself up to a completely novel approach to philosophizing that is
often discomforting but rarely unrewarding.
Even pro-Levinasian commentators notoriously concede that he
is difficult to read with any satisfactory comprehension. Levinas's
books are replete with wisdom that is often illuminating, but
occasionally vitiating of comprehension. He was a visionary of
unrivalled sensitivity who spent nearly a century trying to reshape
subterranean strata of Western thought. In some sense, he thought
philosophical violence begins with the power of the mind to render
experience intelligible. Hence, he devised captious textual games
that keep the reader disoriented whenever he or she might be satis-
fied with an impeccable power of interpretation. Despite Levinas's
considerable influence in the contemporary humanities and his sen-
sitivity to new intellectual needs, determining the relevance of his
contribution to ethics is frustrating to students and professional
academics alike. The problem lies in his strategy of composition, in
which how he writes about a subject is interleaved with what he is
describing. For example, when Levinas exhorts the reader to be
responsible for his own demand for responsibility, it is never quite
clear whether this notion of responsibility is coherent, though there
is every reason to think that it is ubiquitous in the moral and
human sciences, as Jacques Derrida has noted.5
What is most inter-
esting, and occasionally infuriating, is that Levinas, who eschews
limpidity of composition, intends to be abstruse and elusive in order
to present his ideas in what he regards as the only truly disputatious
fashion. And indeed, as a result few people who share in his
work for the first time do so with immediate satisfaction. In the
main, to demand coherence in a Levinasian text is to be cutting
against the grain of its strategy of composition. What follows is a
summary of some of the ways the reader might be frustrated by his
obstreperous texts.
First, Levinas wrote many repetitive books. It might seem that he
has merely one or two trenchant formulas in mind, such as 'reducing
the other to the same' or 'otherwise than being', each of which is
adumbrated at crucial moments of inquiry. The sanguine critic
might swear that to read one article is to read them all. Each thought
is approached from myriad perspectives and with varying intentions
that undergo minor revision, but, despite its many vicissitudes,
3

LEVINAS: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
it retains its evocative meanings. However, these meanings are so
protean that one is rarely certain what one has learned.
Second, Levinas's textual strategy is obliquitous. His ideas are
adulterated with one another, such that, for example, if one is inter-
ested in meaning in language, one is quickly forced to read about
dialogue, scepticism, time, God and so on. The reader's comprehen-
sion is always disequilibriated and deferred. In other words, Levinas
postpones the resolution of a reader's line of questioning by simply
pointing onwards to yet something else: r is justified by q, which is
justified by p, and so on. When one is annoyed by this strategy, the
result might look like nothing more impressive than a mess of con-
cepts haphazardly thrown together in a semi-intelligible haze. In
certain books, Levinas's reasoning is similar to the black ink an
octopus squirts in order to elude capture. But many 'positivistic'
readers might believe that authors are not supposed to be as furtive
as octopuses, and thus might wonder sardonically why Levinas
shows no signs of wanting to be understood. As we shall see, in some
sense, being lost in a Levinasian text is a necessary condition for
ultimate comprehension.
Third, holding formal logic and argumentative rationality in some
contempt, Levinas delights in contradiction, paradox and circular
reasoning. For example, he might insist that something is both p in
one respect and not-/? in another respect, but the respects in which
this contradiction is intended to be accepted are exceedingly abstruse
and, when refined for understanding, lead on to other contradictions
and paradoxes. Sometimes the paradoxes Levinas unveils even seem
embarrassingly platitudinous, especially when taken out of context.
Finally, we are told that/?justifies q and that </justifies/?. One might
conjecture that perhaps Levinas is a speculative thinker who has in
mind a certain metaphysical stipulation of tightly interwoven con-
cepts that cannot be disentangled or exhibited, but only repeated
breathlessly.
Fourth, and most importantly, Levinas indulges in blizzards of
hyperbole. In or out of context, some of Levinas's highflying pro-
nouncements can seem rebarbative. Rhetorical gestures 'explain'
rhetorical gestures without conceptual fruition. Although he derides
rhetoric in philosophy for its deceptive qualities, and extols genuine
discourse, his work flits nervously between the two, calling attention
to their tenuous distinction.6
There is a certain rigour at work in this
playful rhetorical game. Inspired by his vision of ethics, he insists
4

hyperbolically that hyperbole itself is the only suitable textual and
linguistic means at his disposal. Unfortunately friendly commenta-
tors follow suit, exacerbating the reader's credulity by imitating the
master's prose. Although there are many fine books about Levinas,
few havemanaged to avoid interpreting Levinas in a Levinasian fash-
ion and some are more honest in this respect than others. Perhaps
only those pertinacious readers appreciative of Levinas's achieve-
ment actually write about it, and those who reject his thoughts and
strategy of composition rarely put pen to paper. Nevertheless, some
critics, including several 'Continental' philosophers notorious for
their own abstruse prose, grumble about Levinas's lack of lucidity
and conceptual exiguity.
The reader must settle on a response to Levinas's strategy.
Although many commentators insist that hyperbolic language suits
Levinas's textual strategy perfectly, they are painfully aware that
Levinas's strategy is wittingly self-defeating, that is, it cannot satisfy
its own requirements. Language itself is Levinas's essential problem,
and yet he must utilize it in order to express his ideas about this
problem. It would be singularlyirresponsible for a thinker to criticize
a usage of language yet use language in precisely that way.Thus,
there is something like a linguistic apologetics at work. One can do
nothing but deploy language in order to criticize language, and even to
use language to point out where language itself is inadequate for the
intended criticism. In each case, one can only strive not to commit the
errors one identifies. Colin Davis, in his excellent introduction to
Levinas, remarks that this apologetics is 'sometimes paradoxical and
sibylline, at other times it can appear repetitive or tautological'
because 'meaning is engendered by a practice of writing that eludes
comprehension'. It pushes language to the breaking point and strives
to rid itself of the deleterious effects of its very 'prepositional struc-
ture'.7
Robert John Sheffler Manning too has noted that Levinas's
rhetoric is expressed in phrases such as 'it is as if and 'it is not as if,
which do not state that something is or is not the case. I have noticed
that when writing about these analogies, one is seduced into writing
about them analogously, as if one could only parrot the strategy of
composition in one's own way. Although we may not have an exact-
ing understanding of these analogies, given their hyperbolic form
we must not assume that they describe matters of fact. However,
sympathetic as an excellent commentator such as Manning is to the
Levinasian project, he does concede that, if one is not enamoured of
5

this hyperbole, then one will not discern any philosophically relevant
claims or arguments.8
My own convictionis that unless there is a point
to be made, the rhetoric is recondite.Despite the rigours of the hyper-
bolic strategy, the rhetoric itself does not make a point. This convic-
tion transverses Levinas's textual strategy and causes interpretative
friction against it.
Thus, difficulties that the reader might encounter in ploughing
intransigently through a book by Levinas are not the result of his or
her own lack of sophistication, but rather in some sense an excess of
sophistication on the part of the author. With such exacting
requirements at stake, it is unfortunate that Levinas elucidates his
vision through allusions to other thinkers, which encourages us to
read his work in terms of influence in the echoing dialogue of philo-
sophical traditions. However, even the reader of philosophical acuity
might be stumped by such questions as: how has Levinas modified
Husserlian phenomenology throughout the history of his inquiry
about ethics? Has Levinas himself escaped the violent forms of
reasoning he condemns in Heidegger's existential analytic? In what
way does Descartes' notion of infinity provide opportunity for a
double reading of Levinas's notion of the face? Has Levinas
responded adequately to deconstructive criticisms? These questions
heap jargon on jargon, name on name. In brief, many commentaries
conclude nothing more than that Levinas is himself a commentator
on luminous facets of an intellectual tradition and is a worthy sub-
ject of commentary himself. The question of relevance, alas, remains
woefully unexplored.
IS CRITICISM IMPOSSIBLE?
Levinas's 'ethics' is irrefutable: to read him is either to be convinced
by him, or to misunderstand. Criticism is undesirable,even unthink-
able. To read Levinas is to be involved in a repetitive, hyperbolic
strategy that either leaves the reader mesmerized by the dazzling
effort to rescue transcendent values from the 'totalizing' clutches of
a metaphysical violence, or brands him or her a proponent of every-
thing philosophically pernicious and overweening. In other words,
either the reader must acknowledge that Levinas is correct, or, by
default, support the very conceptual tendencies he censures. If one
does the former, then all that is left is to repeat Levinas's textual
strategy, preferably in Levinas's obdurate jargon, since any other
6

philosophical paradigms are tinged with a bad 'metaphysical
violence'. If the latter, one's thinking is dismissed as insufficiently
'ethical'.
Or so Levinas's commentators normally imply. Levinas's hyper-
bolic strategy is not merely compelling, but comforting. Anyone
concerned with the 'loss of meaning' in a secular age, or the
encroachments of nihilism, or the threat of totalitarianism, will hear
the resonant power of Levinas's effort to re-enchant love and desire,
sociability and justice, piety and philosophy. With such an exalted
reinvestigation of values in mind, there has been minimal and very
discrete bickering over interpretations. The Derridean criticism of
Levinas is a friendly, internal matter, and more aggressive criticisms,
such as those of Alain Badiou (whoregards Levinas's thought as a
'dog's dinner'), are mostly ignored. The singular lack of internecine
squabbling may be the result of a tacit consent not to disturb Levinas's
legacy to the world.
However, a crucial aspect of the seductiveness of Levinas's con-
summate rhetorical strategy is the challenge to criticize it. We should
respond to Levinas, not mimic his demand for a response. To
respond ethically means to go eyeball-to-eyeball with Levinas, con-
fronting dubious notions with an unflinching gaze. When commen-
tators allow themselves to be seduced by this depiction into an
uncritical complaisance, then they are not being responsible in a
Levinasian way at all. Be that as it may,Levinas's message actually
trumpets stridently 'Challenge me, criticize me, above all RESPOND TO
ME'. Yet Levinasians have failed to answer this challenge; they are
warmed by the seductive whisper, not perturbed by the clarion's call.
In this respect, Levinasians, satisfied with repetition and exegetical
commentary, are the least Levinasian.
Alain Renault has remarked that the scintillating notion of the
'face' is primarily an example of transcendence, sometimes known as
or associated with ideas of alterity, otherness, surplus, excess, exter-
iority, rupture and disruption.9
As long as selves encounter the faces
of other persons, any notion of how they interact, or should inter-
act, even a materialistic or atheistic one,presupposes transcendence.
Human traits and dispositions, such as love, doubt, guilt, suffering,
appreciation of the beautiful and so on, are indications of the place
of transcendence in our lives. Whilst sociobiologists and utilitarians,
for example, might be unmitigatedly correct to find reductive and
empirical grounds for human morality, the Levinasian point is that
7

the very same human beings under reductive scrutiny think of them-
selves as oriented towards the transcendent,that is, as aiming beyond
seemingly untransgressible limits, or always disrupting even the
most obstinate notion of reality with their own simple dispositions
and tendencies. One can easily imagine Levinas's laughter as he
notes that even those people who challenge the significance of his
notion of the 'other' are still responding to precisely the kind of
'other', and in precisely the same fashion, that he propounds so
vigorously.
Staunch criticism is an imperative because the stakes are very high.
If Levinas is correct, then nothing short of a radical revision of ethics,
indeed, of the very philosophical context of ethics, is necessary. To
truly comprehend the grand implications of his vision, one would
need to work towards a renovation of the architecture of ethical
theories, stressing responsibility over freedom, the good over the
true, the transcendent over the immanent, or, most broadly, ethics
over philosophy. Traditional ethics itself, if Levinas is correct, would
not only merit revision; it would require an entirely different para-
digm of thought about the role of abstract values in the composition
of ethical theories. Nothing could ever be the same again in ethics, or
indeed in philosophical discourse understood mostexpansively.
Levinas makes four radically provocative claims to support his
demand for revision.
1 The relation between a self and another person is the basic con-
text in which ethical problems must be examined.
2 The self's responsibility for the other is more basic ('pre-
originary') than its freedom and volition.
3 The Good to which responsibility for the other person isdirected
is privileged over the Truth that the self freely chooses to seek.
4 An Ethics of responsibility, not the 'ontology' of freedom, should
be the 'first philosophy' that informs the rest of philosophical
inquiry.
THE INFLUENCES OF A VISIONARY
Levinas might be one of the two or three most widely discussed
French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although his books
were hugely successful in the 1980s, he wrote in near obscurity for
half a century. However, the publication of Totality and Infinity in
8

1961, and Derrida's later essay about it, brought Levinas into the
international mainstream.
His life began in Kaunas, Lithuania in January 1906 (though as a
result of differences in calendars he claimed 30 December as his
birthday, which is curiously relevant to his 'diachronic' notion of
time).10
He grew up in a multilingual environment, with Yiddish,
Russian and Hebrew being spoken and studied in the home. His
great fascination with learning may have been the result of the influ-
ence of his father, who was a bookseller. Unfortunately, in 1915 Jews
were expelled from Lithuania and his family were forced to emigrate
to the Ukraine, where he attended high school. The family returned
to Lithuania in 1920, but by 1923 Levinas was keen to move out on
his own, enrolling at the University of Strasbourg. One mightcon-
jecture that his fixation with metaphors of exile, evasion and travel-
ling with return (Ulysses) and without it (Moses), is the result of his
own family's itinerant life.
When Levinas arrived in Strasbourg as a student, could he have
known that his destiny would be intertwined with France and the
French language? Although he briefly followed Henri Bergson's
process philosophy, which was the intellectual fashion of the time, he
soon devoted himself to the burgeoning school of phenomenology.
Fascinated by the original work of Edmund Husserl's philosophical
methodology, which was nearly unknown outside Germany, he stud-
ied from 1928 to 1929 in Freiburg, where he fell under the spell of the
mesmerizing provocations of Husserl's renegade student, Martin
Heidegger. He returned to France in order to complete his first work,
The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology and to translate
Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. These efforts famously introduced
phenomenology into France. Without them, perhaps Sartre would
never have been inspired to offer existentialism as a thrilling, post-
war, cultural alternative. Levinas remained something of a purist,
however, refusing to draw too close to more radical interpretations
of phenomenological texts.
Teaching at the Alliance Israelite Universelle, he married and over
the ensuing years produced two children. During this period he was a
familiar but marginal figure in Parisian intellectual life, attending the
salons of the religious existentialist Gabriel Marcel and the brilliant
seminars of the refugee teacher Alexander Kojeve, who notoriously
introduced the philosophy of Hegel to an entire generation of
9

LEVINAS:AGUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
thinkers, including Lacan, Bataille, Aron and others. Levinas was
very disturbed by the rise of National Socialism and crestfallen in
regard to Martin Heidegger's ideological support for it. He published
his first original article at this time, 'Reflections on the Philosophy of
Hitlerism'.11
When the Second World War broke out, Levinas served as a trans-
lator in the French army, utilizing his formidable skills in German
and Russian. However, in 1940, he was captured by the German
army and, as a result of his French uniform, was sent to a POW
labour camp rather than a concentration camp. During his intern-
ment there, he wrote Existence and Existents, which has an occa-
sional literary grandeur his work would rarely match, perhaps as a
result of the influence of the extraordinary circumstances under
which it was written. The European tumult had terrible con-
sequences for his Lithuanian family, who were lost early in the war.
In France, his wife and first child were hustled into a monastery in
order to elude capture by the SS. The man who made this rescue
possible was an old friend from his student days at Strasbourg,
Maurice Blanchot, a fabulously original man of letters whose
literary life persisted in intimate contiguity to Levinas's own.
After the war, he became director of an institute for Jewish studies
and began intensive Talmudic study under the intriguingly enigmatic
Talmudist Chouchani for four years. The result was a voluminous
body of work on Judaica written over approximately thirty years. In
1961, Levinas produced Totality and Infinity, a work that is massive
in scope and might ultimately be regarded as a pivotal moment in
twentieth-century intellectual history. It is written in a literary form
similar to existentialist texts from the first half of the century, but it
has a message that presages some of the 'postmodern' themes of the
second half. After serving as professor at a number of universities, he
became professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1973, a position
from which he retired in 1979. The ideas that became Otherwise than
Being or Beyond Essence reached fruition during this period. It is his
most philosophically rewarding work, perhaps hampered by its
unique strategy of composition. He died on 27 December 1995, less
than a week short of his 90th birthday.
Levinas has been influenced by some of the most fascinating
philosophers of the classical and modern eras. He also had the priv-
ilege of learning new philosophical orientations during excitingtimes.
Those most important to Levinas were neo-Kantianism (especially
10

relevant to modern Jewish philosophy) and phenomenology (includ-
ing the short-lived excitement of existentialism, specifically that of
Jean-Paul Sartre). Levinas was self-confessedly bowled over by the
prospects of Husserlian phenomenology and troubled by Martin
Heidegger's infamous treatment of it. Commentators dwell at length
on Levinas's relationship with these more renowned thinkers, and
rightly so. Not only is Levinas a phenomenologist, but he may be one
of the few thinkers to keep phenomenological schools of thought
open into the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, nowadaysphe-
nomenology is on the margins of mainstream thought and is no
longer associated with any radical movements. Most philosophers
do not seem interested in Husserl's intriguing method for slipping
out of traditional problems of experience. There are many excellent
appraisals of Levinas's relationship with phenomenology, which will
not be emphasized in this book. I have made this alarming decision
because phenomenological jargon is an insufficient background for
interpreting the relevance of Levinas's thought.
Of other major thinkers influencing Levinas's work, the most
important might be Hegel, Kant and Spinoza. The great German
idealist Hegel was discovered by Levinas's generation, especially
under the massive influence in France of Alexander Kojeve and Jean
Hyppolite.12
Enormous chunks of Levinas's texts are glosses on
Hegel's notions of being, personal identity and language. Interest-
ingly, Levinas's ethics has not been contrasted sufficiently with
Kantian deontological notions of the moral law as often as one
might suspect. The greatest modern ethicist is an important presence
throughout Levinas's work, and in many ways Levinas is a reluctant
Kantian.13
Finally, the philosophical language of the Jewish meta-
physician Baruch de Spinoza is interwoven throughout Levinas's
later books, especially Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence.^
Many commentators are keen to point out that Levinas's thoughts
are intertwined with those of fascinating French contemporaries,
many of whom he called friend. These include such fascinating poets
and men-of-letters as Maurice Blanchot,15
Gabriel Marcel, Vladimir
Jankelevitch,16
Edmund Jabes17
and others. These impressive figures
are almost unknown outside France and are at least as difficult to
interpret as Levinas himself.
Far more pertinent to a critical inquiry into the relevance of
Levinas's thought is the very promising engagement with four
mostly unrelated areas of the humanities today-.psychology (especially
II

LEVINAS:A GUIDE FORTHEPERPLEXED
psychotherapy), Jewish philosophy and Holocaust Studies, feminism
and postmodern theory}*
PSYCHOLOGY - Some psychotherapists have observed that Levinas's
'ethical responsibility' and his depiction of the self obsessed by other
persons has an intuitive similarity with other-centred psychological
theories. John Heaton, for example, suggests that the ethics of
responsibility might help psychotherapy to understand the therapist/
patient relationship more effectively.19
Suzanne Barnard has
noted that Levinas might contribute to a movement beyond 'the
foundational-relativist binary that threatens to stultify debate on
ethicsinpsychology'.20
In otherwords, Levinas's offer ofan alternative
to a contemporary psychology has bogged down into an opposition
between foundational theoretical constructions and mererelativistic
orientations. George Kunz insists that selves are indeed dependent
upon one another in non-reciprocal yet formative ways. He refers to
the Levinasian alternative 'radical altruism', which maintains that
we should be emphasizing how the neediness and worthiness of
other persons shape selfhood prior to any self-centred rational
activity, such as intending to do something that would make us
happy.21
JEWISH PHILOSOPHY ANDHOLOCAUST STUDIES - Levinas is undoubt-
edly one of the greatest Jewish philosophers of the twentiethcentury.
He surely deserves mention alongside Martin Buber,22
Franz
Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch23
and Emil Fackenheim.
Most provocative is Levinas's confrontation of traditional Jewish
philosophical notions with contemporary philosophical perspec-
tives. Roughly, on the one hand, the Jewish philosophical tradition
stresses responsibility within community and a special form of text-
ual interpretation that enables the law to adapt to changing com-
munitarian circumstances. Richard Cohen, Robert Gibbs and Susan
Handelman have explored the 'Jewishness' of Levinas's thought, not
only in terms of the manner in which it draws from Judaic sources,
but in the way that it sustains a challenge to contemporary Jewish
thought.24
Levinas, for whom the horrors of the Holocaust were a
tragic personal presence, is at every stage in his philosophical devel-
opment intimatelymindful of just how much those genocidal events
have confronted the way we think and live. Leonard Grob has noted
that Levinas's criticism of philosophy for making events such as the
12

THE PROBLEMOF INTRODUCTION
Holocaust possible, and even somehow justifying them, is highly
pertinent in Holocaust studies today.25
Indeed, Levinas is mentioned
with commendation by many of the contributors to two collections
of articles in Holocaust Studies entitled Good and Evil after Ausch-
witz: Ethical Implications for Today26 and Postmodernism and the
Holocaust.21
FEMINISM - Perhaps no subject in Levinas's work has received more
attention than his contribution to feminism. The question is whether
his work is friendly to feminism, or even has a feministic undercur-
rent. Generally speaking, as a religious traditionalist, Levinas makes
a strong effort to be respectful of women, but one that might not be
appreciated by some feminists. Is woman seen only from a masculine
perspective, no matter how admired and respected she is? Is she
depicted as respectable only because of some masculine perspective
upon her nature? Is she merely a submissive and supportive bit player
in the drama of history? Is she a representative of the consoling and
nurturing Feminine that assists the masculine character to attain
greater fulfilment and transcendence? Key texts in this area are those
of Luce Irigaray, Catherine Chalier, Stella Sandford, Tina Chanter
and Alison Ainley (see Chapter 12 for bibliographical citations).
POSTMODERN THEORY - Levinas is not straightforwardly postmodern.
Yet, his work has been discovered as a fellow traveller to the post-
modern paradigm. The emphasis upon the fragmentation of reason
and the many perspectives that constitute any cultural orientation is
prefigured in Levinas's understanding of 'infinite' social arrange-
ments. Jeffrey Reiman has proposed that Levinas be understood as a
'postmodern liberal' who maintains that individuals should live lives
without violence or oppression from others.28
Noreen O'Connor has
noted that Levinas might be spoken of in association with the radical
historian of ideas Michel Foucault, with whom he shares a fascination
with the gaps and ruptures in contemporary history.29
Intriguingly,
Oona Ajzenstat has developed the thesis that Levinas is genuinely
postmodern primarily because of the unique Judaic sources of his
thought. Traditional Jewish philosophy, forgotten even by many in the
Jewish tradition and marginalized in the mainstream of the Western
tradition (which remains reluctant to admit its indebtedness) pos-
sesses a kind of contemporary radicalism. The oldest and the most
forgotten is also most relevant to the modern human condition.30
13

CHAPTER I
FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
Levinas is acclaimed, though sometimes vituperated, as the phil-
osopher of 'the other'. He contends that Western philosophy, and
indeed Western civilization itself, exhibits an often horrific pro-
pensity to reduce everything fortuitous, foreign and enigmatic to
conditions of intelligibility. This reduction takes place even at the
behest of morality, which, in the famous first words of Totality and
Infinity, may be 'duping' us.1
The West recoils from the obliterated
secrets of the past, the unpredictable events of the future and any-
thing that cannot be rationally ordered and manipulated. Everything
must be known, understood, synthesized, analysed, utilized; if some-
thing cannot be grasped by the rationalistic mind, then it is either
extraneous or portentous. Given its perfectionistic drive to impose
rationalistic categories upon the world in order to realize a future
state of perfect intelligibility, nothing seemingly can resist the
rational order of science, the technological order of utility and the
political order of justice. Among the many entities that Western
rationality inexorably seeks to render intelligible are: God, the indi-
vidual agent, the historical past, the progressive future, non-Western
cultures and any cultural tradition that is mythological or 'supersti-
tious' in nature. Western rationality seeks to rationalize the being of
God in such a way that it is just a being among beings. It strips
individual persons of all the facets of their unique existences,
reducing them to a faceless horde living side-by-side in anonymity. It
endeavours to expand memory to the point that nothing past is
forgotten and to thrust itself into the future so that nothing is un-
divinable. Finally, foreign traditions that might not contribute to the
perpetual march of rational success are either crushed, distorted or
ignored, as colonialism and the Cold War attested, and several
14

'terroristic' or 'rogue' nations have recently discovered. Levinas util-
izes several terms to describe the perfectionistic urge of rationality to
reduce everything to transparent intelligibility, most evocative of
which would be 'being's move'.
The dignity of being the ultimate and royal discourse belongs to
Western philosophy because of the strict coinciding of thought, in
which philosophy resides, and the ideas of reality which this
thought thinks. For thought, this coinciding means not having to
think beyond what mediates a previous belongingness to 'being's
move' [geste d'etre] or at least not beyond what modifies a previ-
ous belongingness to 'being's move', such as formal and ideal
notions. For the being of reality, this coinciding means to
illuminate thought and the conceived by showing itself. To show
itself, to be illuminated, is just what having meaning is, what
having intelligibility par excellence is, the intelligibility under-
lying every modification of meaning. [. . .] Rationality has to be
understood as the incessant emergence of thought from the
energy of 'being's move' or its modification, and reason has to
be understood out of this rationality.2
It might be worthwhile to discuss the story of 'being's move' in
more generally Levinasian terms. The 'ontology of power' is his
grandiloquent term for a salient aspect of Western metaphysics.
There is urgency in his claim that metaphysics has been interested
primarily in totalization, the reduction of any form of difference to
sameness for the purpose of enhancing the power of rationalization.3
Under ideal conditions, knowledge is perfectly adequate to reality.
The totalizing tendency of Western metaphysics comes in the form
of a dual aspect theory of power. On the one hand, when our knowl-
edge is adequate to reality, then everything is reduced to sameness,
which gives an epistemological mission to rationality. On the other
hand, when we have discovered the metaphysical principle of differ-
ence that enables comprehension of the uncomprehended, then we
have reduced difference to sameness by other means; this facilitates
principles of knowledge, which give a purpose to metaphysics.
Epistemology and metaphysics, then, are enfolded in the conditions
of the ineluctable progress of totalization.
Selfhood precipitates its power to become through the effects of
totalization. The more adequate its knowledge, and the more
15

LEVINAS:A GUIDE FORTHE PERPLEXED
reduced the differences of reality, then the more power over reality it
has, and therefore the more perfect it is.The self comes to be at once
detached from and empowered over the reality it has reduced and
adequated in its pursuit of unmitigated knowledge. Self-sufficient
autonomy is achieved when the self is distanced from the world,
empowered over it and masterfully subordinated to universal laws
that give it purpose and justification. Hence, not only has selfhood
advanced its means of access to reality, but it has transformed its
status in that reality as well. Of course, there is no rational guarantee
that reduction and adequation will leave selfhood detached and
empowered, if only because this totalizing process has effects upon
the self as well as its reality. In its ability to rise above its existence
through conscious activity, its own individuation is reduced and
adequated as well. This is tantamount to the claim that the more
human subjectivity knows of its reality and assumespower over it, the
less it retains its uniqueness and the less power it has over its own
determination. The self loses itself by progressively disappearing into
the totality it has madefor itself. We speak of the self as if we were
talking about a unique individual, when in fact we are referring to
some principle that renders uniqueness intelligible. Totalization
entails that there would be nothing to the self that could remain
unreduced and non-adequated: there is no aspect of the 'Anteriority'
of the self that has not been reduced to the totality of rationalism.
Emotions, religious beliefs, sexual pleasure and anything intimate
about the self are part of the technical economy of rationalism.
Nothing being outside or inside this totality that is not interpreted
through the values of rational reduction, no individuality or speci-
ficity, no enigma or pure transcendence, could possibly sustain itself.
If the ideal of modern Western rationalism, of the 'ontology of
power', were to obtain, then the potential of anything specific being
subversive or disruptive of this ideal is eradicated. One might
say that life, then, would lack the poignancy that makes it worth
living. . .
However, Emmanuel Levinas is not exclusivelya critic of modern
Western rationality. He is more widely esteemed as a visionary
thinker who explores the neglected status of ethics. He contends that
his is no mere ethics among competing ethics but an 'ethics of ethics',
that is, very roughly, the study of the manner in which foreignness,
inexplicability and unpredictability shape the human condition des-
pite the often arrogant demands of rationalism. For Levinas, the
16

human condition is indeed shaped by rationality, especially in the
form of technology and politics, but it is most radically dependent
upon the very foreign elements this rationality strives to render intel-
ligible. The self is torn by an irresolvable and irresistible strife
between the order of the 'Same', which strives to totalize everything
under the illumination of reason, and the order of the Other, in
which vital parts of human existence remain necessarily unil-
lumined. The self and the self s world are determined by enigmatic
phenomena that remain unknown to us and irreducible to rational
criteria in the totalizing project. In a sense, there are aspects of
human existence that can never be known, and indeed, it is best for
us that these things continue to keep their secrets. That iswhat Levinas
means when he iterates that infinity always resists totality, the other
always 'overflows' the same: no matter how much we come to know,
it is always something resisting or disrupting the perimeters of
the known. Only through an exploration of this overflowing, this
resistance and disruption, can the ultimate principle of ethics be
articulated - responsibility.
THE THREE ASPECTS OF THE 'ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY'
The phrase 'ethics of ethics' is opprobriously vague. It can bring a
smile to the cynic's lips: 'Isn't this like the "meaning of meaning" or
the "emptiness of emptiness"?' Perhaps a common translation of
this idea will sober the cynic's smug incredulity: 'the ethics of
responsibility'. Levinas denounced the effects that the drive to per-
fect intelligibilityproduces on interaction between persons. His texts
never cease to exhibit a fascination with the enigmatic ways that
human beings express their uniqueness in social intercourse. More-
over, he avers that we are dependent upon others in ways of which we
are often unaware, precisely because we so often think of ourselves in
terms of the evaluating criteria of modern rationality. Although he
wrote of it voluminously, Levinas might never have been satisfied
with his efforts to show that there is something disruptive and
irreducible in our social interaction, and indeed, something inexplic-
able too.There are ways in which we respond to foreignness without
being conscious of doing so, even in simple dialogue with others who
face us, which in itself is tantamount to a subversion of totalization.
T understand responsibility as responsibility for the Other', Levinas
announces in an interview,'for what is not my deed, or for what does
17

LEVINAS: A GUIDE FORTHE PERPLEXED
not even matter to me; or which precisely does matter to me, is met
by me as face.'4
Since the face of another person is so enigmatically
foreign, there is a mysterious quality to responsibility, regardless of
whether it matters to me or not.
Levinas stresses that in myriad ways responsibility is vital even to
freedom. He propounds the controversial claim that freedom itself
would be impossible without responsibility. In some intriguing ways,
this entails that freedom is subordinate to responsibility. Levinas
states this neatly: 'A free being alone is responsible, that is, already
not free. A being capable of beginning in the present is alone
encumbered with itself.5
Perhaps Levinas is correct to insist that
moral philosophy has always presupposed that one can only be
responsible if one is capable of being free. He maintains that this is
false, since only a person capable of responsibility could be called to
discover its freedom. Naturally, this does not signify any hostility to
freedom on Levinas's part. On the contrary, if freedom is vital to the
exercise of responsibility, then that indicates only a criticism of any
philosophical refusal to recognize the vital role of responsibility in
human existence. Modern rationality emphasizes the privilege of
freedom over responsibility because the irreducible aspects of the
human condition are either presumed intelligibleor ignored. It estab-
lishes the ideal of the rational, autonomous (self-ruling) and free
agent capable of deciding whether to be responsible and choosing
which responsibility to recognize. But, and this is a vital Levinasian
objection, there is an indefinite number of alternative courses of
action upon which we decide or among which we choose. In a richly
significant sense, although freedom may be determined by rational-
istic criteria, rationality itself finds its opportunities in the network
of social relationships in which the self is embedded. The self could
not be self-ruling if it did not have some obligation to be so, and that
obligation too is elicited by social arrangements. Furthermore, even
the self s freedom is facilitated solely by dialogical opportunity. The
opposition between freedom and responsibility, then, does not pose
a question of exclusive alternatives, an 'either/or', but rather a ques-
tion of privilege and subordination. Ultimately, for Levinas,
responsibility isprimary because we can discover ourfreedom for our-
selves only if responsibilities demand it of us. One could not be free
unless responsibilities provided opportunities to be so, and one could
not be responsible if one lacked the free volitional agency to enact
responsibility. Freedom may be necessary for ethics, but an ethics of
18

ethics is satisfied only when the prior condition of responsibility is
explored and acknowledged.
There are three interleaved meanings at work in the significanceof
'responsibility'. They are:
1 'responsibility' as responding to the other in an indeclinable
fashion;
2 'responsibility' as respondingfor oneself to the other person and
its demand; and
3 'responsibility' as respondingfor the other in the sense of substi-
tuting oneself for the other person in its responsibilities.
The ethics of responsibility means, for the initial purpose of clari-
fication, that we are born into a world of social relationships which
we have not chosen and which we cannot ignore. Robert John Sheffler
Manning approves of the thought that Levinasian responsibility is
the most 'primordial' state of interhuman relations, though not the
basic state of individual beings. Indeed, all thought is directed and
given meaning by this responsibility.6
Something is expected of us by
other people from the first moments of our consciousness and at
every moment along the pathways in life we think we choose. What
we call 'freedom' is actually a response to the responsibilities that the
world of social relationships, into which we are born, elucidates. We
discover our individual freedoms in response to the exigencies of
human existence, prominent among which are relations with others.
Discovering one's freedom in experience of the other person is simi-
lar to an elevation, a promotion, in which the self locates incessantly,
unveils a new necessary commitment to the well-beingof others. We
are never alone, but always 'face-to-face' with other people who call
us to recognize our responsibilities to them. When Levinas avows
that this responsibility is 'indeclinable', he intends us to understand
that we cannot say 'no' to it. 'To be I', Levinas proclaims, 'signifies
not being able to escape responsibility' because I am bound uniquely
to the other.' Even before I encounter the other, in fact, I am respon-
sible. T am obliged without this obligation having begun in me, as
though an order slipped into my consciousness like a thief, smuggled
itself in.'8
The other person may verbally or behaviourially demand
that we discover our freedom and use it to be responsible to them,
but the mere presence of the other is enough to call us to responsibil-
ity. Merely to come into contact with someone else is to discover that
19

one must respond. In a sense, even to say 'No!' to responsibility
is still to respond, as Levinas occasionally maintained. When he
examines the meaning of the 'face' in the 'face-to-face' relationship,
Levinas understood that there is something enigmatic, or quasi-
indeterminate, in the human visage that forces us to recognize certain
commitments to others. And this is so even when we are not con-
scious of reacting in this fashion and, indeed, even when we refuse to
admit that this is the case. The face of another person elicits a
responsibility to that person. On every occasion in which we respond
to someone, we are being responsible to them in an indeclinable, that
is, irrefusable, way. The face of the other person in the face-to-face
relationship has a kind of powerful privilege over us. He often writes
of the self as a 'hostage' persecuted by the other person. And yet,
Levinas takes this privilege of the face even further: the face both
demands reasons and makes rationality possible.
The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obli-
gation, which no 'Anteriority' permits avoiding. It is that discourse
that obliges the entering into discourse, the commandment of
discourse rationality prays for, a 'force' that convinces even 'the
people who do not want to listen' [Plato, Republic 327 b] and this
founds the true universality of reason.9
Generally speaking, false rationalities, then, are those that are not
responses to foreignness in the face-to-face relationship; genuine
rationalities, on the contrary, are answers engendered by others
commanded to do something in such relationships.
Levinas's language in describing this 'other' merits cursory
divergence. The other person is 'absolutely other' than the self, and
of what the self takes it to be,but not absolutelyother than everything,
a designation reserved for a god alone. It is different in every relevant
sense, and not only in its characteristics and comportment.10
Despite
being naked, foreign, a stranger, a widow, an orphan or, in general,
destitute and needy, it is also lord and master precisely because of
the effect it has on the self. Despite being forlorn and destitute, it
establishes a kind of power over the self." Insofar as the self is
autonomously powerful and self-sufficient, the other approaches it
as a destitute superior, as someone possessing 'majesty' and foreign
intimacy. It may be sought, but it approaches and joins the self only
when it chooses. It is due to this elusiveness that its destitution
20

constitutes a magisterial privilege. It commands the self to command
itself, to exercise its powers completely on behalf of the other. It calls
the self s freedom into question and then demands that it use it
responsibly.12
It challenges the self s very right to exist, as well as its
being what it thinks it is, even as it demands that self-affirmation.13
It
is right there in the midst of the self s experience, yet it eludes the
self s grasp and appears to come up behind the self s perception of
it.14
The other person has an experiential effect that one might
associate with an otherworldly being, and indeed it is 'as if some-
thing of that other world shines through its face.15
Obviously, there is
something 'higher' or more exalted about the other person, Levinas
maintains, and this height is associated precisely with its lack of
power. 'Higher than me and yet poorer than me' - that is a phrase
Levinas uses on several occasions to describe what he thinks is
happening in the face-to-face relation.
The problem of the other person is a problem of analogy. The
other person is sufficiently 'like a person' to be responded to, but not
enough 'like' yet other persons to be understood as nothing but a per-
son. Simon Critchley remarks, 'The Other who approaches me is a
singular other who does not lose him or her self in a crowd of
others'.16
Thus, the self is, on the one hand, at once singular with
characteristics that make it uniquely distinct from other persons and
objects, and like them in various tangible and perceptible respects.
However, on the other hand, the other person is 'other' also in the
sense of being absolutely different from any possible conception of it
based on experience. It is unlike even what one takes it to be, namely,
a 'person' with all the essential properties and existential qualities
one deems a person to have. As Manning maintains, the Levinasian
'other' is an absolutely different entity, if it is an entity at all, differ-
ent from all other persons and objects and irreducible to any com-
mensurating idea of a person or thing. He writes that, although
Levinas 'refers to the Other as absolutely and infinitely other', he
'does not deny that the Other is understood in terms of being'. The
other person, then, is an alter ego (as Levinas wrote on occasion),
but is 'always more than this'.17
The 'Other' is like a person to a
certain degree, but not at all more than that degree; it is more than
merely a person, but not too much like a mere person. The 'Other'
stands out from the crowd and yet is not merely distinct from it; it
is completely beyond the crowd but not absolutely unintelligible.
Robert Gibbs thinks that another person that possesses such
21

characteristics is 'strangely underdetermined', which one might take
to mean that its aggregated aspects compose an obscure and unneces-
sarily complex description, that is, one to which no reality could be
commensurate.18
Identifying the problem of analogy exposed the
overdetermination of the concept of the 'other person'; that is, too
many characteristics are rhetorically heaped up to enable any clarity
of description. It is somewhat befuddling that a being could be both
'more than' merely a person but 'not absolutely other'. There must
be some indeterminate range between the two, some scheme of intel-
ligibility in which it is neither completely determinate nor completely
indeterminate: not too much like a person, but not too little either.
(One might be reminded of David Hume's devastating criticisms of
the analogies between human beings and gods in the Dialoguescon-
cerning Natural Religion, where it is shown that the analogy fails no
matter how much similarity or dissimilarity there is.) At any rate, we
are told that we should not be too 'ontological', that is,not to reduce
the 'being' of this other person to the status of other beings, and yet
we are not told how far beyond 'ontological' we are permitted to
journey, perhaps because that would be to think 'ontologically'.
Unsettled by the proximity of others, one is not only responsible
to them, but responsible for oneself under their gaze. The other per-
son's very presence forces one to stand up for oneself and exercise
one's discovered freedom. Such a self is in no way 'cool, calm and
collected', but in a way obsessed by the other's demands. After all,
this face and its demands remain incompletely grasped by the self,
and yet the self is under the spotlights of its expectations. The other
person wants something that one must give, but exactly what do they
require? When exposed to the demanding gaze of the other person,
one is not an autonomous free agent, but rather a divided or even
fragmented self that must collect itself and discover the means by
which it can be freely self-ruling. 'Responding for' oneself implies
what Levinas describes as 'substitution', which means that no one
can be substituted for oneself in one's own responsibility. Edith
Wyschogrod describes this vividly: 'Substitution is possible only for a
moral consciousness obsessed with the other person, with what is
strange, unbalanced, escapes all principle, origins and will.'19
If
responsibility is indeclinable and unchosen, then one cannot say
'Someone else can bear this responsibility'. Moreover, although the
self can imagine itself substituted for a destitute other in the sense of
'putting oneself in their shoes', this process is not reversible. The
22

non-substitutability of oneself in one's responsibility demonstrates
that responsibilities cannot be passed on to someone else. Shirking
responsibility, as Levinas often said, is nevertheless a form of
response.
A discussion of 'responsibility for oneself is incomplete without a
description of the self that is being called to responsibility. The self
in the face-to-face relationship is radically passive in the sense of
being receptive of or susceptible to the face and the demand it repre-
sents, without being able to do otherwise. A passive self is very active
in its responsiveness to the other person, but not yet autonomously
and self-sufficiently active. To respond to and for the other person
means that one is sentiently responsive to its foreignness and
demandingness. The other person disturbs one to the point that one
is no longer 'origin' of oneself.20
When Levinas insists that 'the eth-
ical relation is not grafted on to an antecedent relation of cognition;
it is a foundation and not a superstructure',21
it is implied that the
self s sentient exposure to the face is a radical experience, that is, the
pre-philosophical experience. He proposed these experiences long
before his emphasis upon ethical relations. In early books such as
Existence and the Existent, he surveys various subjective states of
sentient responsiveness such as anxiety about the limitlessness of
existence, dread of the event of death and insomnia. These are
experiences in which one is not in control of oneself, but haunted by
some existential state of one's experience. He offers many depictions
of this radically subjective self, such as the exposure to the other
person as a 'risky uncovering of oneself, in sincerity, the breaking up
of inwardness and the abandonment of all shelters, exposure to
traumas, vulnerability'.22
Prior to any choices and actions, these
experiences are 'always already' a part of what one is in the face-to-
face relationship. All of these experiences of the other person in
which we are radically passive precede our autonomy to enact our
freedom.
Intriguingly, the many ways of being 'responsible to' someone
cause the self to be something other than what one would choose
autonomously. And being 'responsible for' others deepens this div-
ision between consciousness of oneself and uncontrollable con-
science for the other. The other person has suggested to the self what
the self itself is in unchosen terms. Whether one wants to behave in a
certain way, or be perceived a certain way, is not primarily one's own
choice. One comes to identify oneself according to the expectations
23

of others in complicity with conscience. Even the egotistic or mali-
cious person has responded to others by adopting a persona in
response to their expectations, though Slavoj Zizek thinks that this
betrays ethics, as we shall see in Chapter 13.
There is a third aspect of responsibility called 'responsibility for
the other'. The one for whom I have to respond, Levinas pronounces,
is also the one to whom I have to respond. 'The "for whom ..." and
the "to whom . .." coincide.'23
The self is 'freed from itself in experi-
ence of other people, but not free in the sense of a free initiative.
Although one must respond, the very status of free existence has
been elevated to a greater height, as he says so often, 'beyond
being'.24
Although one is responsible to the other and for oneself,
one is also responsible for the actions of others. 'Responsibility for'
others is very similar to sympathy, feeling with someone, especiallyin
their suffering. No one can be substituted for the self in its indeclin-
able responsibility, but it must be responsible for others if their pres-
ence demands it. For example, when someone in pain approaches,
responsibility for this pain is radical even if one neither caused this
pain nor assumed any responsibility for it. One is solicitous of the
other person in its suffering. 'What can I do to help?' or 'Are you all
right?' or 'What happened?' or 'Who did this to you?' are possible
responses that suggest 'responsibility for'. One's exposure to the face
of a suffering person places one in a position to treat this suffering as
if it were one's own.
'Responsibility for others' has other aspects as well. One might
feel responsible for some action performed by someone else. 'We
should not let genocide occur again' is an example of recognition of
a special kind of responsibility. Whenever genocide occurs, one has a
stake in accountability even though one is neither performing it nor
even threatened by it. One is responsible for the suffering and death
of the victims and responsible for the perpetrators of the atrocities,
even those executed against ourselves. It is as if one were saying, in
conscience, 'Although this has nothing to do with me personally, I
feel responsible for the actions of these criminals'. Generally speak-
ing, then, 'responsibility for' means both that it is as if the suffering
of the victims were mine and as if the action of the violent agent
were mine as well. Merely 'responding to' the victim makes one
'responsible for' the crime.
Because one is responsible without voluntarily 'taking on' this
responsibility whenever the other person looks at oneself, one's
24

responsibilities are for them. Beyond this, one is responsible for the
responsibilities of others. Nothing that concerns the Stranger, Levinas
says, can leave one indifferent.25
Others respond to others too, and
their manner of doing so is something one is 'responsible for'.
Whether others are persecuted or persecutors, one is to put oneself in
their place and be responsive, though one should always recall that,
although one may bear others' responsibility, no one else can bear
one's own. One can alwaysdemand justice for others, especially those
closest, precisely because one is responsible even for the responsi-
bilities of others.26
Levinas is willing to take this responsibility as far
as substitutabilityfor the persecutors, even my own persecutor.27
On many occasions in his writing, Levinas notes reconditely that
these responsibilities are 'infinite'. Although he offers many meta-
physical descriptions of this infinity, what is most directly relevant to
the determination of responsibilities is their scope. He often quotes
Dostoyevsky's 'We are all guilty (or, in other formulations, respon-
sible) of all and for all men before all, and I more than the others'.28
Everything done that causes harm or suffering is something for
which we are guilty (or responsible). We are all responsible to every-
one else for anything that has been done. And each person, from its
own perspective, is more responsible or guilty than anyone or every-
one else. Roughly speaking, on the one hand, one is responsible to all
persecuted persons for all that is done to them, and on the other, one
is responsible for everythingthat is done by others to them. It might
be worthwhile to break down the face-to-face relationship into
several levels of responsibility.
1 One must respond to the other.
2 One is responsible for oneself to the other person.
3 One is responsible for the other person to yet other persons.
4 One is responsible to the persecuted other by substituting myself
for them.
5 One is responsible for the persecutor, even my own, by adopting
the responsibilitiesof the persecutor that are not be recognized.
RESPONSIBILITY, CONSEQUENTIALISM AND DEONTOLOGY
Most contemporary ethicists and moral philosophers ignore
Levinas's portrayal of the ethics of responsibility on the grounds of
its uncertain contribution to contemporary normative theories.
25

When Levinas insists that he is not merely offering another ethics,
but an 'ethics of ethics' that focuses on aspects of responsible self-
hood that have been neglected by traditional ethical theories, he is
removing his theory from the domain of contemporary ethical
concerns as moral philosophers understand them.
The moral philosopher might want to know how necessary this
underlying foundation of responsibility is to traditional paradigms
of freedom and obligation. Jacques Derrida, a convivial critic, has
noticed that the concept of responsibility might 'lack coherence
or consequence', though it could still 'function' as a concept that
is ineffable - ubiquitous without specific location in law and
ethics.29
Be that as it may, determining coherence would require
awkward comparisons with classifications of ethical theory, such as
deontology and consequentialism.30
Any comparison of Levinas and contemporary normative theory
must begin with the question of autonomy, a term associated with
the regal philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Catherine Chalier remarks
lucidly that Kant's emphasis upon the self-ruling subject is of great
importance to Levinas's notion of responsibility. Roughly speaking,
for Kant the self is autonomous in the sense that it imposes upon
itself personal rules of conduct that are logically compatible with
universalizable principles of reason, thereby treating others as ulti-
mate recipients of moral agency and not means to self-interested ends.
Autonomy is necessary for a morally relevant exercise of practical
reason because its opposite, heteronomy, is understood variously as
being ruled by self-interested others or by no principles of duty at all.
Kant insiststhat 'disinterestedness' isnecessary for autonomy, that is,
one's conduct could not be moral when one has some sociallyworthy
goal in mind, or when anyone else is treating one as a means to
satisfying their own ends. The moral self rationally imposes univer-
salizable and non-contradictory principles of duty upon itself but,
according to Kant, it does not do so in a spirit of self-interest to
which it is antithetical initially. Being morally autonomous defines
one's self-interest, not vice versa, such that one desires to do one's
duties above all, but one is not morally autonomous simply because
it suits one's self-intereststo be so.
Levinas, however, regards the rational autonomy of the self in its
disinterestedness as something of a ploy to fulfil the terms of self-
interest on a more generally efficacious register of thought. Not even
self-interest purified by rational autonomy is ethical in Levinas's
26

sense. He suspects that the moral self-interest possessed by an
autonomous self is potentially an exercise of the ontology of power
and its egoistic values. At any rate, Chalier maintains, it 'does not
deliver the subject from ontological egoism' and 'even seems to con-
demn the subject to never move beyond it'.31
And indeed, given
Levinas's commitment to responsibility for the other person that is
awakened by that person's approach, the fact that the morally
autonomous self is original in its imposition of principles of duty
upon itself testifies to a lack of responsibility to and for the other
person.32
It responds to the law, not to the face, and thus, in evading
the tyranny of the foreign and arbitrary laws imposed upon it heter-
onomously, it has now become something of a tyrant to the other
person itself.33
Moreover, the autonomous self is a victim of tyranny,
not its perpetrator. Autonomous or otherwise, it is beset either by the
'tyrant's alienating heteronomy', which comes in the form of power-
ful, perhaps non-rational, laws the tyrant imposes upon the self, or
by the tyranny of the other person, which comes in the form of a
'privileged heteronomy' that 'invests' freedom and makes an 'infinite
request of it'. Under the tyrant, the self is merely a victim manipu-
lated by foreign self-interests but, under the tyranny of the
other person, it is singularized by the indeclinability and
non-substitutability of its responsibility.34
Alain Renault has made the significant point that it is entirely
possible that Levinas 'miss[es] the indispensability of autonomy'
altogether.35
If autonomy is lacking in the Levinasian self, then
deontology, and in a different way, consequentialism, will not be able
to accommodate that self, as we shall see. The 'Ethics' of the ethics
of responsibility would be dissipated because there is no ethics to
which this 'Ethics' can relate in the absence of autonomy. For Levinas,
the self is not isolated in an insular self-sufficiency. It is the passivity
of an exposed self that constitutes its subjectivity, not the activity of
its autonomy. Selves do not give themselves laws as autonomy
requires, but rather the laws come from the response to the other
person.
Renault responds impressively that Levinas's rejection of auton-
omy in this way is a 'sign of an insufficiently precise categorization'.
Levinas obfuscates a necessary distinction between autonomy and
independence, when, as Renault insists, the very notion of autonomy
presupposes the exposure to the other that precludes independence
and individuation.36
Being autonomous means that the self bestows
27

laws upon its own conduct because it has 'transcended the self-
identity of the desiring subject (individuality) and opened itself up
to the otherness of the human species'." Thus, being autonomous
entails rising up out of independent self-sufficiency as an individual
self and living by the laws of the other person. Moreover, if the self
is not autonomous in this sense, then its response to the other person
would amount to a rupture of its identity such that its subjectivity
would be dissolved. That is, unless a self is autonomous, then its
response to the other person could not lead to a responsibility for it.
In addition, as Renault points out correctly, although autonomy is a
matter of selfhood, it is 'identified with the intersubjective com-
munity of a humanity in agreement about the law governing it'.38
Thus, face-to-face relationships alone may not be sufficient for the
development of selfhood unless they participate in a context of
communitarian agreements, which is something that Levinas
explicitly rejects, as we shall see in Chapter 8.
With these problems of autonomy in mind, we might ask whether
Levinas's refusal to admit self-interestedness into his view of ethics
creates difficulties in determining itscontributionto normativetheory.
It seems plausible to suspect that Levinas would condemn con-
sequentialism for its self-interestedness. If so, then what contribution
might Levinas make to consequentialism with this criticisim? In
order to provide an answer, it is important to acknowledge that con-
sequentialism, like deontology, addresses the issue of what bestows
moral worth upon an action, or what makes a good action 'good'?
Consequentialism, at its most basic, argues that certain facts about
the consequences of an action determine the moral worth of the
action. Very roughly, if the consequences are good, then the action
that produces those consequences is good. Utilitarianism, for
example, might argue that, when faced with a moral dilemma, one
should assess the competing possible outcomes in terms of rational
expected utility. The action that would produce the morally best
outcome would be the action recommended in order to avoid moral
confusion. Of course, not all consequentialistsare content with this
classic formulation. Many, influenced by the American philosopher
of law John Rawls, would argue that 'the good is defined independ-
ently from the right, and the right is defined as that whichmaximizes
the good'.39
Whatever consequences are in some way deemed good
are thereforedetermined to be 'right'. The goodness of ultimate con-
sequences establishes what is right, such that Tightness then becomes
28

a universal prescription of actions we should perform precisely
because they maximize goodness. However, consequentialism is not
used merely to assess the goodness and Tightness of actions, but the
nature of moral motivations as well. If a particular value is deter-
mined to have moral worth, that is it is ultimately good for people to
do and to receive it from others, then it is right to do it. It is good for
oneself and others that one should be charitable, therefore charity is
right. Yet, what counts most strongly in this simple formulation is
that one seeks desire to enact or promote the value of charity, and
indeed strives to do so. Thus, in some sense whatever values one
adopts, one must adopt them with the idea of being committed to
their promotion, that is, to encourage charitable agency in others.
The probabilities of competing ways of promoting charity should be
assessed and effective courses of action prognosticated. Of course,
inductions of this kind about future states of affairs and the prob-
able outcomes of the competing actions and are uncertain, but after
all they are probabilities that one must weigh as a conscientious
moral agent. The moral worth of one's action is determined by the
predicted outcomes from which one chooses. The fact that some
form of charitable conduct appears to be most competent in pro-
ducing good consequences does not actually render being charitable
morally worthy. The cement of this theory is the aforementioned
commitment to some version of universal prescriptivism, which
means that, if one is a certain kind of moral agent, with a certain
kind of promotable value in mind, in a specific kind of context, faced
with a certain kind of choice, there is universal advice about what
one should do.
Obviously, one could expect greater analytic detail in the nature of
consequentialism, but this sketch is sufficient for an evaluation of the
relevance of Levinas's ethics of responsibility. It might be interesting
to discern (a) how consequentialism might contribute to Levinas's
notion of the discovery of freedom, and, mutatis mutandis, (b) how
Levinas's face-to-face relation might lend greater detail to the
consequentialist context.
Consequentialism could provide a number of interesting motifs to
the discovery of freedom if only Levinas were more coherent in his
depiction of volition and agency within the face-to-face relationship.
Levinas appears to counter every consequentialist claim with a
recondite rejoinder. For example, the consequentialist agent is
autonomous and self-sufficient, capable of rationally deliberating to
29

LEVINAS:AGUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
determine the most morally worthy course of action available to it.
However, Levinas's self is disturbed by an injunction coming from
the other person, an injunction that de-cores it and strips it of the
conceits of autonomous agency. In addition, the consequentialist
agent is answering to a universal injunction that it imposes on the
world of its own autonomous accord. One chooses to be charitable
because it is rationally desirable to intend to bring about certain
effects. However, Levinas's self has no choice in the matter: it does
not choose to answer the other person's demand for charity, and it
does not even choose how to go about being charitable. It is not
answering to any universal rationality nor is it imposing one upon its
network of social arrangements. Indeed, there is nothing straight-
forwardly rational about the demand the other person makes; it need
not even make sense to the self, and in fact, it does not even have to
matter to it. To deliberate over possible options is to choose among
them, rejecting options of lesser moral value and being motivated
autonomously by the greatest. Furthermore, the consequentialist
agent is empowered to choose whether or not to be charitable and
how to do so; it is sufficiently autonomous to be able to answer to
universal requirements and to promote them if it chooses. But the
Levinasian self is merely responding breathlessly to a demanding
other in a burdensome network of responsibilities of which it may
not even be fully aware. It has no choice in the matter and cannot
choose instead to promote a particular moral agenda. Ultimately,
the consequentialist agent runs through reality imposing its agenda
upon relevant situations and justifying its impositions with a uni-
versal rationale. It need have little sensitivity to the various social
arrangements that necessitate moral existence, many of which would
be unknown, uninteresting or simply irrational. The Levinasian self,
on the contrary, is forced to respond to these social arrangements in
ways it cannot control and, no matter how sensitive it is to their
complex nuances, it could never appropriate them all. It could never
actually know which responsibilities are relevant in a given dilemma,
nor even whether it knew them all.
In conclusion, the Levinasian self lacks precisely those character-
istics that facilitate consequentialist decisions determining moral
worth. To argue that the self may be able to step back from its
infinite web of responsibilities and make a consequentialist decision
is to fall back into the very modern rationalist paradigm, the 'ontol-
ogy of power' discussed at the beginning of this section, that Levinas
30

abhors as insufficiently ethical and damaging to the human condi-
tion. To be consequentialist in orientation is to participate in a
rational and universalist order that does not attend with sufficient
sensitivity to the enigmatic and indeclinable nature of human ethical
existence expressed through the faces of others. Basically, con-
sequentialism is not interested in, and therefore cannot make a con-
tribution to, our passive discovery of freedom in a network of
unchosen responsibilities.
Thus, any consequentialist contribution to the face-to-face rela-
tionship is forestalled. But what might Levinas's portrayal of infinite
responsibilities in this relationship contribute to consequentialism?
What one might seek to discover is some aspect of ethical life that
consequentialism either presupposes unwittingly or neglects at its
own peril.
From the outset, one might note that, although rational analysis
informs the consequentialist agent about the terms of its decision,
the fact that it has a moral dilemma at all may be the result of
morally relevant factors that are non-rational and beyond the agent's
control. For example, in pondering the various ways that charity is
promotable, the agent might be responding to a demand on the part
of those for whom charity might be good. After all, the ways in
which charity is promotable and therefore good will be determined
by the consequences of charitable and non-charitable actions on
balance. These, in turn, will be determined by 'for whom the charity
is good' and 'which forms of charity are good for them'. Rationality
might help the consequentialist agent to decide which course of
promotable charity to perform, but perhaps the options are initially
presented by the circumstance itself. Other persons for whom charity
is good might have demands that specify the alternative options of
the charitable course of action, and thus they may have an invest-
ment in providing the options from which rationality chooses. One
might surmise, then, that a possible contribution of Levinas's
ethics of responsibility to the consequentialist cause would come in
the form of a challenge: does the agent actually have any awareness
of the various relevant moral factors constraining the deliberation?
More specifically, for example, when choosing this promotable
course of charity over others, is one doing so initially because one is
mindful of the limitations of one's own ability to be charitable as this
person demands it, the limitations of one's ability to answer for
one's charity as a free agent, and the limitations placed by the
31

consequences this might have for third parties? Imagine that one
decided to refuse the best course of action for the other person on
the grounds of morally bad effects (or precedence) that might result
for other people not immediately affected by the action. Rationality
would be determined by one's awareness of some finite segment of
the infinite network of responsibilities.
Roughly speaking, there is no reason why consequentialism could
not concede that one's otherwise rational decisions about promot-
ability and goodness are shaped by and dependent upon a network
of social arrangements one has not chosen. Unfortunately for the
comparison, Levinas would probably not have acknowledged that
consequentialism had satisfied his requirements as long as it sub-
ordinates social arrangements to the rational impartiality of
decisions. All options count equally, until one chooses the best
option. But for Levinas, not only is one unable to make an
unconstrained choice as aformal self, but one is not able to make an
impartial decision either, in the face-to-face relationship.
Simply tacking an underpinning of responsibilities beneath the
consequentialist scenario and ignoring the details of the face-to-face
relationship would not enable us to say that Levinas had made a
contribution. It is not clear that consequentialism must attend to
these situational factors, since it is interested primarily in what it
would be rational to do if one were morally minded in a given situ-
ation and what makes the course of action one chooses a 'good'
course. It need not accept the imperative of responsibility to indi-
vidual persons in specific circumstances, but rather the necessity
of making certain kinds of normatively informed decisions. And,
of course, it can only shrug off Levinas's admittedly hyperbolic
descriptions of the social arrangements.
Therefore, it may seem evident that consequentialism cannot be
clearly impressed to the service of Levinasian thought, and Levinasian
thought makes only a modest or even marginal contribution to the
consequentialist agenda.
It remains to be seen whether a better result may obtain from
comparing Levinasian thought to non-consequentialism, known
more commonly as deontology. Classically, deontology is defined as
the study of the logic of duties. It is captivated by the possibility that
intending to do one's duty confers moral value upon actions one
performs when motivated by that duty. Typified by the massively
influential ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, classical deontology
32

has offered one of the most resoundingly successful accounts of
modern law and rationality. More contemporarily, deontology is
understood to stress the importance of recognizing and adhering to
specific constraints or norms that give focus to morally relevant
aspects of our lives. Without such constraints, life would not be
immoral, but it would not have any substantial moral worth either.
There are simply some actions that are wrong in themselves, that is,
that fall outside the constraints weimpose, or ought to impose, upon
ourselves. John Rawls, again, has offered a famous formulation of
deontology: it 'does not specify the good independently from the
right, or does not interpret the right as maximizingthe good'.40
That
is, acting 'rightly' means refraining from doing those things which
one is constrained (rationally) from doing. Initially, one defines what
is right and what is wrong independently of what is thought to be
good. Although one might do some good, one should refrain if
doing so would break certain rules that prescribe what it is right to
do. Contrary to consequentialism's requirements, one should pass
up any of the best 'good' outcomes if they require transgression of
clearly delineated criteria of Tightness. What it is right to do is prior
to and separate from what it is good to do. According to deontology,
one should do what is right according to rules specified by reason,
not intend to do the good. If being charitable breaks no such rules,
then one should be charitable because it is right to be so, even if the
form of charity one chooses might be (consequentially) inferior to
another form of charity. We should live morally estimable lives
according to rationally estimable rules, even if doing so requires
placing our own interests before those of others. Moreover, most
deontological constraints are negative (You should or must not. ..).
In fact, deontology often insists on the priority of prohibitive con-
straints above positive obligations, such that an obligation not to
murder has greater motivational force than any obligation to be
charitable. Ultimately, conduct could have considerable moral worth
even if no good had been done for others, and, it must be said,
whatever good is done does not enhance the moral value of that
conduct at all. In other words, avoiding wrongdoing, that is, refrain-
ing from actions that break rules determining Tightness, isprivileged
over considerations about promoting the avoidance of wrongdoing
in another person or in general. Indeed, given a choice between
avoiding small wrongdoing by not stopping someone from great
wrongdoing, and being a small wrongdoer in order to stop great
33

LEVINAS: A GUIDE FORTHE PERPLEXED
wrongdoing, an initial deontological requirement would be that
the former is superior to the latter. Not breaking rules of Tightness
is more important than doing good for others, or even ending
wrongdoing to them.
Many of the problems encountered in crossing Levinas with con-
sequentialism are replicated here. The problem is with deontology's
emphasis upon universal, rational principles. Already, there is too
much unpalatable rationalism for Levinas, but the abrasiveness of
the Levinasian description and the deontological theory is to be
found in the fact that deontology does not advocate the promot-
ability of goodness in the way consequentialism does. It appears to
say only that one should live by estimable rules and avoid transgress-
ing their constraints. Since most deontological constraints are nega-
tive (You should not. . .), one is obligated primarily to refrain from
performing certain actions. As long as one refrains, one's conduct
has moral worth. Indeed, one's moral perfection might consist in
merely avoiding wrongdoing without ever taking the initiative to do
good. That is straightforwardly incompatible with Levinas's ethics of
responsibility. On the one hand, for Levinas, the other person's
demand for responsibility is indeclinable (one cannot say 'no' to it).
Deontology interpolates that moral worth is determined by the right
to judge whether to recognize an obligation to respond, such that one
might not assist the other person at all because doing so might repre-
sent the transgression of a rule. On the other, one's responsibility to
the other is one for which the self is unsubstitutable (no one else can
stand in one's place and bear it). Deontology demurs that someone
should recognize and adhere to an estimable duty, not necessarily
that any good must be done. Thus, although Levinas rejects the idea
that one might shirk responsibility on the grounds that someone else
could bear it, that is precisely what deontology appears to advocate.
There is an enormous chasm separating Levinas's 7 am more respon-
sible than everyone else' from the deontological 'Someone, but not
necessarily myself, should be boundby this rule'.
Thus, again, it seems that Levinas's face-to-face relationship
involves individual responsibilities that are limitless in number and
force, whereas deontological obligation consists of a finite list of
(mostly negative) rules that completely describe the decency of
moral conduct. One might turn awayfrom a destituteand persecuted
person, deontology implies, if helping them would represent the
breaking of an estimable (rational and universal) rule. Yet even if
34

one did help the other person, by deontological lights the moral
worth of one's action would not have been determined by the
response, but because one was obeying such a rule. In brief, one is
morally permitted, or even obligated, to shirk responsibility, but
even when one recognizes it, one does so as an autonomous being.
It suffices to say that Levinas and contemporary normative theory
are exclusionary. If we treat the 'ethics of ethics' as a metaethical
body of criteria for evaluating the cogency of normative ethics, then
we would be bound to reject both consequentialism and deontology.
In the main they appear to make precisely the kinds of errors
Levinas denounces in modern Western rationality. Alternatively, the
agenda of normative ethics (to determine the moral worth of con-
duct, etc.) is not something to which Levinasian ethics can make any
contribution. Since Levinas has not identified a single overwhelm-
ingly damaging problem with them, then we might challenge the
relevance of Levinas's ethics altogether. What good is it if it chal-
lenges so many basic ethical presuppositions and yet can offer noth-
ing viable in their place? Therefore, treacherous as it may sound in
an introduction to a fine visionary thinker, it is respectable to enter-
tain that Levinas's masterly vision is not relevant to contemporary
ethical theory.
35

CHAPTER 2
VIOLENCE AND THE SELF
A very pertinent aspect of Levinas's work consists in a suppositional
criticism of the way traditional philosophy has viewed the self. In
particular, he is captivated by the way philosophy links the self with
violence. In the last chapter, we saw the violent effects of the face-to-
face relationship upon the self. These effects will figure again in later
chapters, especially Chapter 7. Here, however, we are exclusively
attentive to the violence the self performs by itself and to itself. That
is, the self appears to be subject to violence in two senses: on the one
hand, there is the violence done to the evolving self by the philo-
sophical paradigms of rationality in whichit acquiesces,on the other
hand, the violence done by the evolving self, which is madepos-
sible by this development. The momentous tendencyof philosophical
rationality and ontology to both violate the self and make it violent
Levinas names the 'ontology of power'. In this chapter, ontology's
ruinous ability to subject the self to violence will be explored and the
key theme of the hypostasizing self will be surveyed in some detail.
THE VIOLATED AND VIOLENT SELF
From the outset, it is necessary to identify what Levinas iscensuring.
Jeffrey L. Koskey is correct to note that Levinas does not intend to
extirpate metaphysics, but to retain its ethicallypositivereconfigur-
ation.1
Ultimately,Levinas rejectsthe violence implied in any viewof
society as a group of free and equal individuals subordinated to
'neutral' rational devices such as the concepts of'humanity', 'human
being' or 'citizen'. Philosophy seeks to totalize all things, to have a
total synthesis of existence, including the individual self, leaving us
'side-by-side' not 'face-to-face'.
36

For Levinas, there is a dramatic tension between philosophy and
the pre-philosophical world. The latter consists of radically different
objects and events experienced, prior to philosophical reflection.
Indeed, we experience them as such, that is, as experienced objects
and events. We are often disturbed or even frightened by the way
reality is so overwhelmingly turbulent. We can discern differences
among objects and events in two ways:there is ontological difference,
in which difference between objects is of greater and lesser degrees
and permits comparisons among things, and there is transcendence
or alterity, in which two things or events are so different as to be
incomparable. Philosophical inquiry has always been based on a
metaphysical reductionism that strives to eradicate these differences
in order to secure knowledge. It is an effort to abrogate difference,
to make different things similar and therefore comprehendible.
Transcendence as well as ontological difference is 'reduced to the
same'. Rationality provides support by proposing concepts, themes,
theories and paradigms that serve to bring different things or
events together under one neutral concept. Philosophy, he main-
tains, has 'most often been an ontology: reduction of the other to
the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures
comprehension of being'.2
It
can be interpreted as an attempt at universal synthesis, a reduc-
tion of all experience, of all that is reasonable, to a totality
wherein consciousness embraces the world, leavesnothing outside
itself, and thus becomes absolute thought. The consciousness of
the self is at the same time the consciousness of the whole. There
have been few protestations in the history of philosophy against
this totalization.3
Reduction to the neuter becomes the universal when it facilitates
comprehension of feral reality by systematically or dialectically lay-
ing the groundwork for total synthesis of knowledge. It allows access
to the embraceable world in a 'way of approaching the known being
such that its alterity with regard to the knowingbeing vanishes'.4
The
neutral term permits comprehension by illuminating the reality in
which alterity takes place. 'Light opens up a horizon and empties
space - delivers being over to nothingness' and in so doing 'medi-
ation (characteristic of Western philosophy) reduces distances.'5
Western philosophy, then, is a reductive rationalism that repudiates
37

transcendence and difference. 'The interval of space given by light is
instantaneously absorbed by light. Light is that through which some-
thing is other than myself, but already as if it came from me. The
illuminated object does not have a fundamental strangeness. Its tran-
scendence is wrapped in immanence.'6
Levinas insists that this reduc-
tive rationalism is politically significant. 'Political totalitarianism
rests on an ontological totalitarianism. Beingis all, a Being in which
nothing finishes and nothing begins. Nothing stands opposed to it,
and no one judges it. It is an anonymous neuter, an impersonal
universe, a universe without language.'7
In brief, philosophy implies
a project that is irrevocably violent to the non-philosophical realm.
Levinas's primary concern, however, is the specific manner in which
it divests individual persons of their very individuality.
Human beings are different from anything else in reality, different
from one another, and even different from our comprehension of
ourselves. Yet philosophy strives to eradicate our very human dis-
parities too by proposing neutral terms that illuminateour existence
and the distance between us. There are two ways that individual
persons in their specific, concrete subjectivity have been subordin-
ated to and neutralized by the universals of metaphysical reduction-
ism and rationality. First, there is the violence done to the self, and
second, the violence the self does to its situation because it has been
violated. In a very important passage, Levinas fulminates:
Violence is to be found in any action in which one acts as if one
were alone to act: as if the rest of the universe were there only to
receive the action. Violence is consequently also any action which
we endure without at every point collaborating in it.8
Human beings have been encouraged by philosophy to think of
themselves as being detached from reality and empowered over it.
The philosophical self is in an existential vacuum: distant from and
unthreatened by its surrounding reality, it acts as if the natural realm
were simply a context within which it acts. Everything human beings
experience and act upon as privileged agents is simply there to
'receive' the action. However, the detached and empowered self has
this privilege only because philosophy has excoriated it of its indi-
vidual uniqueness and replaced it with the power to act as if one
were not part of the universe. There is compensation in which
the loss of a certain pre-philosophical kind of personal identity is
38

sacrificed in exchange for a kind of detached empowerment. Instead
of being beings different from one another, we are lumped together
outside reality as empowered beings. And, of course, those who are
more powerful as a result of this violence done to them will utilize
this power violently against those who are lesspowerful.
Philosophy regards individual persons as examples of a genus. A
human person is an instance of the class of human persons, of
humanity or human beings. The neutral term 'humanity' nullifies
differences possessed existentially by individual human persons.
Moreover, every individual's subjectivity is grounded in norms and
codes to which it answers without exception. It views itself from 'on
high', enabling a self-transcendence which consists in 'being like to
itself and in 'letting itself be identifiedfrom the outside by the finger
that points to it' in the light of reason.9
Each existent human being
appears to be what it is by participating in an existence that is
anonymous and precedes it. Each is 'just a human being' among
human beings. 'It is as if the existents appeared only in the existence
that precedes them, as though the existence were independent of the
existent, and the existent that finds itself thrown there could never
become master of existence.'10
If the existent is merely 'another
existent', then it has been stripped of its unique sovereignty over
itself, its seeminglyineradicable autonomy. There is a distinction and
a separation, then, between individual human persons as existents
and the existence in which they participate in order to understand,
explain or generally come to grips with being an existent in the
world. In exchange for this ability to situate itself in the world, the
self has relinquished its uniqueness and autonomy. It knows what it
is and how it is as a 'being among beings', but it is forlorn in its basic
situation in the world. Cliched as it sounds, the self has lost itself in
one way in order to find itself in another.
Therefore, the self is a master of itself and its existence by virtue
of rational reflection and detachment, but in compensation it has
stripped itself of individuality and thereby ensured that it could
never be genuine master of existence. Existence remains a foreign
and hostile force even when the self is subordinated to it. There is the
illusion of mastery as a result of the deception promulgated by trad-
itional philosophy. However, much of this is predicated on the
notion that existence has been understood apart from and prior to
the existent, as if the human being walked into a realm of anony-
mous existence.As Levinaswrites,To affirm the priority of Beingover
39

existents is to already decide the essence of philosophy; it is to sub-
ordinate the relation with something, who is an existent (the ethical
relation) to a relation with the Being of existents'." Derrida has
noted that the history of Western philosophy - especially the phil-
osopher Levinas is criticizing here, Martin Heidegger - has not
understood existence in this way. Instead, 'being is nothing outside
the existent, does not precede it; and therefore we simply cannot
speak, as Levinas does, of "subordination" because it is not a "for-
eign power" or "hostile neutral force" V2
Indeed, Derrida continues,
'Being' is not a predicate shared by all things that reduces their dif-
ference, but rather what makes predication of beings possible; it does
not conceal any differences; and even, on the contrary, permits dif-
ferences among existents to emerge. Thus, Levinas's view of the neu-
tral existence to which existents are subordinated may be an
oversimplification.
However, Levinas's ingenuity may be apparent when he notices
that onlyfreedom could resist this subordination, and yet freedom itself
is the result of this subordination.This leads to the second aspect of
the critique of the 'ontology of power'.
The subordination and neutralization of the human being in its
specificity is complemented by, or indeed, facilitated by, the ascrip-
tion of a certain degree of resistance to totalization. The self is a
rationally purposive, volitional and, above all, detached and
empowered existent able to be agent of the universal, to serve the
purposes of rationality and history as reflected by the moral and
rational imperatives of its existence. The individual's freedom does
not enable it to resist neutralization; it merely reinforces it under the
broad maxim that being free is an aspect of being 'a being amongst
beings'. For example, free will is deemed a property of being a
human being; political liberty is allegedly a property of being a US
citizen. The destiny of a free being consists in playing an unwitting
role in the 'drama of reason' and not in a decision for, or willing
concurrence in, this drama.13
The human being is swept up into a
movement of being, 'being's move', wherein this resistance is
channelled into the purposes of history. Even the free resistance to
historical change is itself a contribution to the rational and political
totalization one is resisting. Rationality emerges from the movement
of being and produces reason, which in turn is utilized both to sub-
ordinate the existent and set it free (falsely) from subordination.14
Levinas writessuccinctly:
40

As a will productive of works, freedom, without being limited in
its willing, enters into a history of which it is a plaything. The
limitation of the will is not within it (the will in man is as infinite
as it is in God), does not lie in the willingness of the will, but lies
in its situation. In this situation, in which a freedom, without in
any way abdicating, nonetheless receives a meaning which
remains alien to it, we recognize a created being. The multiplicity
of egos is not an accident, but is the situation of creation. The
possibility of injustice is the only possible limitation on freedom,
and is the condition for totality to take form.15
In other words, in the existential situation of the 'ontology of
power', one is free to do what one likes, however violently, to oneself,
other persons and one's total situation, because one is free from
difference. The reduction of the other to the same emancipates the
self from the need to admit difference. This 'emancipation' leads to
nothing but the illusion of free mastery in this exchange, for even the
resistance of freedom is merely a plaything. One may come to recog-
nize how one's freedom is merely a pawn in the rational and histor-
ical movement of being only when one experiences injustice.
However, injustice is the very event of subordinating the individual
to the universal that has made this illusory freedom possible. In
striving to possess the world, in denying it an independent existence,
and in subordinating it to one's own power, 'reality's resistance to
our acts itself turns into the experience of this resistance; as such, it
is already absorbed by knowledge and leaves us alone with our-
selves'.16
That is, we are alone in our experience of injustice, alone in
the knowledge that we are participating in the very existence which
makes that injustice possible, and even alone in our inability to do
anything about it as free agents. One simply sojourns in being, resting
content with one's existence and freedom until there is injustice, at
which moment one recognizes that freedom itself is chimerical. But
freedom, Levinas insists, is not a sojourning in being. It is the ability
to adjourn from existence because freedom itself is imperilled by
totalization.17
The self should understand, he claims, that when free-
dom is in peril, the 'hour of treason' should be postponed. Complete
totalization must be resisted, not through the freedom that it enables,
but through responsibility.
Existing human beings in their unique singularity are not shaped
by the totalizing processes of history. On the contrary, history itself
41

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBASSY TO THE
EASTERN COURTS OF COCHIN-CHINA, SIAM, AND MUSCAT ***

EMBASSY
TO THE
EASTERN COURTS
OF
COCHIN-CHINA, SIAM, AND
MUSCAT;
IN THE
U. S. SLOOP-OF-WAR PEACOCK,
DAVID GEISINGER, COMMANDER,
DURING THE YEARS 1832-3-4.
BY
EDMUND ROBERTS.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS.
1837.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1837,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of
New York.
TO THE
HON. LEVI WOODBURY,
THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,
BY
HIS FRIEND AND FELLOW-CITIZEN,
THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION.
Having some years since become acquainted with the commerce of
Asia and Eastern Africa, the information produced on my mind a
conviction that considerable benefit would result from effecting
treaties with some of the native powers bordering on the Indian
ocean.
With a view to effect an object apparently so important, I addressed
a letter to the Hon. Levi Woodbury, then a Senator in Congress from
the state of New Hampshire, detailing the neglected state of our
commerce with certain eastern princes, and showing that the
difference between the duties paid on English and American
commerce, in their dominions, constituted of itself a very important
item in profit, in favour of the former.
Subsequently to this period, Mr. Woodbury was appointed to the
secretaryship of the Navy, and consequently became more deeply
interested in the success of our floating commerce.
Scarcely had his appointment been confirmed before the melancholy
news arrived, that the ship Friendship, of Salem, Mass., had been
plundered, and a great portion of her crew murdered, by the natives
of Qualah Battu.
As an important branch of our commerce to the pepper ports on the
western coast of Sumatra was endangered, by the successful and
hostile act of these barbarians, it was deemed necessary that the
piratical outrage should be promptly noticed by a national demand
for the surrender and punishment of the aggressors.
About this period, the U. S. ship-of-war Potomac was nearly ready to
proceed to her station on the western coast of South America, by
way of Cape Horn, but her destination was immediately changed for
the western coast of Sumatra, accompanied by instructions to carry

into effect the measures of government against the inhabitants of
Qualah Battu.
As our government was anxious to guard against any casualty which
might befall the Potomac in fulfilling her directions, it resolved to
despatch the United States’ sloop-of-war Peacock and schooner
Boxer, to carry into effect, if necessary, the orders of the first-named
vessel, and also to convey to the courts of Cochin-China, Siam and
Muscat, a mission charged to effect, if practicable, treaties with
those respective powers which would place American commerce on
a surer basis, and on an equality with that of the most favoured
nations trading to those kingdoms.
A special or confidential agent being necessary to carry into effect
the new measures of government, I had the honour to be selected
for that duty, at the particular recommendation of the secretary of
the Navy.
The summary chastisement of the inhabitants of Qualah Battu, and
the complete success of Com. Downes, in the performance of the
duties assigned by government, rendered a visit from the Peacock to
that place unnecessary, and thus left the objects of the mission more
fully open to a complete and minute investigation. How far they
have been faithfully accomplished, I leave to the candid and
impartial judgment of those who peruse the details of the Embassy,
in the following pages.
At the period of my visit to the courts of Siam and Muscat, American
commerce was placed on a most precarious footing, subject to every
species of imposition which avarice might think proper to inflict, as
the price of an uncertain protection.
Nor was it to pecuniary extortions alone that the uncontrolled hand
of power extended. The person of the American citizen, in common
with that of other foreigners, was subject to the penalties of a law
which gave the creditor an absolute power over the life, equally with
the property, of the debtor, at the court of Siam. As an American, I
could not fail to be deeply impressed with the barbarity of this legal

enactment, and its abrogation, in relation to my own countrymen,
detailed in the Embassy, I consider as not the least among the
benefits resulting from the mission.
With the courts of Siam and Muscat, it will be seen, I was enabled to
effect the most friendly relation, and to place our commerce on a
basis in which the excessive export and import duties, previously
demanded, were reduced fifteen per cent.
If in the attainment of these benefits some sacrifice of personal
feeling was at times made for the advantage of American commerce,
the dignity of my country was never lost sight of, nor her honour
jeoparded by humiliating and degrading concessions to eastern
etiquette.
The insulting formalities required as preliminaries to the treaty, by
the ministers from the capital of Cochin-China, left me no
alternative, save that of terminating a protracted correspondence,
singularly marked from its commencement to its termination by
duplicity and prevarication in the official servants of the emperor.
The detail of the various conversations, admissions and denials, on
the part of these eastern ministers, in the pages of the Embassy,
exhibits their diplomatic character in true, but not favourable
colours.
The unprotected state of our trade from the Cape of Good Hope to
the eastern coast of Japan, including our valuable whale-fishery, was
painfully impressed on my attention in the course of the Embassy.
Not a single vessel-of-war is to be seen waving the national flag over
our extensive commerce from the west of Africa to the east of
Japan: our merchantmen, trading to Java, Sumatra and the
Philippine islands, are totally unprotected. The extent of this
commerce may be estimated from the fact that there arrived in two
ports in Java during one year, one hundred and one ships, the united
tonnage of which, amounted to thirty-eight thousand, eight hundred
and seventy-seven tons. To this may be added the whale-fishery on
the Japanese coast, which likewise calls loudly for succour, and
protection from the government. The hardy whaler—the fearless

adventurer on the deep—yielding an immense revenue to his
country, amid sufferings and privations of no common order,
certainly claims at the hand of that country, protection from the
savage pirate of the Pacific. Among this class of citizens too, we may
look for those bold and determined spirits who would form the
bulwark of our national navy. The protection of this important and
prolific branch of commerce is, in every point of view, a political and
moral advantage. I indulge the hope that it will become the object of
special legislation, and that the hardy sons of the ocean, while filling
the coffers of their country, may enjoy the protection of her flag.
The various tables relative to exports, imports, currencies, weights
and measures, in the various places visited by the Embassy, will, I
trust, be found greatly beneficial to the commercial enterprise which,
yearly, extends from the Cape of Good Hope to the China sea. They
have been compiled in some instances from direct observation, and
in others, from the best authority which could be obtained. While it
has been my special object to render the pages of the Embassy a
guide to the best interests of commerce, I have not been unmindful
of the claims which the general reader may have on a work
embracing a view of that interesting quarter of the world, the
eastern and southern portion of the eastern hemisphere; its natural
scenery, productions, language, manners, ceremonies, and internal
political regulations, will be found in the Embassy. The picture may
not be at all times of a pleasing character; it has rather been my
object to give the original impression, than to decorate it with any
factitious colouring. When visible demonstration could be obtained, I
have always resorted to it, in drawing my conclusions; and in those
cases in which this best auxiliary was denied me, I have given the
testimony of travellers from other countries, who preceded me in
visiting the courts touched at by the Embassy, and whose details
have received the sanction of the world.
The abject condition of morals among the inhabitants of the Indian
ocean, will naturally interest the philanthropist: while rejoicing in the
high moral tone of society which distinguishes his own happy land,
he will look with an eye of compassion on those regions where the

worship of the Supreme Being gives place to the mysterious idolatry
of Budha, or the external ceremonies of Confucius.
The searcher after literary information will find in the account of the
literary institutions of China much interesting and useful matter for
observation and reflection. In relation to the strictness of her
collegiate examinations, and the high grade of learning necessary to
secure their honours, some useful hints may be derived to our own
collegiate institutions.
In the appendix will be found a curious literary document in relation
to the aborigines of the Malay peninsula, particularly of the negroes
called Semang, accompanied by specimens of the Semang language
in two dialects, for which due credit has been given in the Embassy.
The philologist will doubtless receive this accession to the common
stock of inquiries into the origin of language, with considerable
gratification. A philosophical investigation of the relationship existing
between the varied families of the earth, and their common origin,
may perhaps yet be based on the analogy existing between their
language and dialects.
The phraseology of the epistolary document from the Sultan of
Muscat to the President of the United States, with that contained in
the letter from Tumbah Tuah to Captain Geisinger, at Bencoolen,
furnishes specimens of that figurative and high-wrought diction, for
which the Oriental nations are distinguished.
As I am about to undertake another voyage to exchange the
ratifications of the treaties alluded to in the Embassy, to form others
in places not yet visited, and to extend, if possible, our commerce on
advantageous terms, still farther east than India or Cochin-China, I
beg my readers will consider the present volume as a prelude to
much further and varied information to be derived under more
favourable auspices—more intimate knowledge of eastern forms—
and that caution which should ever be the child of experience.
In concluding my introductory remarks, I would freely acknowledge
my obligation to the works of those authors who have preceded me

in visiting the nations to which the Embassy was directed. I deemed
it important that no useful information, from whatever source
derived, should be withheld from my countrymen. Wherever ocular
or audible demonstration could be had, I have recorded the facts as
they were presented, in the most simple and unadorned manner; I
had not in view the flights of rhetorical composition, but the detail of
useful intelligence.
My country claimed at my hands, the faithful fulfilment of arduous
and responsible duties. If, in the information furnished in the
Embassy, her requirements have been accomplished, my ambition is
satisfied.
E. R.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Sailing from Boston; Arrival at St. Jago; Description; Exports;
Great Drought; Fogo; Fortifications; Sailing for Brazil;
Description of the Coast; Harbour of Rio and Distant Views;
the City; Public Garden; Boto Fogo; Botanic Garden;
Population; Public Buildings; Senate and House of
Representatives
13
CHAPTER II.
Sailing from Montevideo; Description of the Island of Tristan
D’Acunha; St. Pauls; Engano; Arrival at Bencoolen and
Description
29
CHAPTER III.
Sailing from Bencoolen; Arrival at Crokatoa and Forsaken
Islands; Scenery; Beautiful Submarine Garden; British Frigate;
Arrival at Angier; Sailing from Angier; Bay and City of Manila;
Buildings; Population; Provisions; Labour
39
CHAPTER IV.
Manila, continued; Calzada; Sea-Cucumber; Cigar-Factory at
Binondo; Exports; Duties; Weights and Currency; Exchange;
Imports; Luzon; Cavité; Hurricane; Lago de Bria; Pina; Indian
and Buffalo; Visits to the Alcade
51
CHAPTER V.
Departure from Manila: Cholera; Cape Bolina; Chinese Vessels;
Pilot; Macao; Linting, Village; Whampoa; Jos Houses; Sacrifice;
Arrival at Canton; River and Boats; Description of Canton;
Great Idol Temple; Legend of the Jos House; Religious
Ceremonies; Minor Temples
63
CHAPTER VI.

Budhism; Tombs of Ancestors; Ceremonies; Origin of Tumuli or
Tombs; Sacrifices to Confucius; Pan-Hwny-Pan; Infanticide;
Charitable Institutions; Government Gratuities
75
CHAPTER VII.
Description of Canton; Sacking of the City; Place of Honour;
Mourning; Compass; Materials for Buildings; Houses; Principal
Offices; Duties and Penalties of Governor; Fires; Governor’s
Salary; Division of Power
89
CHAPTER VIII.
Literary Institutions of China; Examinations; Schools; Teachers;
School-room Ceremonies; Colleges; Domestic Commerce;
Population of the Provinces; Imports; Exports
109
CHAPTER IX.
Early Commerce of China; American Trade; Hong-Merchants;
Translators; Linguists; Foreign Factories; Style of Living;
Manufactories and Trade; Physicians; Egg-Boats;
Manufacturers; Mechanics; Population of Canton
123
CHAPTER X.
Weights and Measures; Money Weights; Commercial Weights;
Opium; Opium-Smokers; Mantchou Dynasty
135
CHAPTER XI.
Death; Ceremonies of Imperial Mourning; Population of the
Chinese Empire; Knock-head Ceremony; Beggars; Cat and Dog
Market; Dr. B. and the China-man; Barbers; Dress of the
Chinese; the Dragon God; Slavery
147
CHAPTER XII.
Climate of Canton and Macao; Meteorological Averages;
Departure from Canton for Macao and Linting; Macao;
Population; Superstitious Ceremony
162
CHAPTER XIII.
Sailing from Linting to Vung-Lam Harbour, in the Province of
Fooyan, or Phuyen; Government of Shundai; Assistant Keeper
of Vung-lam; Letters to the King of Cochin-China; Catholic
Priest; Deputies from Shundai
171

CHAPTER XIV.
Present of a Feast to the Embassy; Description of
Arrangement; Deputies of Hué; Extraordinary Demands—
Refusal to Forward Despatches to the Emperor; Letter of the
Envoy to the Minister of Commerce; President’s Letter;
Unconditional Requirements of the Deputies
189
CHAPTER XV.
Suspension of Intercourse; Failure of Mission; Departure of
Embassy from Vung-Lam Bay; Envoy’s Titles; Mode of Husking
Rice; Tombs of the Dead; Fishing Boats; Absence of Priests
and Temples; Superstitions; Wild Animals; Mandarins’ House;
Mode of taking Leave; Government of Cochin-China; Grades of
Rank
213
CHAPTER XVI.
Passage from Cochin-China to the Gulf of Siam; Arrival at the
Mouth of the River Menam; Packnam; Procession to the
Government-House; Reception; Governor; Siamese Temples;
Interview with the Siamese Foreign Minister; Prima Donna;
Feats of Strength; Siamese Females; Fire at Bang-kok; White
Elephants; Embalming; Shaving-head Ceremony and Feast;
Fox-bats
227
CHAPTER XVII.
Presentation at the Palace of Bang-kok; Description; Royal
Elephant; White Elephants; King of Siam; Great Temple of
Guatama; City of Bang-kok; Temple of Wat-chan-tong, and
Figure of Budha; Banyan Tree; Fire-feeders; Missionaries
253
CHAPTER XVIII.
Chinese Junks; Mechanic Arts of Siam; Amusements; Dancing
Snakes; Annual Oath of Allegiance; Description of the Capital;
Embassy from Cochin-China; Education in Siam; Palace
271
CHAPTER XIX.
Procession to the Funeral Pile of Wang-na, or Second King;
Origin of Budhism in Siam; Sommona Kodom; Atheistical
Principles of Budhism; Budhist Commandments; History of
289

Siam; Government; Titles of the King; Officers of the
Government
CHAPTER XX.
Ancient Laws of Siam; Legal Oaths; Punishment for Debt;
Divorces; Population of Siam; Stature and Complexion of the
Siamese; Division of Time; Boundaries and Possessions of
Siam; Marine of Siam; Imports; Inland Trade; Currency; Treaty
of Commerce; Table of Exports
305
CHAPTER XXI.
Departure from Bang-kok for Singapore; Singapore;
Commerce; Bugis; Maritime Laws; Departure from Singapore;
Straits of Gaspar; Island of Java; Population of Java; Clothing;
Dying; Stamping; Fruits; Birds
319
CHAPTER XXII.
Batavia; Burying-Grounds; Servants’ Wages; Academy of Arts;
Departure from Batavia; Arrival at Angier; Departure from
Angier; Red Sea; Arrival at Mocha; Turkie Ben Al Mas; Palace
of Mocha; Currency at Mocha; Transparent Stone; Colour of
the Red Sea
336
CHAPTER XXIII.
Departure from the Red Sea; Cape Rosselgate; Arrival at
Muscat; Blind Beggars; Fin-back Whales; Bedouin Arabs; Pearl
Islanders; Arab Houses; Currency of Muscat; Naval Force of
Muscat
351
CHAPTER XXIV.
Departure from Muscat; Arrival at Quintangony and
Mozambique; Exports from Mozambique; Imports; Departure
from Mozambique; Arrival at Table Bay; Cape of Good Hope
365
CHAPTER XXV.
Algoa Bay; Imports; Population of the Cape of Good Hope;
Public Institutions; Newspapers; Departure from the Cape;
Arrival at Rio Janeiro; Departure from Rio Janeiro; Arrival at
Boston Harbour; Statistical Table
386
APPENDIX.

Various Documents connected with the Work 403

CHAPTER I.
SAILING FROM BOSTON—ARRIVAL AT ST. JAGO—
DESCRIPTION—EXPORTS—GREAT DROUGHT—FOGO—
FORTIFICATIONS—SAILING FOR BRAZIL—DESCRIPTION
OF THE COAST—HARBOUR OF RIO AND DISTANT VIEWS
—THE CITY—PUBLIC GARDEN—BOTO FOGO—BOTANIC
GARDEN—POPULATION—PUBLIC BUILDINGS—SENATE
AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
The Executive having, in the year 1832, resolved on an attempt to
place our commercial relations, with some of the native powers of
Asia, on a sure and advantageous basis, orders were issued to
prepare the United States’ ship Peacock, and the schooner Boxer, for
that special object.
The commanders of these vessels were required to visit certain ports
on the southeastern coast of Asia, and to make a general report on
the condition of our commerce, in relation to its security from
piratical, or other hostile acts in the Indian seas. I was honoured by
the President of the United States with the station of special agent
or envoy to the courts of Cochin China, Siam, and Muscat, for the
purpose of effecting treaties which should place our commerce in
those countries on an equality with that enjoyed by the most
favoured nations.
The Boxer, having orders to proceed on a voyage to Liberia and from
thence to join the Peacock off the coast of Brazil, left Boston harbour
about the middle of February, 1832; and on the following March we
sailed from the same port, in the latter-named vessel, for Rio
Janeiro; having on board F. Baylies, Esq., whom we were carrying to
that place on his way to Buenos Ayres, to which Republic he had
received the appointment of chargé d’affaires from the government
of the United States. No circumstance, worthy of record, occurred

until the eighth day of April, when at daybreak we discovered the
isle of Sal, one of the Cape de Verds, and ere evening closed, St.
Nicholas and Bonavista appeared in sight. We lay to on that night
under the lee of Mayo and on the following morning cast anchor in
the roadstead of Porto Prayo, in the island of St. Jago.
The customary salute of thirteen guns, given to the town, was
immediately returned with a corresponding number. Of the weather,
considering the season, we had no reason to complain. The
thermometer ranged between 40° and 72°, rarely exceeding the one
or falling below the other; the lowest point, when we passed St.
George’s Bank, being 37°, and the highest, at the time the northeast
tradewind first met us, being 71°, in latitude 19°, and longitude 26°.
The barometer ranged from 29°, 97′, to 30°, 45′.
The most perfect order and regularity prevailed on board the ship, in
every department of duty; each individual having his duties so
defined as to prevent confusion among the crew, should any of the
seamen be called suddenly to quarters, or to make, take in, or reef
sails. Among the acquisitions most useful and instructive, were an
excellent library, presented by the government to the officers, and a
second selection of books, purchased by the officers and crew,
jointly. It was a gratifying sight to behold men who might, otherwise,
have been occupied in relating idle stories, singing immoral songs,
quarrelling, or creating a mutinous spirit among their fellows,
drawing useful information from the great sources of knowledge,
and extracting from the page of history, at the same time, a fund of
information and a code of morals.
The Cape de Verd islands belong to the kingdom of Portugal, and
are ten in number. They were discovered by Noel, in the year 1440,
and contain a population, as follows: Sal, four hundred; Mayo, two
thousand five hundred; St. Vincent, three hundred and fifty-six; St.
Nicholas, five thousand; St. Jago, thirty thousand; Fogo, ten
thousand; St. Antonio, twenty-four thousand; Brava, eight thousand;
Bonavista, four thousand; St. Lucia, uninhabited; total, eighty-four
thousand.

CAPE DE VERDS—
EXPORTS.
Among the principal articles of export from the
abovementioned islands is orchilla, a species of
lichen. It is used for dying any shade of purple or
crimson, and is superior to the same kind of moss found in Italy or
the Canaries. This vegetable product glitters, as a sparkling gem, in
the royal diadem of Portugal, having been monopolized by the
crown, to which it yields an annual revenue of $200,000. The right
of purchase claimed by the crown, allows only five cents per pound.
Were it not for this unjust monopoly, orchilla would readily sell at
twenty-five cents the pound. It is exported to Lisbon, and there sold,
by the agents of the royal trader, to foreign merchants, who re-
export it to their respective countries. Salt is produced at these
islands, in large quantities, and furnishes a considerable article of
export for the United States’ markets; being used for the salting of
beef, butter, &c. Heavy cargoes of it are exported, principally by
Americans, to Rio Grande and La Plata, for the curing of jerked or
dried beef, which finds a ready sale in the market of Havana. It is
also purchased by American sealers to salt the skins. In the list of
fruits on this cluster of islands, the red and black grape are
conspicuous. They furnish, converted into wine, a considerable
article of internal commerce. St. Antonio alone, says Mr. Masters, of
Sal, produces, annually, from fifteen hundred to two thousand pipes
of wine. Owing to the ignorance of the inhabitants in the process of
fermentation, it is of ordinary quality, generally unfit for
transportation, and may be purchased at the rate of ten or twelve
dollars per pipe.
If there be truth in the often-repeated assertion, that volcanic
countries produce the best wines, Fogo will export, at a future day, a
very superior article. Since the year 1827, coffee, nearly equal in
flavour to that of Mocha, has been cultivated with success.
Previously to that period, the crown had laid an almost prohibitory
duty on the importation of this article from its empoverished
islanders, in order to encourage the agricultural produce of its more
extensive southern possessions, in the vast territory of Brazil. Every
planter, now, looks on his plantation as a source of increasing profit,

PORTO PRAYA—
FOGO.
and within five or six years, coffee will become the leading article of
commerce from the Cape de Verd islands. It now realizes ten cents
per pound. The remaining articles for export, are hides, skins, goats,
and asses.
We found the inhabitants, on several of these islands, suffering
extreme distress from a want of provisions, occasioned by a failure
in the periodical rains, for two successive years. At Fogo, many died
from starvation. The inhabitants of this island have, long since,
annually exported ten or twelve small cargoes of corn to Madeira,
and in this, their day of suffering, the inhabitants of that sister-island
received them by hundreds with every mark of kindness and
attention. Some small relief was likewise administered from the
Peacock.
The whole appearance of the Cape de Verds, in consequence of this
long-continued drought, was exceedingly arid; the grass assumed a
dark brown colour, similar to that which may be seen on our western
prairies, when a fire has passed over them. Nothing green was
visible in the vicinity of Porto Praya, save in the deep valleys, lying
on the outskirts of the town, where some moisture yet remained,
and where water was obtained for the suffering population.
The town of Porto Praya, is situated on an
eminence of considerable height, and may be
approached, in front of the harbour, by two roads;
the one being on the eastern and the other on the western side.
These roads exhibit marks of great labour, bestowed in their
construction; they have been, for the most part, blasted out of the
solid rock, and extend up the side of a precipitous hill. Forty-five
pieces of cannon, of various caliber, pointed towards the roadstead,
serve, at once, as a fortification to the town and a protection to the
harbour.
Vessels bound to Western Africa, South America, or the East Indies,
generally take in refreshments at this port, which affords a safe
anchorage for vessels at all seasons of the year, excepting the month
of September. During this month it is visited by a violent gale from

the south, that would place in the most imminent danger any vessel
which might seek for security beneath the bold and rocky precipice
that rises in many places, nearly perpendicularly, one hundred and
twenty feet above the shore.
At the summit of this rocky acclivity is the plain on which Porto Praya
is built, and where a large open square, from which three or four
streets diverge, serves as a market-place. Within this square is a
building used for a jail. On its eastern side are situated the
governor’s house and a church; the latter being the only place for
religious worship in the town.
At the request of the governor, Capt. G. and myself paid him a visit.
We were received with courtesy and affability. He is of noble family,
not quite thirty years of age; and on this occasion was bedecked
with six orders of merit, which he frequently gazed on with apparent
satisfaction and delight. The houses here are generally built of
stone: those facing the public square are two stories in height, and
well stuccoed; on the western side, many of them commodious, well
finished and furnished, and fastidiously neat in their appearance. A
gallery, resting on a precipice seventy or eighty feet high, extends
along their rear, and commands a prospect of neat gardens, securely
walled in, and laden with tropical fruits, vegetables, and flowers. We
observed several negro girls, in the valley beneath, drawing water
for the inhabitants of the town, and, with well filled jars, winding
their way up the side of a zig-zag and dangerous path on the
hillside. As the eye followed their ascent up the fearful height, from
which a false step would have dashed them in pieces, we could not
but admire the seeming ease with which they balanced their vessels,
and the apparent disregard of danger displayed by them as they
frequently bent, in wanton sportiveness, over the projecting crags of
the precipice.
The population of Porto Praya is said to amount to fifteen hundred
or two thousand, nineteen twentieths of which are black or of
doubtful origin. As a suitable return for the hospitality we had
received from the inhabitants, a supper and dance were given to

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