Levinass Existential Analytic A Commentary On Totality And Infinity Illustrated James R Mensch

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L e v i n a s ’ s e x i s t e n t i a L a n a L y t i c

Northwestern University
Studies in Phenomenology
and
Existential Philosophy

Founding Editor †James M. Edie
General Editor Anthony J. Steinbock
Associate Editor John McCumber

L E v i N A S ’ S
E x i S t E N t i A L
A N A Ly t i C
A Commentary on Totality
and Infinity
James R. Mensch
Northwestern University Press
Evanston, illinois

Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2015 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2015. All
rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 978-0-8101-3054-8 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-8101-3052-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8101-6818-3 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mensch, James R., author.
Levinas’s existential analytic : a commentary on Totality and infinity /
James Mensch.
pages cm. — (Northwestern University studies in phenomenology and
existential philosophy)
ISBN 978-0-8101-3054-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8101-3052-4
(cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8101-6818-3 (ebook)
1. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totalité et infini. 2. Whole and parts (Philosophy).
3. Infinite. 4. Phenomenology. I. Title. II. Series: Northwestern University
studies in phenomenology & existential philosophy.
B2430.L483T466 2014
111—dc23
201403320
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

For the dead of the ghettos of Terezín and Łodz

Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
introduction 3
1 Heidegger’s Existential Analytic 11
2 the Preface 19
3 Metaphysical Desire, Totality and Infinity, i, A 27
4 Separation and Discourse, Totality and Infinity, i, B 41
5 truth and Justice, Totality and Infinity, i, C 60
6 Separation and Absoluteness, Totality and Infinity, i, D 69
7 interiority and Economy, Totality and Infinity, ii, A–B, C §§1–2 74
8 Dwelling and Freedom, Totality and Infinity, ii, C §3–E §3 92
9 the Face, Totality and Infinity, iii, A–B 114
10 the temporality of Finite Freedom, Totality and Infinity, iii, C 131
11 Beyond the Face: the Analytic of the Erotic, Totality and Infinity,
iv, A–G 148
12 Conclusions, Totality and Infinity, iv, Conclusions §§1–12 175
Notes 193
Bibliography 221
index 227

xi
Preface
In a conversation with Philip Nemo, Levinas asserts that Heidegger’s
Being and Time is “one of the finest books in the history of philosophy,”
comparing it to “Plato’s Phaedrus, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Mind, and Bergson’s Time and Free Will.” This commen-
tary on Levinas’s Totality and Infinity has been written with a conviction
that it, too, should be added to this list.
It has also been written to fulfill a need. For students working in
the field of Continental philosophy, Totality and Infinity has increasingly
become required reading. Encountering it, however, students often find
themselves at a loss. This is because Levinas’s work is profoundly original.
Following on a tradition that stretches from Parmenides to Heidegger, its
goal is that of understanding the nature of being. In doing so, it rethinks
the history of philosophy from a novel perspective. Like Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it struggles to find a language
that is adequate to the originality of its insights. The result is a text that
is dense and often difficult to read. Novel meanings are attached to fa-
miliar terms, and arguments often proceed through a series of references
that have to be filled out to understand the import of their conclusions.
Hence, the need for a commentary on this text.
The goal of my commentary is quite modest. Its models are Nor-
man Kemp Smith’s and H. J. Patton’s commentaries on theCritique of Pure
Reason. Readers seeking a groundbreaking interpretation of Levinas or
interpretations that push the bounds in our contemporary understand-
ing of Levinas will have to look elsewhere. Norman Kemp Smith wrote
of his Commentary, “My sole aim has been to reach, as far as may prove
feasible, an unbiased understanding of Kant’s great work.” My aim is the
same with regard to Totality and Infinity. It is to guide the reader through
this text, laying out its arguments, detailing its referents, and thereby situ-
ating it in relation to the history of philosophy. In pursuing these tasks, it
has limited its references to the issues that animate contemporary schol-
arly debates to the endnotes. These may be consulted by readers seeking
additional information on, say, feminist interpretations of Levinas or his
reception by Heidegger scholars. In all this, I have been guided by the

xii
P R E F A C E
difficulties and questions raised by my students over the years as I taught
this text. If I have succeeded in some measure in answering these, I shall
have succeeded in reaching my goal, which is the modest one of provid-
ing an introduction to Levinas’s thought through a reading of this text.
I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Research Council for a
multiyear grant that allowed me to pursue the research for this book. My
gratitude also extends to the PRVOUK P18 “Phenomenology and Semi-
otics” program at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, which
financially supported my project’s final stages. Finally, I would also like
to express my appreciation for my students, whose interest in Levinas has
sustained me over the years.

xiii
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the former director of the Husserl Archives in Louvain,
Professor Rudolph Bernet, for granting me permission to quote from
Husserl’s Nachlass. Grateful acknowledgment is due to the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a multiyear grant sup-
porting the research that made this commentary possible. I am also
grateful to PRVOUK P18, the Phenomenology and Semiotics program
at Charles University, Prague, for the funding that they provided for the
final stages of my research in Paris. Finally, I must thank my wife, Jo-
sephine Mensch, for her careful proofreading and helpful suggestions
for improving my text. Without her input, it would not have reached its
present form.

L e v i n a s ’ s e x i s t e n t i a L a n a L y t i c

3
introduction
the Nature of Levinas’s text
By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Levinas’s master-
piece, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, is destined to endure as
one of the great works of philosophy. My aim in presenting a commentary
on it is to help students follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phe-
nomenological analyses that fill it. The need for such a guide comes from
its extraordinary difficulty. A number of factors enter into this. There is
first of all Levinas’s language, which often consists of novel uses for terms
such as “desire,” the “face,” and “infinity.” This usage is tied to the fact that
Levinas is attempting to present a position that is absolutely novel in the
history of philosophy. He aims to reconfigure the philosophical tradition
from a different standpoint. Thus, a careful reading of his text requires
both a knowledge of this tradition and a grasp of how radically different
his approach is. Moreover, while Levinas’s text is not long—particularly
with regard to the task it sets itself—it is extraordinarily dense. His argu-
ments often proceed via a tissue of allusions that have to be specified
to see their force. This density does not exclude a continuous return to
the same themes. In a kind of spiraling motion, the divisions of his text
revisit previous themes, viewing them in different contexts in order to
clarify them. This way of proceeding gives the book its nonsystematic
character. Terms, when they initially appear, are frequently opaque. The
phenomenological analyses that explicate their meaning often seem to
have a provisional character. The same holds for the arguments that em-
ploy these terms. In a word, Levinas’s procedure is the opposite of the
foundational model that, since Descartes, has characterized philosophical
writing. His premises, rather than being stated in the beginning, often
appear late in his work.
A tempting response to this nonsystematic, nonfoundational char-
acter is to gather all the instances of his themes and present his position
as a systematic whole, one that gives the reader a total view of his position.
The result, however, would not be a commentary that leads the student,
section by section, through the work. It would be a book about Totality
and Infinity or, more precisely, about the doctrines it presents. But to
proceed paragraph by paragraph, like the medieval commentators, and

4
I N T R O D U C T I O N
provide a running commentary is not really possible given the nonsys-
tematic character of Levinas’s text. To limit oneself to commenting on
the initial presentation of a theme would be to leave the reader in doubt
as to its direction and sense. A compromise is, therefore, necessary. As
I progress through the text, I shall bring in as much later material as is
necessary to grasp the section under consideration, leaving in suspense,
as far as possible, the insights of later sections.
In this way, I hope to be faithful to the intent of the text. The pecu-
liar structure of Totality and Infinity is not accidental. It is not the result of
an inability to write systematically. The vision that guides its structure is
that teaching proceeds through conversation. To use a pair of Levinas’s
terms, a conversation consists in the interplay of the saying and the said.
As long as the conversation continues, what is said is not the last word.
There is a saying, a new speaking, that adds to it, either by correcting it or
showing it in a new light. Thus, as the context shifts, terms are adjusted,
questions raised and answered. Nothing that is said exists on its own. It is
not defenseless like the words of a printed text. The person who utters it
can come to the defense of it. The person hearing it can voice his objec-
tions. Levinas’s text with its spiraling motion is rather like this. It aims to
teach by engaging the reader.
the Radical Character of Totality
and Infinity
The surplus of the saying over the said, points, for Levinas, to the surplus
of a person with regard to every conceptual framework that might be
employed to define him. The person exceeds this framework just as the
saying exceeds the said. There is, to use another of Levinas’s terms, a cer-
tain infinity to the person. He is nonfinite in that he cannot be limited or
bounded. There is always an excess, an addition that, like a new saying,
adds to our conception of him. No total understanding of the person is,
therefore, possible. For Levinas, this infinity signifies that we cannot think
of persons as individuals of a species. What makes them human, what is
essential to them, cannot be expressed in a common notion. They are,
in fact, irreducibly individual.
One way to grasp this irreducibility is through the Talmud, a text
Levinas studied and lectured on. The assertion that each of us is radically
singular occurs during the Talmud’s discussion of witnesses’ testimony in
capital cases.1
Giving false witness in such instances is deadly since “capital
cases are not like monetary cases.” In the latter, an error can be corrected
by “monetary restitution.” But “in capital cases [the person giving false

5
witness] is held responsible for [the accused’s] blood and the blood of
his descendants until the end of time.”2
It is not just that when we kill a
person, we kill her descendants; it is that the person, herself, is irreplace-
able. There is no substitute that can make good her loss, since each per-
son is a world unto herself. In the Talmud’s words, “For this reason was
man created alone, to teach thee that whosoever destroys a single soul
of Israel, scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a
complete world; and whosoever preserves a single soul of Israel, scripture
ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete world.”3
Everyone, in fact, is as unique as Adam was on the first day of creation.
Everyone can say that the world was created for his or her sake. As the text
continues: “if a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble
one another. But the Supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be
He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one
of them resembles his fellows. Therefore every single person is obliged to
say: the world was created for my sake.”4
Since every person is unique, the
“world” of each person, the world that comes to presence in and through
this person, is also unique. As such, it is irreplaceable. It cannot be made
up by the world of another person for “not one of them resembles his
fellows.” The loss of the person is, then, the loss of “a complete world.”
Saving the person is saving a world.
If we accept this, then we have to say with Levinas, “That all men are
brothers is not explained by their resemblance, nor by a common cause
of which they would be the effect, like metals which refer to the same die
that struck them” (Totality and Infinity, 214).5
In fact, if each constitutes
a world, no overriding or “total” conception of them is possible. Onto-
logically speaking, the multiplicity of humans is a “radical multiplicity,
distinct from numerical multiplicity” (TI, 220). A numerical multiplicity
is acquired by counting according to a unit, the unit being that by which
each thing is to count as one. If my unit is an apple, then I can count
apples. If it is fruit, then I can count fruit—for example, apples and
oranges. Levinas’s claim is thatthere is no unit to count human beings. There
cannot be if each person is radically unique.
To see the fundamental character of this claim, we have to note with
the historian Leopold von Ranke that three elements formed Europe
and, by extension, Western civilization. They are its classical heritage,
the peoples that inundated the ancient Roman Empire, and Judeo-
Christianity.6
As Christopher Dawson observed, the totalitarian move-
ments of the twentieth century were distinguished by their attempts to
eliminate the third.7
There is, in fact, a radical incompatibility between
the view of humanity advanced by the Talmud—and, by extension, by
Judeo-Christianity—and the totalitarian view. In both its fascist and
communist versions, totalitarianism proposed a total understanding of

6
humankind. For the Nazis, this was primarily racial and biological; for
the communists, it involved economics and class warfare. In both cases,
it involved a conception that claimed to leave nothing out, that embraced
all human beings, without exception, in a set of “iron laws,” be they racial
or economic. In Levinas’s mind, such ideologies were distinguished by
their denial of the excessive or “infinite” character of human being.
Their view of “totality” excluded our “infinity.” They left no room for our
“exteriority”—that is, for our ability to stand outside of every conceptual
framework. What this meant is that they denied the biblical insight re-
garding the radical singularity and irreplaceability of every human being.
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority is, in fact, an attempt to counter
this exclusion. Positively, it is an attempt to restore what Levinas takes to
be the foundational element of the West’s biblical heritage.
Were the effort to exclude this heritage limited to the ideologies
of the last century, Levinas’s work would have, at most, a historical sig-
nificance. It would be limited to showing how totalitarianism had to op-
pose Judeo-Christianity. The radical nature of Levinas’s thought, how-
ever, goes beyond this. His claim is that this opposition is inherent in
the West’s classical heritage. The tension between “Athens” and “Jeru-
salem” concerns, in his mind, philosophy’s concealment of the radical
singularity of human being. Thus, the temptation of totalitarianism is
an ineradicable part of our heritage. It is implicit in its classical, philo-
sophical self-conception. From the beginning, this involves an effort to
gain a total conception of being as such and, hence, of human being.
This drive towards totality begins with Parmenides’s assertion of the all-
embracing unity of being, a unity that by definition excludes exterior-
ity. It continues with philosophers such as Plato and Kant, Spinoza and
Hegel.Totality and Infinity aims at nothing less than overturning this heri-
tage. Its goal is to “oppose the ancient privilege of unity which is affirmed
from Parmenides to Spinoza and Hegel” (TI, 102). This involves recon-
ceiving philosophical thought such that multiplicity is prior to unity and
difference is prior to identity. Levinas, as we shall see, will rework the
traditional philosophical themes of ontology, epistemology, ethics, and
language by starting with the premise that human singularity is prior to
numerical unity and human otherness is prior to sameness.
Heidegger’s Existential Analytic
The particular path Levinas takes to reach these goals is deeply indebted
to Martin Heidegger. Levinas first met Heidegger when he went to

7
Freiburg in 1928 to hear the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl lecture.
In Freiburg, as he tells Philippe Nemo, he “discovered” Heidegger’s mag-
num opus, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). He relates, “It is one of the fin-
est books in the history of philosophy—I say this after years of reflection.”
Comparing it to “Plato’s Phaedrus, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Mind, and Bergson’s Time and Free Will,” he asserts, it is
“one of the finest among four or five others.” In fact, his “admiration for
Heidegger is above all an admiration for Sein und Zeit.”8
This admiration
is, however, conflicted, given Heidegger’s “political engagements.” Ac-
cording to Levinas, “Heidegger has never been exculpated in my eyes
from his participation in National-Socialism.”9
As he elsewhere writes, “It
is difficult to forgive Heidegger.”10
Put philosophically, the praise for Heidegger concerns the latter’s
“existential analytic.” This is a description of our “existing.” By this is
meant the ways in which we relate to the world, employing its objects to
disclose both it and ourselves. What is attractive about this analysis is how
it correlates our sense of being to our interactions with the world. Levinas
also finds instructive, though ultimately lacking, Heidegger’s analysis of
the uniqueness of human being. According to Heidegger, being is, for
the most part, disclosed pragmatically. We gain the sense of the objects
that we encounter by employing them for our purposes. Wind, for ex-
ample, shows itself as wind to fill my sails, when I use a sailboat to cross
the lake. Similarly, water can reveal itself as something to drink, to wash
with, or to douse a fire according to my purpose. All such disclosures, ac-
cording to Heidegger, are guided by an overall understanding of being.
Although such an understanding is historically determined, there are fea-
tures of it that remain the same. These come from the Dasein, the human
being, that discloses being. Dasein discloses being through his purpose-
ful, pragmatic activity. The basis of this activity is his peculiar temporal
structure, one where he is led by his conception of the future to use the
resources the past has given him to act in the present so as to realize his
goals. Thus, the water I have on hand from my past activity can at present
be used to douse a fire if this is the future state I wish to realize. For Hei-
degger, this temporal structure serves “as the horizon for all understand-
ing of being and for any way of interpreting it” (SZ, 17).11
It implicitly
determines the sense of being as such.
What about the being of Dasein? Heidegger takes “temporality as
the meaning of the being that we call Dasein.” Throughout Being and
Time, he will interpret the “structures of Dasein” as “modes of temporal-
ity” (SZ, 17). As for Dasein’s uniqueness, this stems, first of all, from the
fact that each of us must die our own death. This makes us realize that
the life we lose in death is as individual as the death that takes it from us.

8
Its individuality, for Heidegger, is a matter of the choices Dasein makes.
Each chosen action defines him as its author. He becomes the person
having done it. This “authorship” is not determined in advance by his
“nature.” He does not have a generic essence with a biologically inher-
ited set of behaviors. His choices are, in fact, up to him. If he is willing
to accept this and take responsibility for his life, his choices are “authen-
tic.” He, himself, rather than the anonymous crowd, sets the direction of
his life. Doing so, he becomes unique as its author. Such uniqueness, it
should at once be noted, has no essential content. Dasein’s freedom to
choose his course in life (and his own being-in-the-world) is such that
he can always overturn the choices he has made. His self-determination
through his choices is absolute precisely because he has no nature, that
is, no inherent limitations (as the animals do) on his behavior. Given this
lack of essential content, the uniqueness of an individual Dasein has a
certain abstractness. As such, it does not override Heidegger’s universal
account of human being as a temporal structure. It is, in fact, in terms
of this universality, that Heidegger can use it to investigate the meaning
of being as such.
Levinas’s Counter-Analytic
Levinas’s alternative to this, in his existential analytic, is to maintain Hei-
degger’s correlation of the sense of being to our Dasein, but to radically
pluralize this sense by providing an alternate foundation for our unique-
ness. This is given by our organic functioning—more particularly, by its
non-substitutability.12
Thus, the fact that no one can die for another is but
one of a host of phenomena, all of which point to the uniqueness of our
embodiment. None of our bodily functions can be replaced by someone
else’s. No one, for example, can eat for us. The fact that someone else
has had his dinner does not lessen my need for my own. The same holds
for sleeping, breathing, or a host of other functions that are part of our
being alive. Our experience of such functioning, which makes up our af-
fective life, thus defines a sphere of privacy and intimacy. The experience
of the flesh of a peach as you bite into it, chewing and swallowing it, is
fundamentally different than the experience of some public object like a
book on a table. The very act of consuming removes the peach from the
public realm. It makes it affectively unavailable to all but yourself. This
is why the “taste” that relates to our affective life is not disputable. Even
with regard to the experience of public objects like a book or a table,
embodiment imposes a certain privacy. As embodied, individuals never

9
occupy the same spatial position at the same time. Thus, their experience
is never precisely the same. The nonidentity or “alterity” that embodi-
ment imposes on us necessitates language. As distinct, we are forced to
use language to communicate our experiences. It is only as translated
into linguistic signs that such experiences achieve any commonality. To
reverse this, the public presence of the world is that of our discourse. It
is only by speaking and comparing our experiences with others that we
can have any certainty that what we see is objectively there, that is, pres-
ent not just for us, but for others as well.
In Levinas’s analytic, our ethical consciousness grows out of this
embodiment. To have a body is to be subject to its needs and exposed to
its vulnerabilities. Embodied, we have to live from the world and what it
offers. We can be hungry even though, as Levinas writes, “Dasein in Hei-
degger is never hungry” (TI, 134). Circumstances, such as poverty, fam-
ine, and war, can prevent us from meeting our needs. Our embodiment
makes us vulnerable to these. The ethical correlate of such vulnerability is
the appeal that stems from the other in distress. It is expressed in our obli-
gations to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and so
on. Heidegger’s analytic, by contrast, never focuses on our embodiment.
It thus ignores the needs and vulnerabilities associated with it. Because
of this, it misses the ethical aspect of our being in the world: it cannot
disclose the world where the biblical command to care for the “widow
and the orphan” has preeminence. This failure to disclose the moral di-
mension of Dasein’s existence has consequences for this analytic’s grasp
of being itself. Its silence on embodiment means that there is nothing in
its conception of being that immunizes it from the abuses of totalitari-
anism. It is liable to the latter’s exclusion of exteriority since it has no
conception of the radical singularity that is based on our embodiment.13
Levinas’s response to this failure is an existential analytic that
grounds our uniqueness, not on our choices, but on our embodied func-
tioning. As with Heidegger’s analytic, the focus is on how our being in
the world corresponds to our understanding of being. For Levinas, how-
ever, this understanding is based on our embodied being with others. As
such, it includes from the beginning the ethical obligations that spring
from our needs and vulnerabilities.14
Indicative of Levinas’s intent are the
Aristotelian terms he uses to characterize this understanding: “metaphys-
ics” and “first philosophy.” Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, called his investi-
gations into the meaning of being “first philosophy.” Its priority came
from the fact that it concerned being as such, being prior to its particular
divisions, which were the subject of particular philosophical investiga-
tions.15
For Levinas, however, “morality is not a branch of philosophy, but
first philosophy” (TI, 304). Our ethical obligations are, as it were, the lens

10
through which the genuine nature of being as such comes into focus in
its radical plurality. Given this positioning of ethics as “first philosophy,”
he employs the term “metaphysics” to designate our ethical apprehen-
sion of being. The result is an existential analytic that is at once a philo-
sophical anthropology, an ethics, and an elucidation of being as such.
Since so much of this analytic is conceived as a response to Hei-
degger’s position, I have to extend my preliminary remarks regarding it.
Thus, before I begin my commentary, I shall sketch out the basic features
of Heidegger’s analytic as it appears in Being and Time.

11
1
Heidegger’s Existential Analytic
the temporal Structure of Care
As I indicated in the introduction, Heidegger sees our human existence,
our Dasein, as a privileged mode of access to the question of being qua
being. By “being” he means the sense or meaning of being. Such mean-
ing comes from us, that is, from our ability to disclose beings, such dis-
closure being guided by our understanding of being. This means that
without us, the question of being loses its context. As Heidegger writes:
Only so long as Dasein exists, which means the factual possibility of an
understanding of being, “is there” being [Sein]. If Dasein does not
exist, then there “is” neither the “independence” [of beings] nor the
“in itself” [of beings]. Such things are neither understandable nor not
understandable. The innerworldly being is neither disclosable nor can
it lie hidden. The one can neither say that beings are nor that they are
not. (SZ, 212)
None of these alternatives are possible if humans with their ability to dis-
close are not present. If, in fact, the being of the world has its sense from
the way we constitute such sense through our disclosures, then the first
question must be about Dasein. In other words, given that “fundamental
ontology [the study of being qua being] . . . must be sought in the exis-
tential analytic of Dasein” (SZ, 13), the question is: What kind of being
does Dasein have?1
Heidegger’s answer involves defining Dasein as “care.” In his words,
“Dasein, when understood ontologically, is care” (SZ, 57). “Care” is a care
for our own being since Dasein, according to Heidegger, is the entity for
whom its own being is an issue (SZ, 12). This means that it has to decide
what it will be. In other words, its being is a matter of its choices as it
makes its way in the world. Such choices involve its projects, that is, the
things it wants to accomplish. Engaging in these, it discloses both the
world and itself. Thus “paper” can mean something to write on, some-
thing to paint or draw on, combustible material to start a fire with, mate-
rial for making silhouettes, paper airplanes, and the like. Each use gives
a different cast to what comes to mind when we think of “paper.” As this

12
C h A P T E R 1
example indicates, disclosure is primarily pragmatic. It exhibits things
in their instrumental value. They are disclosed insofar as they are useful
for our projects. Our interpretations of them, our considering them as
something definite, is based on this.2
In Heidegger’s words, interpreta-
tion “appresents the what-it-is-for of a thing and so brings out the ref-
erence of the ‘in-order-to,’” that is, its use in a particular project.3
As a
result, the world becomes articulated. It gains its meaningfulness as an
“equipmental totality.” This disclosure of the world is also a self-disclosure.
As persons for whom our being is an issue, our being becomes that of the
accomplishers of these projects. Thus, the project of writing a book, if
carried out, makes a person an author. Similarly, the builder is the person
who has built something.
Since such projects involve the world, so does the selfhood that
is disclosed through them. Insofar as it is defined through projects in-
volving objects in the world, Dasein’s fundamental ontological mode is,
according to Heidegger, being-in-the-world. This being-in-the-world in-
volves our “comportment” (our behavior) towards beings, which is itself
based on our understanding of being.4
What is this understanding? It is,
as indicated, our knowing how to make our way in the world. It is our
implicitly grasping the context of the relations involved in our tasks or
projects. Our understanding of “breakfast,” for example, is constitutive
of our being-in-the-world of the kitchen in the morning. We “under-
stand” how to go about making breakfast. The objects in the kitchen—
the eggs, plates, cereal bowls, spoons, and so on—all have meaning; they
are “understood” in their purpose; and we behave or “comport” our-
selves towards them accordingly. Heidegger calls the place of such inter-
related objects a “Bezugsbereich.” This term designates an area of relations
that is suited to disclose beings in a particular way. The kitchen is one ex-
ample of a Bezugsbereich. Another is the law court, whose trial proceedings
are meant to disclose guilt or innocence. A very different Bezugsbereich is
provided by the scientific laboratory, which discloses being in its measur-
able material properties. As such examples indicate, the human world
consists of multiple areas of relations. Each has its particular manner of
revealing being. Corresponding to each is a particular understanding of
how we are to make our way among its objects. Thus, the richer and more
multiple our understanding is, the richer is our human world. Its mean-
ingfulness increases along with the complexity of our behavior. So does
our sense of who (or what) we are in our being-in-the-world.
All this has a reference to our temporality. In fact, the point of
Heidegger’s descriptions is to exhibit “temporality as the meaning of the
being that we call Dasein.” This involves “the repeated interpretation . . .
of the structures of Dasein . . . as modes of temporality” (SZ, 17). Such

13
h E I D E G G E R ’ S E X I S T E N T I A L A N A L Y T I C
structures are those of our being-in-the-world as “care”—that is, as be-
ings who face the choice of what sort of beings we shall become through
our projects. Thus, the past is what gives us the resources for our choices.
The future appears in our projecting ourselves forward in opting for
some goal, while the present occurs in our actualization of this goal. Let
me go through these one by one, starting with the future. According to
Heidegger, the future appears because, in making a choice, “Dasein has
already compared itself in its [present] being with a[n unrealized] possi-
bility of itself” (SZ, 191). This means that “Dasein is already ahead of itself
in its being. Dasein is always [in considering these possibilities of itself]
‘beyond itself’ [‘über sich hinaus’]” (SZ, 192). Sartre expresses this insight
as follows: man, he asserts, is the being “who is what he is not, and who
is not what he is.”5
Separated from myself in my being ahead of myself,
I am not what I presently am. Given this, I can only “be” what I am not,
that is, be as projected toward those goals or possibilities that I actualize
through my projects. This being ahead of myself is, according to Hei-
degger, part of the structure of my being as care. In his words, “The being
of Dasein signifies, being ahead of yourself in already being in the world
as being there with the entities that one encounters within the world. This
being fills in the meaning of the term care” (SZ, 192). This complicated
terminology should not conceal from us the basic phenomenon that Hei-
degger is pointing to: Someone is knocking at the door. Hearing this, we
are already ahead of ourselves, already projecting ourselves forward to
the moment when we answer the door. In our being, we are there at the
door awaiting ourselves as we walk forward to open it. The insight, in
other words, is that we are in our being temporally extended. This being
ahead of ourselves is the origin of our sense of futurity. It is what allows
futurity to appear. When, for example, I walk towards the door, I disclose
the future by closing the gap between the self that awaits me and the pres-
ent. As Heidegger writes, “This . . . letting itself come towards itself [auf sich
Zukommen-lassen] . . . is the original phenomenon of the future” (SZ, 325).
The original appearing of the past also occurs through the accom-
plishment of my goals. In describing it, Heidegger returns to the fact that
my projects spring from my possibilities. I am “ahead of myself” when
I project these possibilities forward as practical goals. Such possibilities
are inherent in my given historical situation. Thus, my possibility of win-
ning a marathon depends on my given physical makeup, that is, on a his-
tory that includes the facts of my birth and subsequent physical develop-
ment. It also depends on how much I have already trained for the event
and on my living in a culture that has developed the tradition of running
marathon races.6
It is this dependence that is at the origin of my sense of
pastness. The past is what provides me with the resources for my projects.

14
C h A P T E R 1
Such resources are part of my being-in-the-world. In providing me with
my possibilities, the “having been” of this being is what allows me to be
ahead of myself, that is, have a future. This dependence does not mean
that the past determines the future. According to Heidegger, the line of
dependence does not go from past to future, but rather the reverse. In
his words, “Dasein ‘is’ its past in the manner of its being, which roughly
speaking, occurs from its future. . . . Its own past—and this always implies
the past of its ‘generation’—does not follow after Dasein, but rather is
always in advance of it” (SZ, 20). His point is that, while the past gives me
the possibilities for my future action, it is only in terms of such action that
they can be considered possibilities at all. They are such only as material
for my projects. Thus, just as paper appears as writing paper when I use
it for this purpose, so its very possibility to serve as such is there for me,
that is, discloses itself, only in terms of this way of my being ahead of my-
self. This means, in Heidegger’s words, “Dasein can authentically be past
only insofar as it is futural. Pastness originates in a certain way from the
future” (SZ, 326).
Heidegger’s account of the present follows the same pattern. It,
too, is described in terms of the accomplishment of our projects. Such
accomplishment results in the disclosure of the things about us. They
show themselves as useful to our projects or as simply there, that is, as
not having any immediate use value. In any case, our taking action to
accomplish our goals results “in a making present [Gegenwärtigen] of these
entities.” The result is the “present in the sense of making present” (SZ,
326). Taken as a temporal mode, the present is thus part of an ongoing
process that involves the past and the future. In accomplishing a goal, I
make what the goal involves present. I also transform my past by adding
to it. This addition transforms the possibilities it offers me. For example,
having opened the door in response to someone knocking, my having
been—my past—includes this action. My present discloses the result—
the presence of the person standing there before me. As part of my situa-
tion, this becomes part of my having been, that is, affects the possibilities
that now open up to me.7
With this account of the temporal modes, Heidegger completes his
description of Dasein as care. “Temporality,” he writes, “reveals itself as
the sense of authentic care” (SZ, 326). This is because our temporal dis-
tension makes care possible. It is, in fact, its inner structure:
Dasein’s total being as care signifies: [being] ahead-of-itself in already-
being-in (a world) as being-there-with (entities one encounters in the
world). . . . The original unity of the structure of care lies in tempo-

15
rality. The “ahead-of-itself” is grounded in the future. The “already-
being-in . . .” exhibits the past. “Being-there-with” is made possible in
making present. (SZ, 327)
According to Heidegger, these three modes can be considered as tempo-
ral “ecstasies”—that is, ways in which we stand out from ourselves.8
In our
temporal being we are extended along the lines of our having-been and
our being ahead of ourselves. Even in the present, we are not self-present
but rather there with the things we disclose. In a striking metaphor, Hei-
degger compares this three-dimensional structure of our temporal apart-
ness to a clearing—that is, to a point in the woods where the trees part
and light enters in. He writes, “The being that bears the title being-there
[Da-sein] is cleared [gelichtet]. . . . What essentially clears this being, i.e.,
what makes it ‘open’ and also ‘bright’ for itself, is what we have defined
as care” (SZ, 350). Since care is temporally structured, he clarifies this by
adding: “ecstatical temporality originally clears the there [Da]” (SZ, 351).
This clearing is our openness to the world. It is our clearing in its midst.
The fundamental point here is that our being in the world is rooted in
our temporality. The transcendence of the world is a function of this tem-
porality. Its apartness—its extension in space—is founded in the apart-
ness of time. It is, Heidegger argues, through my closing the gap between
the present and the future that I “spatialize” my world. For example, I
disclose the space between the door and my place in the room through
my action of walking towards it to answer someone knocking. Had I no
such project, this space would not be “cleared.” It would not be disclosed
or made “bright” (see SZ, §23).
Nothingness and the Call of Conscience
Heidegger is not content to describe our being as care. His inquiry drives
him to seek the ground of our being as care. In his eyes, it is not sufficient
to say that we are “care” because we are the kind of being for whom our
being is an issue. We have to ask: why is it an issue? Heidegger’s answer
is that it is an issue for us because of our radical otherness from every-
thing that we encounter in the world. Dasein is not encountered as a
mere thing is; neither is it present as something useful for a project.
In Heidegger’s terms, then, our being is an issue for us because we are
“no-thing,” that is, we do not fall under the ontological categories that
are descriptive of things.9
Our absence on the level of these categories

16
C h A P T E R 1
gives us the nothingness (the no-thingness) that is at the heart of our
projective being. This nothingness is what allows us to “be there” with the
possibilities we choose to realize. Thus, for Heidegger, “not only is the
projection, as one that has been thrown, determined by the nothingness
[Nichtigkeit] of the being of its basis [Grundseins], but also, as projection,
[Dasein] is itself essentially null [nichtig] . . . the nothingness meant here
belongs to Dasein’s being-free for its existential possibilities” (SZ, 285).10
Such nothingness belongs to our freedom to choose among our different
possibilities precisely because our Dasein is not some thing, not some entity
with a determinate nature. If it were, then its nature would limit its choices
and, hence, its ability to be ahead of itself.
Heidegger relates this nothingness to the fact that we can die, death
being understood as the collapse of the inner temporal distance that is
our structure as Dasein. A thing, having no such temporal structure, can-
not die. A clearing, a temporal apartness, can, however, close up leaving
nothing behind. As a clearing I am both subject to the nothingness of
death and in my no-thingness an expression of it. This equation of my in-
ner nothingness with my mortality is the paradoxical heart of Heidegger’s
description of our temporalization. One way to approach it is through
the essential futurity and alterity of death. Its futurity follows from the
fact that as long as we are alive, death remains outstanding. Death is the
possibility that lies beyond all our other possibilities. When it is accom-
plished, all the others must vanish. This is because, as Heidegger writes,
death undoes “our being in the world as such.” Facing death, we confront
“the possibility of our not being able to be there” in the world at all (SZ,
250). Thus, death is always ahead of us. Were we to eliminate it, we would
suppress our being-ahead-of-ourselves. We would collapse the tempo-
ral distance that makes us Dasein.11
We would, in other words, reduce
ourselves to the category of a mere thing. A thing can neither die nor
be ahead of itself. Our not being a thing, our no-thingness, is, however,
the nothingness that is at the basis of our projective being. Thus, the es-
sential futurity of death and the futurity (the ahead-of-ourselves) of our
projective being both point back to this nothingness that lies at our basis.
Such nothingness is ourselves in our radical self-alterity. We are, at
our basis, other than all the possibilities of selfhood that we can realize
through our projects. In the “null basis” of our being as care, we are also
distinct from all the particular beings we disclose. Our inner alterity is
such that it places us beyond everything worldly that we can imagine
or know. The radical alterity of such nothingness thus coincides with
the radical alterity of death. The identification of this nothingness with
death focuses on the fact that death itself, as my annihilation, is other
than everything I can know. Its radical alterity is my alterity in my being-

17
ahead-of-myself. The self I am ahead of as I project myself forward to my
goal is myself in my no-thingness. What I “leap over” in projecting myself
forward is the radical absence that allows me to be temporally distended.
What Heidegger calls the “call of conscience” arises when I face
this nothingness. Doing so, I realize that my being is not something
given to me beforehand, not something I inherit. It is the result of my
action. Heidegger puts this in terms of the self-alterity that is our self-
transcendence as we project ourselves forward. “If in the ground of its
essence Dasein were not transcending, which now means, if it were not
in advance holding itself out into the nothing, then it could never adopt
a stance towards beings nor even towards itself” (The Basic Problems of
Phenomenology, 95). This holding itself out into the nothing is its being
ahead of itself. In separating Dasein from itself, the “nothing” allows it
to assume responsibility both for the beings it reveals and for itself in its
revealing them. The “call of conscience” that arises from this is essentially
a call to self-responsibility. In Heidegger’s words, the call is “a calling-
forth to that potentiality-for-being, which in each case I already am as
Dasein.” This calling-forth is “a summons to being-guilty [Schuldigsein]”
(SZ, 287). “Guilt” here has the double sense of “debt [Schuld]” and of
“being responsible for something [Schuld sein daran]” (see ibid., 282–85).
Both senses appear when I resolutely face the fact that I will die. In facing
death, I face the nothing at the heart of my projective being. Responding
to this, I realize my responsibility for my being. This realization is that of
my self-indebtedness. I owe myself whatever being I have. Thus, the call of
conscience is a call to face one’s situation, to recognize the factual pos-
sibilities inherent in it. In Heidegger’s words, “The call of conscience has
the character of Dasein’s appeal to its ownmost potentiality-to-be-itself
[Selbstseinkönnen]; and this is done by summoning it to its ownmost being-
guilty [Schuldigsein]”—that is, its ownmost self-indebtedness (SZ, 269).
Hearing this summons, I realize that my being is the result of my choices.
My being springs from the possibilities I choose to actualize.
It is possible to see temporalization as the process of paying this
debt. Endeavoring to pay it, I must anticipate, that is, see myself in terms
of my future possibilities. For such possibilities to be realizable, this pro-
jecting myself forward must be done in terms of my factually given past.
I must anticipate while retaining the past that gives these possibilities
their concrete shape. I must, also, work to actualize such real possibili-
ties, thereby making myself something. But, of course, I can never be
some thing. I am essentially null. Thus, I am always in debt to myself. The
debt of being, as long as I live, can never be repaid. To satisfy the debt
would be to collapse my projective being into the inanimate presence of
a mere thing. The result of my attempting to pay it is, thus, my life in its

18
C h A P T E R 1
ongoing temporalization. The call of conscience to pay the debt of self-
hood is, in other words, what drives this life forward. The sense of our
impending death animates this call. Both ahead of us and internal to us,
death is identified with the nothingness of our temporal distension—that
is, our being ahead of ourselves within ourselves. The link of death to
the “nothing” that “is neither an object nor any being at all” comes from
the fact that death is “the impossibility of any existence at all” (SZ, 262).
For Heidegger, our facing this end means acknowledging that our being-
in-the-world is our responsibility. It is our facing our self-indebtedness in
the face of our nothingness.
I shall have occasion to return to and refine this sketch of Hei-
degger’s analytic during the following commentary on Totality and Infin-
ity. For the present, it is sufficient to keep the main point in mind. For
Heidegger, the “call of conscience,” understood as the basis of our ethi-
cal responsibility, is self-directed. The notion of our responsibility to the
other—that is, to his or her being-in-the-world—is, at most, peripheral
to his concerns.12
This focus on oneself rather than the other is why
Levinas asserts that Heidegger would probably be more afraid of dying
than of being a murderer.13

19
2
the Preface
the Question
Like Heidegger in Being and Time, Levinas in his initial remarks is con-
cerned with opening up a space for the inquiry he is about to undertake.
Does it makes any sense to speak of morality? There is no room for an
investigation that takes it on its own terms if we assume from the start
that morality is an illusion unmasked by the experience of war. Levinas,
accordingly, begins the “Preface” by writing: “Everyone will readily agree
that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped
by morality. Does not lucidity, the mind’s openness upon the true, con-
sist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war?” (TI, 21). The
attitude he is confronting is that “war . . . renders morality derisory.” War
is the ultimate reality. This means that “the trial by force is the test of
the real.” Heraclites, the pre-Socratic philosopher, asserted that “strife
is justice”1
and “war is the father and king of all.”2
Yet, we do not need
such fragments to show that “being reveals itself as war to philosophical
thought” (ibid.). Philosophy’s tendency to equate being with war comes
from war’s all-embracing quality. Like Parmenides’s concept of being,
war allows no exteriority. It draws everything in. As Levinas puts this: “Not
only modern war but every war . . . establishes an order from which no
one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not
manifest exteriority and the other as other” (ibid.). This all-embracing
character is particularly evident in the “total war” that Goebbels advo-
cated (and all nations more or less practiced) during the Second World
War. Those who engaged in it used any and all means to prosecute their
war aims. In their bombing raids they did not distinguish civilians from
soldiers. The Germans were particularly ruthless in their treatment of the
occupied populations. Their totalitarian ideology, like war itself, had an
all-embracing character. Its ideal was the inclusion of all life under state
control, employing everything involved in such life as means for the ends
that the state set.
Morality, by contrast, involves never treating individuals simply as
means for our purposes. It implies, as Kant argued, treating them as
ends in themselves. They should be respected as autonomous individu-
als who have an existence exterior to our purposes, persons who regard

20
C h A P T E R 2
themselves as the end or goal of their own activities. The question Levinas
is raising is whether this regard for others is an illusion. Is it something
that cannot stand philosophical inspection? Does not the same hold for
peace, as the opposite of war? Does not the striving for peace “live on
subjective opinions and illusions”? (TI, 24). The space for such questions
involves the possibility of a negative response. To open it up is to question
the obviousness of a positive answer.
Such obviousness, Levinas claims, comes from the history of West-
ern philosophy. Totalization, the denial of exteriority, and war all spring
from the nature of its endeavor. In his words, “The visage of being that
shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality that dominates
Western philosophy” (TI, 21). The reason why philosophy only regards
the aspect of being that shows itself in war is because its ideal is that of
gaining a total knowledge, one that leaves nothing out. The goal of an all-
inclusive knowledge is, of course, possible only if being itself is inherently
graspable. This implies, as Parmenides wrote, “The same thing exists for
thinking and for being,”3
that is, to be is to be thinkable or, to reverse this:
what cannot be known cannot be. It is simply a pure nothingness. This
holds, Levinas writes, “unless philosophical evidence refers from itself to
a situation that can no longer be stated in terms of ‘totality’ . . . Unless
the non-knowing with which the philosophical knowing begins coincides
not with pure nothingness but only with a nothingness of objects.” It
holds, in fact, unless “we can proceed from the experience of totality
back to a situation where totality breaks up, a situation that conditions
the totality itself” (TI, 24). What is this nontotalizable situation that condi-
tions philosophical evidence? How can it stand as a condition for totality
itself? Levinas claims: “Such a situation is the gleam of exteriority or of
transcendence in the face of the Other [autrui].4
The rigorously devel-
oped concept of this transcendence is expressed by the term “infinity”
(TI, 24–25). The claim, here, which we shall have to explore, is that the
“situation” that “breaks up” totality is the experience of another person.
This experience is something that philosophy presupposes in positing
a totality. Yet what it points to stands outside of this totality. The other
person transcends the totality and, thereby, exhibits his or her “infinity.”
infinity
The meaning of “infinity” is one that Levinas coins for his own purposes.
It does not signify a being, as in an “infinite being,” but rather a mode of
being. Grammatically, its referent is not a noun, but rather a verb desig-

21
T h E P R E F A C E
nating an activity of being. The action is that of overflowing. In Levinas’s
words, “infinity overflows the thought that thinks it. Its very infinition is
produced precisely in this overflowing” (TI, 25). This means that “the
idea of infinity is the mode of being, the infinition, of infinity” (TI, 26).
Infinition is the action of infinity. It “is produced in the improbable feat
whereby a separated being fixed in its identity, the same, the I, nonethe-
less contains in itself what it can neither contain nor receive solely by
virtue of its own identity” (TI, 26–27). Here, “subjectivity realizes . . . the
astonishing feat of containing more than it is possible for it to contain”
(TI, 27). Infinity, then, is manifested by the surplus, the excess of the
object. As a verb, it designates this exceeding.
The transcendence it expresses is not, as Derrida argues, a total
transcendence, a complete nonidentity between the subject and that
which transcends it. Were this the case, then what is transcendent would
be completely unknown. We could neither know nor be aware of it. If this
were Levinas’s position, then we would have to say with Derrida, “Levi-
nas . . . deprives himself of the very foundation and possibility of his own
language. What authorizes him to say ‘infinitely other’ if the infinitely
other does not appear as such . . . ?”5
Every transcendent Other would be
“totally other” and we would be at a loss to distinguish between them.6
Infinity, as characterizing transcendence, however, only signifies “the ex-
ceeding of limits” (TI, 26). It implies both limits and their surpassing. The
limits are those of the subject or “I” (the “same”). The surpassing of them
is accomplished by the presence of the Other as other. It occurs through
the Other who is in me and yet transcends me.
One way of understanding Levinas’s meaning is by noting the pos-
sible relations intentions have to fulfillments. The givenness of what we
intend can exactly match our intentions. It can be other than what we in-
tend—as is the case when we are mistaken. The givenness also can be less.
It can, for example, not offer the detail that was part of our intentions.
Finally, givenness can exceed our intentions. In showing itself, the object
presents us with more than what we intended. To intend the object as
having such excessive presence is, paradoxically, to intend it as exceeding
our intentions. Such presence has a peculiar quality. It makes us aware
that more is being offered than we can formulate in our intentions. The
interpretations based on our previous experience are not sufficient to
grasp the sense it embodies. We have to adjust our interpretation and
return to it again. In such a return, however, we face the same situation.
Yet another return is called for. The “object” that continually demands
such a return is, of course, not an object, but a person. In speaking with
the Other, he is always adding to the said. His ability to do so points to his
transcendence of the said. Such transcendence is not just manifested in

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C h A P T E R 2
conversation; it also shows itself in the Other’s behavior. In his actions,
the Other gives himself as both like and not like me. He behaves gener-
ally as I do, but not in any strictly predictable way. There is always a certain
excess in what he shows me. He is not limited to the predictions I make
from my own experience. I make such predictions based on my inter-
pretation of the situation. His interpretation, however, need not match
my own.7
To intend the Other as manifesting this quality is, as indicated,
to intend the inadequacy of one’s intention. The intention directs itself
towards a fulfillment that will exceed its content. Given this, we have to
say with Levinas that the thought of the Other contains “more than it is
possible for it to contain.” It contains more that what it is possible for
it to “receive solely by virtue of its own identity” (TI, 27). Its identity as
a thought is given by its content. This is what is possible for thought to
contain. But the intention to the Other contains more than this as intend-
ing the inadequacy of such content, that is, as directing itself towards a
presence that will exceed it.
infinity and Embodiment
Levinas writes that his work will apprehend subjectivity “as founded in
the idea of infinity” (TI, 26). One of the ways a person manifests his in-
finity is in the action he takes to alter his circumstances. Viewed in terms
of the thought that merely contemplates the world, there is “an essential
violence” in action. This violence involves action’s ability “to shatter at
every moment the framework of a content that is thought, to cross the
barriers of immanence” (TI, 27). When we act, we “shatter” the thought
that represents what is by creating something new. This means that “what,
in action, breaks forth as essential violence is the surplus of being over the
thought that claims to contain [being], the marvel of the idea of infin-
ity” (ibid.). Levinas’s point is that when we act, we do more than simply
regard the world. Action involves more than the adequation of thought
with its object. A new situation, a “surplus of being,” results from the act.
Something is present, something exists, that was not there before. Thus,
action surpasses the “thought that claims to contain being” by produc-
ing the new. It involves the idea of infinity in the sense of presupposing
limits (those given by the thought that claims to contain being) and ex-
ceeding these limits. What action produces exceeds thought in the sense
that the existence or being that our action produces is not just the thought
of existence or being.
Behind this surplus is both the infinity of subjectivity and the em-

23
T h E P R E F A C E
bodiment that allows it to act. Both are involved in “the incarnation of
consciousness.” Such incarnation, Levinas writes, is “comprehensible
only if, over and beyond adequation, the overflowing of the idea by its
ideatum, that is, the idea of infinity [as such overflowing] moves con-
sciousness” (TI, 27). This “overflowing of the idea by its ideatum”—that
is, by the existent of which we have the idea—is the overflowing of the
content of the idea by the existence that bears this content. Conscious-
ness, in acting, is moved by something more than its ideas. In acting,
it presupposes the surplus of actual existence. As an embodied actor,
“consciousness, then, does not consist in equaling being with representa-
tion . . . but rather in overflowing [representation] . . . and in accomplish-
ing events whose ultimate signification (contrary to the Heideggerian
conception) does not lie in disclosing” (ibid.). The reference, here, is to
Heidegger’s pragmatic theory of disclosure: I disclose things as material
for my projects by acting to achieve my ends. It is also to the fact that my
action does not just disclose (as if it only revealed what already was there
waiting to be disclosed). It actually creates the new. It surpasses disclosure
by creating what was not yet there to be disclosed before the action. If we
ask for the source of such newness, it is subjectivity itself “as founded in
the idea of infinity.” Incarnate consciousness, as moved by this idea, acts
to create the new.
Ethics and infinity
Levinas claims that “the idea of infinity . . . is the common source of
activity and theory” (TI, 27). One way to understand this is to note that
theory’s claim to grasp objective reality is not something that can be es-
tablished by a single individual. As I said in the “Introduction,” it is only
by speaking and comparing our experiences with Others that we can
have any certainty that what we see is objectively there, that it is present,
not just for us, but for Others as well. To grasp such Others, however,
we must possess the idea of infinity, that is, the idea of the exceeding by
which the Other shows herself as other. If we accept this, then we can say,
with Levinas, not just all practice, but also “knowing qua intentionality
already presupposes the idea of infinity” (ibid.).
Because this last point is the linchpin of his argument, Levinas will
return to it again and again. If we grant it, we cannot say that morality is
an illusion, something that the progress of knowledge gradually dispels.
Ethics, with its focus on the Other as other, is not something dependent
on objective knowledge. It is prior to it. As the “overflowing of objecti-

24
C h A P T E R 2
fying thought,” the ethical relation is, in fact, the “forgotten experience
by which [such thought] lives” (TI, 28). Objectifying thought, the thought
that attempts to get the object in itself, the object apart from our partial
and biased apprehensions, inherently has a “transcendent intention.”
As such, it lives from, but forgets ethics in that “the essential of ethics
is in its transcendent intention” (TI, 29). The goal of Totality and Infin-
ity will be to demonstrate this. In Levinas’s words, “The break-up of the
formal structure of thought . . . into events which this structure dissimu-
lates, but which sustain it . . . constitutes a deduction—necessary and yet
non-analytical” (TI, 28). There is here an allusion to Immanuel Kant’s
“transcendental deduction.” In hisCritique of Pure Reason, Kant traces the
possibility of objective knowledge back to the categories and, ultimately,
back to the unity of our subjectivity. Levinas’s deduction will deduce its
possibility from the event of the “transcendent intention” that animates
ethics.
In another allusion, this time to Aristotle, Levinas writes, “Already
of itself ethics is an ‘optics’” (TI, 29). To consider ethics as an optics is
to regard it as a mode of perception, like the sensible and intellectual
modes of perception. Aristotle thought that, like these modes, ethical
insight has its own special “organ.” This, he claimed, was our character.
Some fundamental principles, he wrote, have to be apprehended, not by
perception nor by induction from examples, but rather by “habituation”
(Nicomachean Ethics, 1098b4). You need the right habits to perceive them.
The character made up of such habits is like the lens of the eye. With-
out it, you cannot focus on the ethical. Thus, you don’t ask an alcoholic
about how much to drink, a miser about how much to give, a coward or a
reckless person about courage, and so on. Their habits incapacitate them
from grasping the correct answer. Levinas makes a similar claim about
objective knowledge. Without the “optics” provided by ethics, we lose the
sense of objectivity.
What we have here is a certain reversal of the relation between activ-
ity and cognition. According to Levinas, we cannot say that “activity rests
on cognitions that illuminate it,” that is, first we have to know, then we
can act (TI, 29). In a certain sense, ethical action is its own seeing, its own
relation to the truth. Heidegger, as we have seen, makes a similar claim
about pragmatic activity. We disclose things—we show “how” and “what”
they are—when we use them for our purposes. Such disclosure manifests
their “truth”—a term whose Greek equivalent, aletheia, he takes to signify
their un-hiddenness. When we use things, we bring them, in their “what”
and “how,” out of concealment. For Levinas, however, ethical action is
more fundamental. He asserts: “The welcoming of the face and the work
of justice—which condition the birth of truth itself—are not interpre-

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T h E P R E F A C E
table in terms of [Heideggerian] disclosure” (TI, 28). They condition
such disclosure and, hence, the “truth” that it exhibits. If our actions are
unethical, if they are the actions of totalization or of war, then we get the
“evidence of war,” the evidence that refutes morality. But this “evidence
of war has been maintained in an essentially hypocritical civilization,”
one claiming to be “attached both to the True and the Good,” but in fact
“antagonistic” to them (TI, 24). Such civilization cannot, in fact, account
for its knowledge, since such knowledge, in its claims to transcendence,
rests on the ethical relation. Its hypocrisy or bad faith involves its hiding
this fact from itself.
Prophetic Eschatology
We are now in a position to understand Levinas’s rather cryptic remarks
regarding “prophetic eschatology.” The term “eschatology” comes from
the Greek eschatos, signifying “last.” It generally refers to doctrines of the
“last things,” concerning the ultimate end of time and the world. So con-
ceived, eschatology seems to provide “information about the future by
revealing the finality of being.” But for Levinas, “its real import lies else-
where.” Rather than introducing “a teleological system into the totality”
or “teaching the orientation of history . . . eschatology institutes a rela-
tion with being beyond the totality or beyond history.” Its “relationship,”
he adds, is “with a surplus always exterior to the totality” (TI, 22). Levinas
uses “the concept of infinity” to convey this surplus. It is needed “to ex-
press this transcendence to totality, non-encompassable within a totality”
that, nonetheless, is as “primordial as totality” is (TI, 23).
As we have seen, the term “infinity” relates to the Other who is in
us and yet transcends us. The morality that springs from this relation
“consummates the vision of eschatology.” Rather than being derived from
it, morality provides the evidence for eschatology. The result, Levinas
writes, is “a ‘vision’ without image, bereft of the synoptic and totalizing
objectifying virtues of vision, a relation or an intentionality of a wholly
different type—which this work seeks to describe” (TI, 23). The perpetual
peace that faith-based eschatology sees as reigning at the end of days is
part of this vision. “But this,” Levinas writes, “does not mean that, when
affirmed objectively, it is believed by faith instead of being known by
knowledge.” In fact, such “peace” is neither an object of faith nor of
knowledge. Hegel claimed to know (as part of his “science of knowledge”)
such peace would result from the dialectic of history. It would occur when
the oppositions that generate history were resolved in a final synthesis.

26
C h A P T E R 2
For Levinas, however, “peace does not take place in the objective history
disclosed by war, as the end of that war or as the end of history” (TI, 24).
It is always present, continually available in the relation to the Other as
other. The point is not to philosophically demonstrate eschatological
“truths” such as peace, but rather “to proceed from the experience of
totality back to a situation where totality breaks up . . . Such a situation
is the gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face of the Other”
(ibid.). It is through the analysis of this situation that Levinas will provide
the evidence for his eschatological vision.

27
3
Metaphysical Desire
Totality and Infinity, i, A
the irreversible Relation
Levinas’s analysis of our relation to the Other begins with a description of
metaphysical desire. Following Heidegger, he sees metaphysics as resting
on the distinction between this world and the true world.1
Its “alibi” is that
“‘the true life is absent.’ But we are in the world.”2
“Metaphysics” is, thus,
“turned towards the ‘elsewhere’ and the ‘otherwise’ and the ‘other’” (TI,
33). So is the desire termed “metaphysical.” It is not a desire for some-
thing I can possess. “The other metaphysically desired is not ‘other’ like
the bread I eat, the land in which I dwell, the landscape I contemplate.”
Such things are part of the totality of the world. I can possess them. In
becoming mine, he writes, “their alterity is . . . reabsorbed into my own
identity as a thinker or a possessor.” By contrast, “the metaphysical desire
tends . . . towards something else entirely, towards the absolutely other”
(ibid.).
What we confront here is desire in a very special sense. It is not a
desire based on need, on being “indigent.” It is not “a longing for return”
to a previously satisfied state (TI, 33). Not being based on need, it is,
Levinas writes, “a desire that cannot be satisfied” by the fulfillment of a
need (TI, 34). Water, for example, satisfies or completes thirst; food does
the same thing for hunger, and so on. But metaphysical desire desires
“beyond what could complete it.” It is a “desire that nourishes itself . . .
with its hunger.” The closing of the gap between the desire and the de-
sired does not occur. They form a “relationship that is not the disap-
pearance of distance.” What we confront is “a desire without satisfaction,
which . . . understands the remoteness, the alterity, the exteriority of the
other” (ibid.).
This very remoteness makes the relation between the desire and
the desired incomprehensible and irreversible. It is incomprehensible
because its terms cannot be comprehended under a single concept. Were
the relation of the terms based on need, they could be put together in a
totality. Hunger and food, for example, can be brought together in the

28
C h A P T E R 3
concept of a sentient organic being that must eat to live. Here, however,
the formal characteristic of the desired is “to be other”; its alterity “makes
up its content.” Thus, the desire and the desired “cannot be totalized”
since the very content of the desired is that of escaping such totalization
(TI, 35). For the same reason, the relation between the desiring person
(“the same”) and the desired (“the other”) is not a reversible relation.
Rather, “the same goes unto the other differently than the other unto the
same.” As Levinas explains this, “the reversibility of the relation . . . would
couple them the one to the other; they would complete one another in
a system visible from the outside. The intended transcendence would
thus be reabsorbed into the unity of the system, [thereby] destroying the
radical alterity of the other” (TI, 35–36). Levinas’s insight is that there is
no outside perspective available here. If there were, both the same and
the other would “be reunited under one gaze, and the absolute distance
that separates them would be filled in” (that is, overcome by the grasp of
them together). Here, however, “the radical separation between the same
and the other means precisely that it is impossible to place oneself out-
side of the correlation between the same and the other so as to record the
correspondence or non-correspondence of this going with this return”
(TI, 36). The point follows since there is no way to take up both sides of
the relation. The alterity of the other is such that I cannot begin from its
side. Were the relation reversible, one could look at it from both sides. I
could start with the other just as well as starting with “the same” (the I),
but this would mean having the other within one’s grasp, comprehend-
ing it as a starting point—that is, grasping it as an “I” just like myself. The
very content of the other, however, denies this possibility.
the “Same”
Given this, we have to say that the relation has only one available starting
point—the “I.” Levinas calls this starting point “the same.” This is because
the “I” or ego exists in the flow of its experiences as identifying itself as
one and the same experiencer. The ego, then, “is the primal identity,
the primordial work of identification.” Not that it remains absolutely the
same, but rather “it is identical in its very alterations. It represents them to
itself and thinks them” (TI, 36). Even when it faces itself and “harkens to
itself thinking,” it overcomes the implicit subject-object split and “merges
with itself” (ibid.). The most immediate referent to this position is Hus-
serl’s doctrine that the “I” or ego maintains its identity over time through
its self-identification.3
It also harks back to Descartes’s assertion that it is

29
M E T A P h Y S I C A L D E S I R E , T O T A L I T Y A N D I N F I N I T Y , I , A
one and the same “mind” or ego that engages in all the different acts of
thinking, perceiving, willing, remembering, hoping, and so on.4
A further
reference is to Kant’s assertion that “the I think must accompany all our
representations,” that is, that all consciousness points back to an I as the
central reference of its representations.5
Levinas extends this tradition by emphasizing that the work of the
I’s self-identification involves the world. The world is not really other than
the I. In fact, the I identifies itself by existing in the world “at home” with
itself. “It finds in the world a place and a home” (TI, 37). In the world,
“dwelling is the very mode of maintaining oneself” (ibid.). Thus, I iden-
tify myself as the person who has built and dwells in this house, who has
carved out this career for himself, and so on. This does not mean that the
world doesn’t resist my efforts, that I don’t have to struggle. It is, in fact, in
overcoming this resistance that I make the world my home, that I fashion
my concrete presence in the world. The world, here, is like the air that
resists the bird’s wings in flight and thus allows the bird to fly by pushing
against the air. In Levinas’s words, “I am at home with myself in the world
because it offers itself to me or resists possession” (TI, 38). In neither case
do I get out of the same. In both cases, “the identification of the same
is . . . the concreteness of egotism.” In a veiled critique of Heidegger,
he adds, “The reversion of the alterity of the world to self-identification
must be taken seriously; the moments of this identification—the body,
the home, labor, possession, economy . . . are the articulations of this
structure [of the same]” (ibid.). None of these factors are explicitly taken
account of in Heidegger’s existential analytic of the structures of Dasein.
To the point that Dasein does not work, own things, or have a home,
he lacks concreteness. To remedy this, Levinas will emphasize these in
his own analytic.
the Otherness of the Other
If the I or the “same” is the starting point for metaphysical desire, its
object is the other person. According to Levinas, “The other person is
absolutely other” (TI, 39).6
The use of “absolutely” does not imply that the
other person is “totally” other—that is, indistinguishable from innumer-
able unknown others. The point is that the other maintains his excess.
It is “absolutely” impossible to comprehend someone totally. One way to
put this is in terms of Kant’s distinction between inner and outer sense,
that is, between the reflective acts by which the mind turns inward and
outer, sensuous perception. As Kant observes, to grasp temporal rela-

30
C h A P T E R 3
tions, I cannot rely on outer perception. I cannot see directly the past
when I regard the world; neither can I sensuously intuit the future. Outer
perception, which grasps only what is now, limits me to spatial relations.
To apprehend temporal relations, those involving the past and the future,
I must turn inward and consult my memories and anticipations.7
Now, to
apprehend directly the other in himself is to apprehend his present per-
ceptions, his memories and anticipations. It is to immediately grasp the
contents of his consciousness. Such a grasp, however, is not given to me
by my sensuous, outer perception of the Other. Moreover, were I to have
such inner access to him, his consciousness would merge with my own. My
inner sense would include both his contents and my own. As a result, he
would not be other, but part of myself. Granting this, the very intention
to theother person as he is in himself cannot, by definition, be fulfilled. A
direct grasp is inconsistent with his alterity. Thus, as I mentioned in the
last chapter, the intention directed to the other person intends its own
surpassing. I intend the Other as other than me insofar as my intention
directs itself towards a fulfillment that will exceed its content. Such con-
tent is necessarily formed from my memories, perceptions, and anticipa-
tions. But these, by definition, cannot coincide with those of the Other.
Another way to grasp Levinas’s position is in terms of the Other’s
behavior. As I noted above, his behavior has an excessive quality. It ex-
ceeds in some measure what I predict on the basis of my own experience.
My experience leads me to interpret a given situation in a given way and
I act accordingly. Action that is not congruent with mine points, then, to
a different interpretation, which indicates a different experience—that
is, a different set of anticipations, perceptions, and memories. It does so
because, on a basic level, interpretation involves anticipation. If, for ex-
ample, I interpret the shadows that I see under a bush to be a cat hiding
there, I anticipate that as I move forward to get a closer look, I shall get a
better view of the features that are now obscure. I thus interpret accord-
ingly the experiences I have in moving closer. My anticipations, of course,
grow out of my past experience. I project forward this experience in
interpreting what I encounter. Now, neither the memories nor anticipa-
tions of the Other are available to me. Thus, neither his interpretations
nor the actions based on these can be grasped in terms of their origin.
There is, then, an irreducible margin of unpredictability in the Other’s
behavior. In fact, were I able to completely predict his behavior, he would
not be other. Such prediction could only be based on an access to his in-
ner sense, which I do not and cannot have. Thus, the Other necessarily
escapes my control. As Levinas puts this, “The ‘stranger’ also means the
free one. Over him I have no power. He escapes my grasp by an essential
dimension, even if I have him at my disposal. He is not wholly in my site”

31
(TI, 39). This holds even if I imprison the Other and control his every
movement. This limitation of his behavior to what I can predict still does
not reduce him to a thing. In an essential dimension—the dimension
of his interpretation based on his memories and anticipations—he still
remains beyond my grasp.
Yet another, complementary way of understanding the Other’s al-
terity is in terms of the future. The “authentic future” is what does not re-
peat totally the present. It has an element of the open, the new. As such, it
exceeds my interpretations, plans, and so on. I cannot entirely predict it.
What I face is not an unpredictability of the natural world, which could,
ideally, be overcome with the increase of my knowledge of its processes
and, hence, a refinement of my interpretation of what they will result in.
Its basis is what, by definition, exceeds this. This is the Other and his in-
terpretation. His action on this basis occasions what I could not foresee
on the basis of my interpretation. As Levinas expresses this, given that
the “authentic future . . . is what is not grasped,” we have to say that “the
other is the future.”8
There is, we may note, a certain paradox here. On
the one hand, we have to say that the objective world is the world that
is there for all of us. This is the world that science appeals to in laying
down its necessary laws. Yet the same world, by definition, is filled with
Others. By virtue of such Others, however, this intersubjective, “objective”
world is never entirely predictable. We cannot entirely anticipate what
our Others will say and do.
All these ways of expressing the alterity of the Other point to the
irreversibility of the relation between myself and the Other. Only one
side of this relation is directly available to me. I must start from myself;
and, in intending the Other, I must go beyond myself and my knowledge.
Here, as Levinas says, “the relation is effected by one of the terms as the
very movement of transcendence, as the traversing of this distance” (TI,
39–40). Such a traversal is not a question of knowledge, a knowledge
that might somehow embrace both terms of the relation. It is a move-
ment beyond this, one where I suspend my interpretation and wait for
the Other to manifest his understanding of our situation.
Conversation and Ethics
The relation to the Other, Levinas writes, “is primordially enacted as con-
versation.” In this conversation, the same—that is, the I—“leaves itself”
to go out to the Other. The concrete situation of the encounter is that
of a face-to-face, one where intimacy does not overcome distance. In

32
C h A P T E R 3
Levinas’s words, “A relation whose terms do not form a totality can . . . be
produced within the general economy of being only as proceeding from
the I to the other, as a face-to-face, [produced] as delineating a distance in
depth—[the distance] of conversation, of goodness, of desire” (TI, 39).
Thus, talking with someone is different than talking at them or talking
about them. In genuine conversation, we do not desire that they simply
mirror our sentiments. Our “metaphysical” desire is that they tell us some-
thing new, something that hasn’t come to mind. Thus, the face of the Other
is a speaking face.9
It is not simply totally Other, as some critics have sug-
gested, the way that a bat’s face is other.10
The bat does not speak, but a
person does. In speaking with her, I intend her as exceeding my inten-
tions, which are based on what has already been said. I expect she will add
something new to the conversation. Once again, my intention intends its
own surpassing. In doing so, I suspend my own interpretation to hear her
interpretation. I wait for her to “speak her mind.” I then respond. But
this response calls forth a further response from her as the conversation
continues, a response that transcends what has already been said. This
transcendence is the breakup of the totality of the “said.” Levinas thus
writes, “Conversation . . . maintains the distance between me and the
other, the radical separation asserted in transcendence which prevents
the reconstitution of the totality.” This does not mean that in speaking I
renounce my egotism. It does, however, mean that “conversation consists
in recognizing in the other a right over this egotism.” It thus involves the
need of “justifying oneself” (TI, 40). Thus, in conversation, I admit the
right of the Other to “call me into question.” I see myself as called to
respond to this question.
With this, we have Levinas’s definition of ethics. “A calling into ques-
tion of the same . . . is brought about by the other. We name this calling
into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the other ‘ethics’”
(TI, 43). The identification of ethics with the limitation of my spontaneity
points to the fact that ethics involves self-limitation. The ethical person
does not do all that his free spontaneity suggests—in particular, he does
not do all that he has power to do with regard to the Other. To do so
would be to treat the person as a thing, as a mere means to his ends. Eth-
ics, in other words, reveals itself in the imbalance of power. A society, for
example, shows its ethical aspect in its treatment of the most vulnerable,
those least able to resist its action. Nothing limits society’s treatment of
this class except itself. Its motive for doing so is not the power of this class,
but rather the ethical calling into question of its spontaneity.
For Kant, this self-limitation is a matter of reason. Asking myself,
for example, if it is proper to lie to get out of a difficulty, I reason out
what would happen if everyone did this. I then see that lying would be

33
impossible since no one would believe what people said. The universal
standpoint thus confronts my particular one and imposes a limit on it.
The same result holds when I universalize the notion of my subjectivity.
As a subject I am an end in itself: I am not a means towards an end, but
rather the end (the that-for-the sake-of-which) I use things as means.
Universalizing this, I realize that everyone else also regards himself as an
end and I must treat them as such. I, therefore, reason out that I cannot
will for the Other what the Other would not will for himself. For example,
given that the Other would not will to be lied to—that is, choose this as
his end, I cannot lie to him.11
As this example indicates, for Kant, the ethi-
cal relation is completely reversible. It involves my ability to comprehend
both myself and the Other in a concept—namely, that of the subject as an
end in itself. The transcendence that lifts the subject outside of himself
is provided by reason, that is, by our ability to universalize our proposed
courses of action and, hence, strip them of any particular limiting cir-
cumstances. For Levinas, by contrast, the ethical relation is irreversible.
The transcendence it demands is provided by the Other. It begins with
the acknowledgment of the otherness of this Other. What interrupts my
spontaneity is the Other’s “calling into question of my spontaneity.” The
result of such calling into question is my need to justify myself, my need to
respond to the differing interpretation the Other puts on our situation.
Ethics and Ontology
What prevents the philosophical acknowledgment of such alterity is, in
Levinas’s eyes, nothing less than Western philosophical thought. Here,
he returns to the initial claims he made in the “Preface” about war and
philosophy. “War,” he wrote, “does not manifest exteriority and the other
as other” (TI, 20). Neither does philosophy. In his words, “The visage [or
aspect] of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality
that dominates Western philosophy” (TI, 21). This is because the ideal of
such philosophy is that of gaining a total knowledge, one that, like war,
leaves nothing out. Regarded in this light, philosophy becomes ontology,
understood as the attempt to grasp being qua being, that is, being in its
totality. This can only be done by searching for the sense of beings, that is,
by knowing them through concepts in their “generality.” As Levinas puts
this: “For the things the work of ontology consists in apprehending the
individual (which alone exists) not in its individuality but in its general-
ity (of which alone there is science). The relation with the other is here
accomplished through a third term [the concept] that I find in myself”

34
C h A P T E R 3
(TI, 44). The difficulty is that this method, when applied to a person,
fails to grasp the person as an individual. In apprehending the person
through the generality of a concept, it mirrors on the intellectual level
the process of war: it conceals the ethical relation, whose focus is on the
individual. In Levinas’s terms, it reduces this relation to the realm of the
“same.” It attempts to express it in terms of the “generality” that “I find
in myself.”
From Socrates to Heidegger, this attempt has characterized the
West. In Levinas’s reading of the tradition, “Western philosophy has most
often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to the same by the inter-
position of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of
being. This primacy of the same was Socrates’ teaching: to receive noth-
ing of the Other but what is in me” (TI, 43). His reference is to Plato’s
doctrine of recollection, where to know is to recall what is already within
one. For Levinas, the “ideal of Socratic truth” implied by this is clear. It
“rests on the essential self-sufficiency of the same, its identification in
ipseity, its egoism. Philosophy is an egology” (TI, 44). What links ego-
tism, egology, and the reduction of the Other to the same is, as Levinas
elsewhere writes, “the correlation between knowledge and being.” The
correlation “indicates both a difference [between the two] and a differ-
ence that is overcome in the true. Here the known is understood and so
appropriated by knowledge.” It is thereby “freed from its otherness.” As
a result, “being as the other of thought . . . becomes . . . knowledge.”12
It
becomes the known as it is grasped in the circle of the same which is com-
posed of our concepts.13
According to Levinas, “modernity” completes
this appropriation insofar as it attempts to move from “the identification
and appropriation of being by knowledge toward the identification of
being and knowledge.”14
Knowledge is knowledge by an ego. The study
of being thus becomes the study of the ego’s acquisition of knowledge; it
becomes a doctrine of the ego, an “egology.” The foremost exemplar of
this view is, for Levinas, Heidegger himself. His question in Being andTime
is not the that of Being (Sein), but rather the question of the meaning of
being (SZ, 1). He thus makes Being “inseparable from the comprehen-
sion of Being.” In doing so, he embraces the same ideal as Socrates. For
Heidegger, “Being is already an appeal to subjectivity” (TI, 45). As with
Socrates, “philosophy is egology.” It becomes a study of the senses (and
the behaviors that, for Heidegger, underlie such senses) that the ego im-
poses in its attempts to gain a total comprehension.15
Embedded in this view is a particular conception of freedom. Levi-
nas introduces it by writing:
The relation with Being that is enacted as ontology consists in neutral-
izing the existent in order to comprehend or grasp it. It is hence not

35
a relation with the other as such but the reduction of the other to the
same. Such is the definition of freedom: to maintain oneself against the
other, despite every relation with the other, to ensure the autarchy of
an I. (TI, 45–46)
Here, the freedom that ontology “promotes” is that of “not allowing it-
self to be alienated by the other” (TI, 42). Implicit here is not just the
identification of freedom with autonomy. There is also the equation of
autonomy with sovereignty, that is, with power (and rule) over others.
The unspoken argument here is that this equation is implicit in any at-
tempt to realize autonomy (or “autarky”). To spell this out, we can say
that given our inherently social nature, we need Others to survive. Our
autonomy thus depends on them. To maintain itself, it thus demands that
we possess sovereignty or rule over them. Thus, freedom implies sover-
eignty since without it, the autonomy it presupposes cannot be realized.
If we grant this, then ontology has a political import. In Levinas’s words,
“‘I think’ comes down to ‘I can’—to an appropriation of what is, to an
exploitation of reality. Ontology as first philosophy is a philosophy of
power. It issues in the State and in the non-violence of the totality, with-
out securing itself against the violence from which this non-violence lives,
and which appears in the tyranny of the State” (TI, 46). The link between
this “I think” and the “I can” that issues in tyranny is the suppression of
the Other. Freedom, itself, is thought in terms of such suppression. Hei-
degger’s ontology, as exemplifying this line of thought, is equally open to
tyranny. Rather than involving any paradigm shift in its raising the ques-
tion of Being, “Heidegger’s ontology, which subordinates the relation-
ship with the Other to the relation with Being in general, remains under
obedience to the anonymous, and leads inevitably to another power, to
imperialist domination, to tyranny” (ibid., 46–47). What such ontology
conceals is what ontology from the beginning has always covered up. This
is ethical relation. As long as we make ontology our “first philosophy,” the
relation to the unique individual that allows him to interrupt us, to call
into question our spontaneity or freedom has no field for its disclosure. The
loss of such, however, is the state of tyranny and war.
To avoid this state, we have to overturn the relation between ethics
(understood as “metaphysics”) and ontology. We must assert: “Metaphys-
ics precedes ontology” (TI, 42). This involves rejecting the equation of
freedom, autonomy, and sovereignty. The argument linking the three
premises ignores the social relation. It acknowledges our dependence
on Others, but does not see this dependence as our natural ontological
condition. Instead, it takes it as something to overcome in the “natural”
expression of our freedom. Thus, in equating autonomy and freedom, it
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Folk-lore

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Title: Lancashire Folk-lore
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Thomas Turner Wilkinson
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FOLK-LORE ***

Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Archaic, dialect and variant
spellings remain as printed. Greek text
appears as originally printed, but with a
mouse-hover transliteration, Βιβλος.
Missing chapter titles have been included
to match the Contents listing for readers'
convenience.
LANCASHIRE
F O L K - L O R E :
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES,
LOCAL CUSTOMS AND USAGES

OF
THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTY PALATINE.

COMPILED AND EDITED BY
JOHN HARLAND, F.S.A.
AND
T. T. WILKINSON, F.R.A.S.
LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
NEW YORK: SCRIBNER AND CO.
1867.

PREFACE.
"Folk-lore," though a term that will not be found in our standard
dictionaries, from Johnson down to Webster, is nevertheless simply a
modern combination of two genuine old English words—Folc, the
folk, the people, "the common people;" and Lár, Laer, Lora, learning,
doctrine, precept, law. In the earlier days of our English tongue, folk-
land, folk-gemote, folk-right, &c., were terms in common use, and
amongst this class of compound words our fore-elders had folc-lare,
by which they denoted plain, simple teaching suited for the people,
what we should now call "popular instruction," and hence folk-lare
also meant a sermon. Folk-Lore, in its present signification—and for
its general acceptance we are largely indebted to the Editor of that
valuable periodical Notes and Queries,—means the notions of the
folk or people, from childhood upwards, especially their superstitious
beliefs and practices, as these have been handed down from
generation to generation, in popular tradition and tale, rhyme,
proverb, or saying, and it is well termed Folk-Lore in
contradistinction to book-lore or scholastic learning. It is the
unlearned people's inheritance of tradition from their ancestors, the
modern reflection of ancient faith and usage. This Folk-Lore has not
been wholly without record in our literature. Hone in his delightful
Every-Day Book, Year Book, and Table Book, has preserved many a
choice bit of England's Folk-Lore; and his example has been ably
followed in Chambers's Book of Days. Brand's Popular Antiquities,
Aubrey's Miscellanies, Allies's Antiquities and Folk-Lore of
Worcestershire, and other like works, have noted down for the
information and amusement of future generations the prevalent
superstitions, and popular customs and usages of the people in
particular districts, during a past age, and at the present time. But
the greatest and best depository and record of the Folk-Lore of
various nations is that excellent periodical Notes and Queries, from

which a charming little volume entitled "Choice Notes from Notes
and Queries,—Folk-Lore," was compiled and published in 1859.
But Lancashire has hitherto been without adequate record, at least
in a collected form, of its Folk-Lore. This has not been because of
any lack of such lore. The North of England generally, and
Lancashire in particular, is remarkably rich in this respect. Possessed
and peopled in succession by the Celts of ancient Britain, by the
Angles and other Teutonic peoples, by the Scandinavian races, and
by Norman and other foreign settlers at early periods,—the result of
the respective contributions of these various peoples is necessarily a
large mass of traditionary lore. To bring this together and present it
in a collected form is the object of this little volume. Its editors have
been long engaged, apart,—distinctly, and independently of each
other,—in collecting particulars of the superstitions in belief and
practice, and of the peculiar customs and usages of the people of
Lancashire. One of them, born in one of its rural districts, still rich in
these respects, is thus enabled to remember and to preserve many
of those customs and usages of his childhood and youth, now
rapidly passing into decay, if not oblivion. The other, conversant from
his earliest remembrances with the Folk-Lore of East Yorkshire, and
with that of Lancashire for the last thirty-five years, is thus enabled
to compare the customs and usages of both, and to recognise the
same essential superstition under slightly different forms. Similarity
of pursuit having led to personal communication, the Editors agreed
to combine their respective collections; and hence the present
volume. They do not pretend herein to have exhausted the whole
range of Lancashire Folk-Lore; but simply to have seized on the
more salient features of its superstitious side, and those of popular
custom and usage. Part I. comprises notices of a great number of
superstitious beliefs and practices. Part II. treats of various local
customs and usages, at particular seasons of the year; during the
great festivals of the church; those connected with birth and
baptism; betrothal and wedding; dying, death-bed, and funeral
customs; as well as manorial and feudal tenures, services, and
usages.

Should the present volume find favour and acceptance, its Editors
may venture hereafter to offer another, embracing the fertile and
interesting subjects of popular pageants, maskings and mummings,
rushbearings, wakes and fairs, out-door sports and games;
punishments, legal and popular; legends and traditions; proverbs,
popular sayings and similes; folk-rhymes, &c. &c.
September, 1866.
But for unavoidable delay, consequent on the preparation of a
large-paper edition, this volume would have been published prior to
"Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the
Borders," by Wm. Henderson. As that work has appeared, it may be
as well to state that, notwithstanding similarity of subject, the two
books do not clash. Mr. Henderson's work relates chiefly to the three
north-eastern counties,—Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire,—
with large notices not only of the Scottish borders, but of Scotland
generally, and many details as to Devonshire folk-lore. Its notices of
Cumberland and Westmorland are fewer than of the three counties
first named; and Lancashire is only two or three times incidentally
mentioned. The field of this county palatine is therefore left free for
the present volume.
January, 1867.

CONTENTS.
PART I.
SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES.
PAGE
Introduction 1
Lancashire Alchemists 23
Lancashire Astrologers 33
Bells 41
Beal-tine or Beltane Fires; Relics of Baal Worship 45
Boggarts, Ghosts, and Haunted Places 49
Boggart Hole Clough 50
Boggarts or Ghosts in Old Halls 51
House Boggarts, or Labouring Goblins 56
Hornby Park Mistress and Margaret Brackin 59
Boggarts in the Nineteenth Century 61
CHARMS AND SPELLS.
Charms and Spells against Evil Beings 62
A Charm, written in Cypher, against Witchcraft and Evil Spirits 63
The Crow Charm and the Lady-bird Charm 70
Pimpernel 71
The Mountain Ash, or Wicken or Wiggen Tree 72
Charms to Cure Sickness, Wounds, Cattle Distemper, etc. 74
Charms for the Toothache 75

Vervain, for Wounds, etc. 76
Charms to Stop Bleeding 77
Touching for the King's Evil 77
Cures for Warts 78
Cure for Hydrocephalus in Cattle 79
Cattle Disorders.—The Shrew Tree in Carnforth 79
Charms for Ague 80
Stinging of Nettles 80
Jaundice 80
To Procure Sleep by Changing the Direction of the Bed 80
THE DEVIL, DEMONS, &c.
The Devil 81
Raising the Devil 83
The Devil and the Schoolmaster at Cockerham 83
Old Nick 84
Demonology 86
Demon and Goblin Superstitions 88
Dispossessing a Demoniac 92
Demoniacal Possession in 1594 92
Demoniacal Possession in 1689 98
DIVINATION.
Divination 102
Divination at Marriages 103
Divination by Bible and Key 103
Another Lancashire form of Divination 104
Divination by the Dying 104
Second-sight 105
Spirits of the Dying and the Dead 105
Casting Lots, &c. 106

MISCELLANEOUS FOLK-LORE.
Druidical Rock Basins 106
Elves and Fairies 110
Folk-Lore of Eccles and the Neighbourhood 113
Tree Barnacles; or, Geese hatched from Sea-shells 116
Warts from Washing in Egg-water 121
Fortune-telling.—Wise Men and Cunning Women, &c. 121
Magic and Magicians 126
Edward Kelly, the Seer 126
Raising the Dead at Walton-le-Dale 128
An Earl of Derby charged with keeping a Conjuror 129
MIRACLES.
Miracles, or Miraculous Stories 131
Miracles by a Dead Duke of Lancaster and King 132
A Miraculous Footprint in Brindle Church 134
The Footprint at Smithells of George Marsh, the Martyr 135
A Legend of Cartmel Church 137
The Prophet Elias, a Lancashire Fanatic 138
OMENS AND PREDICATIONS.
Omens and Predications 138
Cats 141
Dogs 142
Lambs 142
Birds 142
Swallows 143
Magpies 143
Dreams 145
The Moon 149

Hæver or Hiver 149
Deasil or Widersinnis 151
Omens of Weather for New Year's-day 151
Death Tick or Death Watch 152
SUPERSTITIONS, GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS.
Popular Superstitions 153
Bones of St. Lawrence, at Chorley 157
The Dead Man's Hand 158
Nineteenth Century Superstition 164
Pendle Forest Superstition 164
East Lancashire Superstition 165
Superstitious Fears and Cruelties 167
Superstitious Beliefs in Manchester in the Sixteenth Century 168
Wells and Springs 169
WITCHES AND WITCHCRAFT.
Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century 174
The Famous History of the Lancashire Witches 176
Dr. Dee charged with Witchcraft 178
The Lancashire Witches 179
Superstitious Fear of Witchcraft 182
A Household Bewitched 184
The Lancashire Witches of 1612 185
The Samlesbury Witches 194
Witchcraft at Middleton 195
Witchcraft in 1633-34 195
The Lancashire Witches of 1633-4 200
Lancashire Witch-finders 200
The Forest of Pendle—The Haunt of the Lancashire Witches 202
Pendle Hill and its Witches 204
Witchcraft about 1654 206

A Liverpool Witch in 1667 206
The Witch of Singleton 207
Witchcraft at Chowbent in the Eighteenth Century 207
Killing a Witch 208
A Recent Witch, near Burnley 209
"Lating" or "Leeting" Witches 210
PART II.
LOCAL CUSTOMS AND USAGES AT VARIOUS SEASONS.
Church and Season Festivals 212
New Year's-day 214
Fire on New Year's Eve 214
New Year's Luck 214
New Year's First Caller 215
New Year's-day and Old Christmas-day 216
Auld Wife Hakes 216
New Year's Gifts and Wishes 216
Shrovetide 217
Shrove-Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday 218
Cock-throwing and Cock-fighting 218
Cock-fighting about Blackburn 220
Cock-penny at Clitheroe 220
Cock-fighting at Burnley 220
Shrovetide Customs in the Fylde 221
Lent.—Ash-Wednesday 221
Mid-Lent Sunday, or "Mothering Sunday" 222
Simnel Cakes 223
To Dianeme 223
Bury 224
Bragot-Sunday 225
Fag-pie Sunday 226

Good Friday 226
Easter 227
Pasche, Pace, or Easter Eggs 228
Pace Egging in Blackburn 228
Pace or Peace Egging in East Lancashire 231
Easter Sports at the Manchester Free Grammar School 231
"Lifting," or "Heaving" at Easter 233
Easter Game of the Ring 234
Playing "Old Ball" 234
Acting with "Ball" 235
Easter Customs in the Fylde 236
May-day Customs 238
May Songs 239
May-day Eve 239
May-day Custom 240
Pendleton and Pendlebury May-pole and Games 240
May Custom in Spotland 242
May-day Customs in the Fylde 242
The May-pole of Lostock 243
Robin Hood and May-games at Burnley, in 1579 244
May-day in Manchester 245
Queen of the May, &c. 246
Whitsuntide 246
Whit-Tuesday.—King and Queen at Downham 248
Rogations or Gang Days 248
Oatmeal Charity at Ince 249
Names for Moons in Autumn 250
"Goose-Intentos" 250
All Souls'-day 251
Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes 251
Christmas 252
Creatures Worshipping on Christmas Eve 253
Christmas Mumming 253
The Hobby Horse, or Old Ball 254

Christmas Customs in the Fylde 254
Celebration of Christmas at Wycoller Hall 256
Carols, &c. 257
EATING AND DRINKING CUSTOMS.
Various 258
The Havercake Lads 258
Wooden Shoes and Oaten Bread or Jannocks 259
Pork Pasties 260
BIRTH AND BAPTISMAL CUSTOMS.
Presents to Women in Childbed 260
Tea-drinking after Childbirth 261
Turning the Bed after Childbirth 261
An Unbaptized Child cannot die 262
Gifts to Infants 262
BETROTHING AND BRIDAL OR WEDDING CUSTOMS.
Betrothing Customs 263
Curious Wedding Custom 263
Courting and Wedding Customs in the Fylde 264
Ancient Bridal Custom.—The Bride's Chair and the Fairy Hole 265
Burnley 265
Marriages at Manchester Parish Church 265
DYING, DEATH-BED, AND FUNERAL CUSTOMS.
Dying Hardly 268
Burying in Woollen 269
Funeral Dole and Arval Cake 270
Dalton-in-Furness 271

Old Funeral Customs at Warton 271
Funeral Customs in the Fylde 272
Mode of Burial of a Widow who had taken Religious Vows 273
Funeral Customs in East Lancashire 273
Bidding to Funerals 274
Situation and Direction of Graves 275
CUSTOMS OF MANORS.
The Honour of Knighthood 277
Maritagium 278
Peculiar Services and Tenures 278
Manor of Cockerham—Regulations for the Sale of Ale 281
Manorial Customs in Furness 281
The Lord's Yule Feast at Ashton 286
Riding the Black Lad at Ashton-under-Lyne 289
Boon Shearing 292
The Principal or Heriot 293
Denton Rent-boons 294
A Saxon Constablewick 295
Talliage or Tallage 296
Rochdale Tithe, Easter-dues, Mortuaries, etc. 297
Farm and Agricultural Celebrations in the Fylde 298
Dalton-in-Furness 299
Letting Sheep Farms in Bowland 300
Mediæval Latin Law Terms 300
Customs [Dues] at Warrington 301
LANCASHIRE FOLK-LORE.

SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES.
INTRODUCTION.
"'Tis a history
Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale
Which children open-eyed and mouth'd
devour,
And thus, as garrulous ignorance relates,
We learn it and believe."
In this large section of the Folk-lore of Lancashire we propose to
treat of all the notions and practices of the people which appear to
recognise a supernatural power or powers, especially as aids to
impart to man a knowledge of the future. An alphabetical
arrangement has been adopted, which is to some extent also
chronological. Beginning with the pretended sciences or arts of
Alchemy and Astrology, the succeeding articles treat of Bells, Beltane
fires, Boggarts, Charms, Demons, Divination, &c.
Many of these superstitions are important in an ethnological point
of view, and immediately place us en rapport with those nations
whose inhabitants have either colonized or conquered this portion of
our country. In treasuring up these records of the olden times,
tradition has, in general, been faithful to her vocation. She has
occasionally grafted portions of one traditional custom, ceremony, or
superstition, upon another; but in the majority of cases enough has
been left to enable us to determine with considerable certainty the
probable origin of each. So far as regards the greater portion of our

local Folk-lore, we may safely assert that it is rapidly becoming
obsolete, and many of the most curious relics must be sought in the
undisturbed nooks and corners of the county. It is there where
popular opinions are cherished and preserved, long after an
improved education has driven them from more intelligent
communities; and it is a remarkable fact that many of these,
although composed of such flimsy materials, and dependent upon
the fancies of the multitude for their very existence, have
nevertheless survived shocks by which kingdoms have been
overthrown, and have preserved their characteristic traits from the
earliest times down to the present.
As what are called the Indo-European, or Aryan, nations—viz., the
Celts, Greeks, Latins, Germans (Teuton and Scandinavian), Letts,
and Sclaves—as is now generally acknowledged, have a common
ancestry in the race which once dwelt together in the regions of the
Upper Oxus, in Asia; so their mythologies, however diverse in their
later European developments, may be regarded as having a common
origin. Space will not allow us to enlarge on this great subject, which
has been ably treated by Jacob Grimm, Dr. Adalbert Kuhn, and many
other German writers, and of which an excellent résumé is given in
Kelly's Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore.
When we refer to the ancient Egyptians, and to the oldest history
extant, we find some striking resemblances between their customs
and our own. The rod of the magician was then as necessary to the
practice of the art as it still is to the "Wizard of the North." The glory
of the art of magic may be said to have departed, but the use of the
rod by the modern conjuror remains as a connecting link between
the harmless deceptions of the present, and that powerful
instrument of the priesthood in times remote. The divining rod, too,
which indicates the existence of a hidden spring, or treasure, or
even a murdered corpse, is another relic of the wand of the Oriental
Magi. The divining cup, as noticed in the case of Joseph and his
brethren, supplies a third instance of this close connexion. Both our
wise men and maidens still whirl the tea-cup, in order that the

disposition of the floating leaves may give them an intimation of
their future destiny, or point out the direction in which an offending
party must be sought. We have yet "wizards that do peep and
mutter," and who profess to foretell future events by looking
"through a glass darkly." The practice of "causing children to pass
through the fire to Moloch," so strongly reprobated by the prophet of
old, may be cited as an instance in which Christianity has not yet
been able to efface all traces of one of the oldest forms of heathen
worship. Sir W. Betham has observed, in his Gael and Cymbri, pp.
222-4, that "we see at this day fires lighted up in Ireland, on the eve
of the summer solstice and the equinoxes, to the Phœnician god
Baal; and they are called Baal-tane, or Baal's fire, though the object
of veneration be forgotten." Such fires are still lighted in Lancashire,
on Hallowe'en, under the names of Beltains or Teanlas; and even
such cakes as the Jews are said to have made in honour of the
Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this season amongst the
inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble. These circumstances may
appear the less strange when we reflect that this river is almost
certainly the Belisama of the Romans; that it was especially
dedicated to the Queen of Heaven, under the designation of Minerva
Belisamæ; and that her worship was long prevalent amongst the
inhabitants of Coccium, Rigodunum, and other Roman stations in the
north of Lancashire. Both the fires and the cakes, however, are now
connected with superstitious notions respecting Purgatory, &c., but
their origin and perpetuation will scarcely admit of doubt.
A belief in astrology and in sacred numbers prevails to a
considerable extent amongst all classes of our society. With many
the stars still "fight in their courses," and our modern fortune-tellers
are yet ready to "rule the planets," and predict good or ill fortune,
on payment of the customary fee. That there is "luck in odd
numbers" was known for a fact in Lancashire long before Mr. Lover
immortalized the tradition. Our housewives always take care that
their hens shall sit upon an odd number of eggs; we always bathe
three times in the sea at Blackpool, Southport, and elsewhere; and
our names are called over three times when our services are

required in courts of law. Three times three is the orthodox number
of cheers; and we still hold that the seventh son of a seventh son is
destined to form an infallible physician. We inherit all such popular
notions as these in common with the German and Scandinavian
nations; but more especially with those of the Saxons and the
Danes. Triads of leaders, or ships, constantly occur in their annals;
and punishments of three and seven years' duration form the burden
of many of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish laws.
A full proportion of the popular stories which are perpetuated in
our nurseries most probably date their existence amongst us from
some amalgamation of races; or, it may be, from the intercourse
attendant upon trade and commerce. The Phœnicians, no doubt,
would impart a portion of their Oriental Folk-lore to the southern
Britons; the Roman legions would leave traces of their prolific
mythology amongst the Brigantes and the Sistuntii; and the Saxons
and the Danes would add their rugged northern modifications to the
common stock. The "History of the Hunchback" is common to both
England and Arabia; the "man in the moon" has found his way into
the popular literature of almost every nation with which we are
acquainted; "Cinderella and her slipper" is "The little golden shoe" of
the ancient Scandinavians, and was equally familiar to the Greeks
and Romans; "Jack and the bean-stalk" is told in Sweden and
Norway as of "The boy who stole the giant's treasure;" whilst our
renowned "Jack the giant-killer" figures in Norway, Lapland, Persia,
and India, as the amusing story of "The herd boy and the giant."
The labours of Tom Hickathrift are evidently a distorted version of
those of Hercules; and these again agree in the main with the
journey of Thor to Utgard, and the more classical travels of Ulysses.
In Greece the clash of the elements during a thunderstorm was
attributed to the chariot wheels of Jove; the Scandinavians ascribed
the sounds to the ponderous wagon of the mighty Thor; our
Lancashire nurses Christianize the phenomenon by assuring their
young companions, poetically enough, that thunder "is the noise
which God makes when passing across the heavens." The notion
that the gods were wont to communicate knowledge of future

events to certain favoured individuals appears to have had a wide
range in ancient times; and this curiosity regarding futurity has
exerted a powerful influence over the minds of men in every stage
of civilization. Hence arose the consulting of oracles and the practice
of divination amongst the ancients, and to the same principles we
must attribute the credulity which at present exists with respect to
the "wise men" who are to be found in almost every town and
village in Lancashire. The means adopted by some of the oracles
when responses were required, strangely remind us of the modern
feats of ventriloquism; others can be well illustrated by what we now
know of mesmerism and its kindred agencies; whilst these and
clairvoyance will account for many of those where the agents are
said by Eustathius to have spoken out of their bellies, or breasts,
from oak trees, or been "cast into trances in which they lay like men
dead or asleep, deprived of all sense and motion; but after some
time returning to themselves, gave strange relations of what they
had seen and heard."
The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded dreams as so many
warnings; they prayed to Mercury to vouchsafe to them a night of
good dreams. In this county we still hold the same opinions; but our
country maidens, having Christianized the subject, now invoke St.
Agnes and a multitude of other saints to be similarly propitious.
There are many other points of resemblance between the Folk-lore
of Lancashire and that of the ancients. Long or short life, health or
disease, good luck or bad, are yet predicted by burning a lock of
human hair; and the fire is frequently poked with much anxiety
when testing the disposition of an absent lover. Many persons may
be found who never put on the left shoe first; and the appearance of
a single magpie has disconcerted many a stout Lancashire farmer
when setting out on a journey of business or pleasure. In the matter
of sneezing we are just as superstitious as when the Romans left us.
They exclaimed, "May Jove protect you," when any one sneezed in
their presence, and an anxious "God bless you" is the common
ejaculation amongst our aged mothers. To the same sources we may
probably attribute the apprehensions which many Lancashire people

entertain with respect to spilling the salt; sudden silence, or fear;
lucky and unlucky days; the presence of thirteen at dinner; raising
ghosts; stopping blood by charms; spitting upon, or drawing blood
from persons in order to avert danger; the evil eye; and a multitude
of other minor superstitions. We possess much of all this in common
with the Saxons and the Danes, but the original source of a great, if
not the greater portion, is probably that of our earliest conquerors.
Divination by means of the works of Homer and Virgil was not
uncommon amongst the ancients; the earlier Christians made use of
the Psalter or New Testament for such purposes. In Lancashire the
Bible and a key are resorted to, both for deciding doubts respecting
a lover, and also to aid in detecting a thief. Divination by water
affords another striking parallel. The ancients decided questions in
dispute by means of a tumbler of water, into which they lowered a
ring suspended by a thread, and having prayed to the gods to
decide the question in dispute, the ring of its own accord would
strike the tumbler a certain number of times. Our "Lancashire
witches" adopt the same means, and follow the Christianized
formula, with a wedding-ring suspended by a hair, whenever the
time before marriage, the number of a family, or even the length of
life, becomes a matter of anxiety.
Most nations, in all ages, have been accustomed to deck the
graves of their dead with appropriate flowers, much as we do at
present. The last words of the dying have, from the earliest times,
been considered of prophetic import; and according to Theocritus,
some one of those present endeavoured to receive into his mouth
the last breath of a dying parent or friend, "as fancying the soul to
pass out with it and enter into their own bodies." Few would expect
to find this singular custom still existing in Lancashire; and yet such
is the fact. Witchcraft can boast her votaries in this county even up
to the present date, and she numbers this practice amongst her rites
and ceremonies.
A very large portion of the Lancashire Folk-lore is identical in many
respects with that which prevailed amongst the sturdy warriors who

founded the Heptarchy, or ruled Northumbria. During the Saxon and
Danish periods their heathendom had a real existence. Its practices
were maintained by an array of priests and altars, with a prescribed
ritual and ceremonies; public worship was performed and oblations
offered with all the pomp and power of a church establishment. The
remnants of this ancient creed are now presented to us in the form
of popular superstitions, in legends and nursery tales, which have
survived all attempts to eradicate them from the minds of the
people. Christ, his apostles, and the saints, have supplanted the old
mythological conceptions; but many popular stories and impious
incantations which now involve these sacred names were formerly
told of some northern hero, or perhaps invoked the power of Satan
himself. The great festival in honour of Eostre may be instanced as
having been transferred to the Christian celebration of the
resurrection of our Lord; whilst the lighting of fires on St. John's eve,
and the bringing in of the boar's head at Christmas, serve to remind
us that the worship of Freja is not extinct. When Christianity became
the national religion, the rooted prejudices of the people were
evidently respected by our early missionaries, and hence the curious
admixture of the sacred and the profane, which everywhere presents
itself in our local popular forms of expression for the pretended cure
of various diseases. The powers and attributes of Woden and Freja
are attributed to Jesus, Peter, or Mary; but in all other respects the
spells and incantations remain the same.
Our forefathers appear to have possessed a full proportion of
those stern characteristics which have ever marked the
Northumbrian population. Whatever opinions they had acquired,
they were prepared to hold them firmly; nor did they give up their
most heathenish practices without a struggle. Both the "law and the
testimony" had to be called into requisition as occasion required;
and even the terrors of these did not at once suffice. In one of the
Anglo-Saxon Penitentiaries, quoted by Mr. Wright in his Essays, we
find a penalty imposed upon those women who use "any witchcraft
to their children, or who draw them through the earth at the
meeting of roads, because that is great heathenishness." A Saxon

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Levinass Existential Analytic A Commentary On Totality And Infinity Illustrated James R Mensch

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