The unknowable other and ethics of ungraspability: Education through the irrational

Abstract

The insistence on knowledge accumulation in modern educational discourses has led to the formation of exclusive dichotomies in various forms, most tangibly observable in the division of people into ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘unknowledgeable’. What underlies this dichotomy is a conception of rationality based on which knowledge is seen as an ‘instrument’ which must necessarily result in a usable, profitable product. From a Levinasian perspective, the latter situation inevitably, if not purposefully, leads to the formation of the Other being located at the side of irrationality, hence an unnecessary entity within the knowledge economy. Analysing Werner Herzog’s film, The Enigma of Kasper Hauser’s (1974), this paper aims to show how irrationality, contrary to the belief of dominant educational/pedagogical discourses, can act as a source for creative thinking. The paper argues that by accepting the Other as the unknowable, we allow them to resort to their singularity as a source for imaginative thinking.

Keywords:

• irrationality
• otherness
• Levinas
• film
• ethics

Introduction

Education, as a supposedly enlightening practice, in particular from the late sixteenth century onwards, has seemed to be preoccupied with a type of ‘categorical rationality’ susceptible to an exclusive/exclusionary, rather than inclusive, approach (Allen & Goddard, 2017). When one looks closely into the early modern driving force behind human’s desire to know, i.e. the Enlightenment, and its ramifications, the early seeds of a ‘potentially’ restrictive rationalisation can be observed. Although claiming that the Enlightenment is inherently characterised by a constraining worldview might seem unsubstantiated, or even biased, what can be confidently said about it is that it has been preoccupied with locating ‘Man’ of knowledge at the centre of the universe. As Allen and Goddard (2017) remark, ‘Though the Enlightenment idea of man and his capacities has become fragile, it is still the idea that governs modern self-understanding with its faith in science, progress and self-improvement and its aim of the mastery of nature through knowledge’ (p. 124-5). The Enlightenment, in its philosophical form being a heritage of Cartesian-Kantian philosophy, and as the foundation of a specific form of post-Enlightenment humanism, is mainly known as a move towards ‘rationality’ and ‘rationalisation’ (Toulmin, 1990). ‘Questioning the foundations of knowledge,’ as Allen and Goddard (2017) remark, modern humanism ‘opened up consideration of the possibility of human existence being constituted exclusively on a rational basis’ (p. 103). According to Peters (2020), the Enlightenment’s project underpinned by its emphasis on rationality has evidently oriented towards the establishment of a homogenising/normalising system, (un)intentionally foreclosing the emergence of ‘the different’ (p. 581). Along related lines, Steinbach (2017) observes that this mechanism can be a consequence of the establishment of binary oppositions at the heart of humanism, where ‘the mind versus the body, human versus the animal, our internal world of the true self (Cartesian Ego) versus the external world of mere things’ inform the bedrock of our thinking journey from modernity onwards (p. 17). In this sense, modern humanism from its very inception has created a mutually exclusive dichotomy based on which one side has been prioritised over the ‘other’ (Toulmin, 1990). To be able to think beyond this normative system, Steinbach (2017) suggests, we need to develop ‘a critique of humanist metaphysics [which] relies upon disruption of binaries and calls for more thorough interaction and interdependence between humans and environments, humans and animals, humans and things’ (p. 17).

On the other hand, the insistence on rationality as the kernel of modern humanism has far-reaching consequences observable in phenomena such as individualism and what might be regarded as blind progressivism (Braidotti, 2012). When such ideas permeate into the fabric of an educational system the consequence is the construction of a society where measurable achievements could be prioritised (Davies & Bansel, 2007). Within such a system, as Clarke (2014) notes, ‘education is seen in largely utilitarian ways…while knowledge is restricted to that which is useful within the system rather than that which questions the very nature and status of the system per se’ (p. 589). According to Biesta (2011), an educational system founded on such an attitude, due to its normative nature, is susceptible to laying a ground for a deterministic approach to subject formation, turning a blind eye to the ‘individuals-in-their-uniqueness’, hence developing and consolidating essentialism and homogeneity (p. 313).

As implied above, this paper adopts a critical approach towards a restrictive notion of rationalism, embedded within the discourse of modern humanism, in order to open a space for the emergence of an ‘other’ who does not necessarily fit into the category of the rational. However, as Biesta (1999) remarks, ‘It is crucial to acknowledge that the critique of humanism is not directed against the humanity of the subject. On the contrary, it is explicitly motivated by a concern for the subject’s humanity’ (p. 208, emphasis in original). The main problem with the notion of modern humanist subjectivity is the essentialist approach it adopts. In other words, the definition of human in modern humanism is set upon ‘some more general essence of man’, as a consequence of which uniqueness of subject, its singularity is overlooked in order to cope up with a more ‘manageable’, generalised and homogenised definition of the subject (p. 208). This observation is coterminous with the Levinasian critique of humanism upon which the theoretical basis of this research is founded. ‘Humanism’, according to Emmanuel Levinas (2006), ‘has to be denounced only because it is not sufficiently human’ (p. 128).

Here it should be noted that Levinas is among the philosophers who is usually blamed for conceptualising a narrow (exclusive) notion of normative human(ism). However, he has explicitly demonstrated that this is not the case. Reflecting on the deranged violence overshadowing the twentieth century, Levinas in one of the papers in his Collected Philosophical Papers (Levinas, 1987a) entitled as ‘Humanism and An-archy’, points out that these behaviours ‘render tragic-comic the concern for oneself and illusory the pretension of the rational animal to have a privileged place in the cosmos and the power to dominate and integrate the totality of being in a self-consciousness’ (p. 127). In the same collection but in another essay entitled as ‘No Identity’, he explicitly criticises the modern project of humanist rationalism and remarks ‘The sciences of man and Heidegger end either in the triumph of mathematical intelligibility, repressing the subject, the person, his uniqueness and his election, into ideology, or else in the enrootedness of man in being, of which he would be the messenger and the poet’ (p. 144). As Calarco (2019) points out, the devastating events of the twentieth century which Levinas, as a prisoner of Nazi’s camps, observes firsthand ‘make Levinas distance himself from traditional humanism and align himself with the central theses of antihumanism’ (p. 77). Accordingly, while Levinas does not totally throws away the traditional concept of human, what we see in his works is ‘a fundamentally relational account of human existence, which contests the problematic atomism and uncritical individualism of the humanism dominant in the Western philosophical tradition’ (p. 71). Yet, perhaps the best argument in defence of Levinas as a philosopher of more-than-human world has been developed by the well-known environmental philosopher, Deborah Bird Rose (2012), who remarks ‘Levinas’s thought, as is by now well-known, aims to reverse the western philosophical tradition by grounding ontology in ethics rather than layering ethics over a pre-established metaphysical foundation’ (p. 134). Then she explicitly aligns Levinasian ethics with a critique of humanism and writes:

…the significance of Levinas’s philosophy is too great to be left in a zone of humans-only. If we understand all living creatures to be in connection, in relationship, in systems of mutual interdependence, then surely these relationships must be analysed in terms of ethics. And if we understand genealogical time to be ethical, then there seems to be no reason to bar nonhumans from ethical relations among themselves. (p. 134)

Informed by a critical reading of modern humanist conceptions of rationality and knowledge, this paper refers to Werner Herzog’s film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974), to demonstrate how irrationality challenges the logic of sameness and hence promises the emergence of an ethical subject. In the film under analysis here, the focus is on Kaspar whose irrationality and abnormality disrupt the normative regimes of truth and sensibility. Although Kaspar’s non-assimilability costs his life, he shows us that the normative rational thinking has the potential to prevent the emergence of a creative ethical subjectivity. But how does he achieve the latter? In a pedagogic sense, how is it possible to transcend the norms, yet act imaginatively and ethically? There are, at least, three aspects of Kaspar’s character that allow him to trouble the normative conception of human, namely non-integratability, ungraspability and identification with the infinite. Accordingly, it can be argued that the irrationality proposed here harbours such attributes/aspects. The analysis of the film revolves around these three notions. However, before going through a Levinasian analysis of the film at stake, Deleuze’s approach to cinema of Werner Herzog and, in particular, to his analysis of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser as appears in Cinema 1: the movement-image (Deleuze, 1986) is presented as an overarching analytical framework. This, I believe, sets a robust ground for delving into the analysis of the film at stake as a work of ‘metaphysical ethics’.

Given the above discussion, it’s worth accentuating that irrationality should not be (mis)understood as a tendency towards a nihilistic absurdity. As Tarc (2006) aptly elaborates on this issue, ‘romanticize[ing] irrationality or madness…can be as threatening to others as hyper-instrumental rationalism’ (p. 302). Rather, what is at stake here is ‘that this fleeting fear of not-knowing in the face of others, rather than simply fear of the Other, also stimulates our impulse to dominate them by the name’ (p. 302). Accordingly, Tarc remarks, ‘Attending to otherness seems to compel a working through of undecidability—that is, an ongoing engagement with incomprehensibility that is never sustainable but remains in traces of our thinking and acting nonetheless’ (p. 302).

A synopsis of the film

Inspired by true events, the film narrates the story of Kaspar Hauser, a 17-year-old boy (acted by non-professional Bruno Schleinstein as the lead actor, a man who had undergone a similar experience to what happened to the film’s protagonist). Kaspar has been kept and chained all his life in a tiny, dilapidated cellar where he has not had contact with the outside world. He cannot walk, speak or make any communication with other humans, and his only companion is a small wooden horse. A man, whose identity remains unknown, in a black overcoat and a top hat, feeds Kaspar during his incarceration in the cellar. The same man decides to teach him how to walk, write and speak, albeit in a very elementary way. One day, in 1828, Kaspar is brought to the small town of Nuremberg by that man while he has a note, apparently written by the unknown man, in his right hand in which his short biography is presented and a request has been made to take care of him.

Kaspar arouses people’s curiosity in the town. Due to the attention he receives, he experiences a vicissitudinous life fluctuating between being exhibited as a strange, exotic creature in the town’s circus to being invited to the nobility’s party. After a couple of months, a kind and educated man called Professor Daumer accepts his custody and teaches him how to read, write and think in a sophisticated way. He even learns how to play piano and finds solace in doing that. It is in this period that a group of clergymen and a university professor come to test his ability in logical thinking, believing that it is the sole way to substantiate Kaspar’s transformation into a normal human being. Kaspar’s conversations with the latter groups, besides other events in the film, will be examined more carefully as they are of significance in showing how he develops his unorthodox yet imaginative approach to thinking. Little by little, Kaspar shows less interest in, and even at times anger and disappointment towards, the so-called civilised society. Then, one day the same man who brought him to the town attacks him with the aim of killing him. Kaspar survives the attack, but once more he is stabbed in the chest and the attack this time leads to his death. In the final sequence, we see Kaspar’s autopsy where his ‘abnormality’ is explained and confirmed with reference to his enlarged liver and the deformity of different parts of his brain.

Analysis of the film

Herzog as a film-philosopher

Perhaps the best way to understand Herzog’s cinema is, following Deleuze (1986), to see him as a philosopher who develops his ideas in cinematic form. Herzog enjoys such an important place within film-philosophy field that Deleuze in his groundbreaking Cinema 1: the movement-image dedicates a separate section to him entitled as ‘The figures of the Large and the Small in Herzog’. According to Deleuze, the ‘Ideas’ of The Large and the Small in Herzog’s film-philosophy should be considered at both ‘formal’ and ‘conceptual’ levels. Yet what turns Herzog’s cinema into a philosophical work is ‘Visions’: the third element which, present in both Ideas, encourages Deleuze to say, ‘Herzog is a metaphysician. He is the most metaphysical of cinema directors’ (p. 185). When Herzog highlights the Large in his works, he either invests on ‘a hallucinatory dimension, where the acting spirit raises itself to boundlessness in nature’, or on ‘a hypnotic dimension where the spirit runs up against the limits which Nature opposes to it’ (p. 184). Accordingly, here we are encountered by the pure realisation of the Large as an Idea ‘in the double nature of landscapes and the actions’ (p. 184). But irony of this investment on the Large is that the apparently heroic actions result in conquering ‘the useless’, hence alluding to futile attempts of so-called ‘modern’ human.

The Small whose manifestation according to Deleuze can be seen in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, is both formally and conceptually different. This time we see, in Deleuze’s words:

…beings incapable of being used. No longer are they visionaries, but weaklings and idiots. The landscapes are dwarfed or flattened, they tum sad and dismal, even tend to disappear. The beings who frequent them no longer have Visions at their disposal but instead seem reduced to an elementary sense of touch, like…Kaspar Hauser in the professor’s garden. (pp. 84-5)

This reduction of the Small ‘to an elementary sense of touch’ is precisely the moment when the metaphysical dimension of Herzog’s cinema culminates, because it is where the idea of usefulness totally shatters in order to opens up a space for the being who ‘simply begins to be’ (p. 185). Accordingly, as Deleuze deftly observes, ‘when Bruno asks the question: ‘Where do objects go when they no longer have any use?’ we might reply that they normally go in the dustbin, but that reply would be inadequate, since the question is metaphysical’ (p. 185). In this way, Bruno/Kaspar, as Deleuze directly refers to, becomes a manifestation of an ‘Absolutely defenceless’ man ‘who is beginning to be, and never finishes being small’ (p. 185). The emergence of Kaspar in the film as the embodiment of the Small, alludes to the contour of pure being, or in Deleuze’s term, ‘the unnameable’; useless, horrified and defenceless in the face of the pre-ordained and determinative Symbolic register (p. 185). Here, as Deleuze remarks, ‘we can see how the Small enters into a relationship with the Large such that the two Ideas communicate and form figures in interchanging’ (p. 185). Contrary to the enfeeblement of the reality of the protagonist in the Large, the main characters of the Small construct:

…such tactile relationships with the world that they inflate and inspire the image itself… And this liberation of tactile values does not merely inspire the image; it partially opens it, to insert vast hallucinatory visions of flight, ascent or passage, like…the three great dreams of landscapes in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Here again we therefore witness a dividing-in-two analogous to that of the sublime; and the whole sublime is rediscovered on the side of the Small. (p. 186)

The way through which Deleuze presents a formulation of Herzog’s cinema adequately sets a ground for analysing Kaspar at the three levels discussed below: (1) a Small yet non-integratable being, (2) who is ungraspable gives life to the sublime, (3) through identifying with the infinite.

Kaspar: The non-integratability of the non-integratable

The emergence of Kaspar Hauser, from the time we see him at the beginning of the film in his ‘limitless prison of a small room’—as he calls it later when he finds no meaning in humans’ life—to the time when he learns how to communicate with people, is the manifestation of an irreducible alterity par excellence; an alterity that leaves him alienated throughout his short life among the so-called normal people. Kaspar cannot be known, let alone be understood, even when he speaks clearly of his worldview. Kaspar’s view of the world is inaccessible to us as he stands beyond the world in which he has fallen; an unfortunate falling as he ‘melancholically’ talks about it later. Whilst this falling is, in a sense, reminiscent of Adam and Eve’s Falling, Kaspar’s experience, contrary to the latter, unravels his non-human nature. In a sense, in the Levinasian term, Kaspar might be seen as a manifestation of evil.

Levinas (1987a) in his Collected Philosophical Papers uses the metaphor of evil to present a formula for critiquing the subjectifying mechanisms of normative politico-economic structures (p. 180). What qualifies evil for such a purpose is its ‘quality’ of ‘non-integratability’. Levinas remarks, ‘Evil is not only the non-integratable; it is also the non-integratability of the non-integratable’ (p. 180). This quality of evil finds particular significance when one considers how evil can manifest a heterogeneous quality irreducible to any pre-defined formal structures. In this regard, Levinas states, ‘It is as though to synthesis, even the purely formal synthesis of the Kantian ‘I think’, capable of uniting the data however heterogeneous they may be, there would be opposed, in the form of evil, the non-synthesizable, still more heterogeneous than all heterogeneity subject to being grasped by the formal’ (p. 180, emphasis added).

This notion of evil should not be conflated with a diabolical representation. According to Mazurov’s (2018), any form of non-human entity which in one way or another represents evilness ‘is thus not a simplistic negation of the human, but a polymorphous, monstrous aberration of the unitary, humanistic and anthropocentric subject form in its entirety’ (p. 262). Referring to Max Stirner, the nineteenth century philosopher, Mazurov observes how the ‘essentialist’ project of liberal subject formation is devised by the Church and the State (two institutions/organisations being in play in the film) (p. 262). In a sense, the evil, or unman in Mazurov’s term, is not merely a metaphysical unreality rooted in entertaining fairytales or religious narratives, but it is the very indispensable ingredient against which the notion of ‘standard Man’ can be devised. In other words, it is a constitutive negativity without which the formation of Man would be impossible. Ironically, whilst the creation of the evil/unman is indispensable for the Church and the State, it is created in order to be controlled and eliminated, because it is in its elimination that the safety of (hu)man is guaranteed. If there is such a phenomenon as evil/unman, it necessarily trespasses the defined and definitive boundaries of the human world. So the evil/unman needs to be controlled so that the human world remains safe. From this perspective, both the emergence of Kaspar and his elimination are justified. Kaspar must appear in the society in order to guarantee the humanity of those nurtured by the dominant norms, those whose existence consolidate the ‘ontological hierarchy’ based on which norms are determined and exercised. And he must be eliminated to make sure that the society would not be threatened by his abnormality, hence conserving the homogeneity of the normative/normal society.

Kaspar is a true embodiment of the non-integratable. Since he has not been fed by normal/ising socio-cultural structures, he cannot be dissolved in them. In a sense, he cannot accept the reductive label of ‘human being’ as he is neither the so-called logical human nor a passive (in the minds of humans) element of the natural world. Kaspar is not able to demarcate between human and non-human worlds, hence embracing heterogeneity of his surroundings, yet simultaneously irreducible to any dominant discourses—particularly, discourses of religion and science. This observation finds significance when we see how he gives agency to the elements being totally objectified in the human’s world(view). There is a sequence in the film where Professor Daumer, with the help of a clergyman, tries to teach Kaspar the ‘natural’ laws of nature. They pick an apple from a tree in order to show him how God’s plan and humans’ intention work together to make the apple ripen. Kaspar asks them not to pick the apple because ‘he is asleep’. In order to persuade Kaspar that apples have no willpower, and they are unable to decide for themselves, Professor Daumer takes a small distance from Kaspar and the clergyman, asking the clergyman to put his foot on the way of the apple whilst he rolls it down. The apple jumps over the clergyman’s foot and passes him. Watching this scene, Kaspar says: ‘Smart apple, it jumped over his foot and ran away’.

While Kaspar’s reaction to the movement of the apple might conjure up the fact that he is suffering from developmental disorders, locating such observations within the context in which Lewis and Kahn (2010) criticise humanist education gives us a different perspective. In particular, in the first chapter of their book entitled ‘Victor, the Wild Child’, they present a wonderful analysis of Victor known as the ‘wolf-child’. While Victor undergoes a somewhat similar process (to that of Kaspar) to prove his normality, he is in some serious ways different from Kaspar. Victor’s senses, contrary to Kaspar, had been defined ‘by the immediacy of animal survival’ or ‘by an organic immediacy’ (p. 49). What helps Kaspar to maintain his human senses yet not be restricted by them is his basic understanding of the notion of ‘play’ as portrayed at the beginning of the film where we see him playing with a wooden horse. Moving the wooden horse back and forth—which in some way conjures up the well-known Freudian Fort/da game played by his grandson and interpreted by Freud as a way for the child to master the trauma of his mother absence—Kaspar’s relation with the toy helps him create ‘a temporary zone of indistinction that troubles binaries between species’ (p. 71, see also Wolf, 2003). Inspired by Gorgio Agamben’s (1993) notion of play according to which children create ‘a fetishistic relation to toys’, Lewis and Kahn (2010) remark, ‘in play, the child’s relationship with toys troubles the very distinctions between the proper and the improper that…[a] humanist pedagogy holds as the law’ (p. 71). In this way, they argue further, toys turn out to enjoy ‘a pure potentiality to be this or that, and thus express a form-of-life beyond the sovereign ban’ (p. 71).

Despite this important sensual difference between Victor and Kaspar, they both end up demonstrating a similar ‘melancholic longing’ emerging as a result of livening in the zone of indistinction. Referring to Walter Benjamin’s (1985) notion of melancholia, Lewis and Kahn observe ‘to become a just man (and thus fully realize humanity as a community of belonging and recognition) is, paradoxically, to remember the creaturely moment of melancholia that embodies the uncanny indistinction between human and the animal’ (p. 58). In fact, it is precisely due to the existence of ‘this surplus, a residual stain that cannot be fully incorporated into the symbolic order’ and reminds the subject of their animality, that creates that melancholic state (p. 43). And this is exactly that which costs Kaspar’s life; he reminds the people of their animality, while this is exactly that which they do not want to remember.

Ungraspability of the other: Knowing, philosophy of the same and power relations

In Levinas, there is a link between the way the Other is constructed/construed and the way through which knowledge is defined. Eithen Balibar (2005) has aptly elaborated on the link between the Other and the violence of knowing. Balibar remarks that the notion of ‘an essential Other’ not only takes up the position of ‘an adversary but embodies a negation of one’s moral and aesthetic and intellectual values’ (p. 30). This Other, as Balibar observes, ‘at the same time, in the most contradictory manner, has to be constructed as a passive ‘object’ of representation, study, dissections, classifications, and an active ‘subject’ of threats, or simply of an alternative path to civilization and salvation’ (p. 30). This ‘uncanny double’, the seemingly contradictory co-presence of subject and object in the Other, lays bare a critical point about the construction Other; that ‘the Other is not really or not purely exterior. It is also interior, constitutive of oneself. Without this ‘otherness’, there would be no possibility of civilizing oneself’ (p. 30). In this way, the Self cannot be constructed without the simultaneous negation and inevitable verification of the Other. Whilst insisting on knowing the Other does not seem to be a negative task per se, it turns out to act negatively when it aims at reducing ‘strangeness’ to ‘sameness’ and rendering ‘alterity…controllable (since it is assumed to be knowable)’ (Zembylas, 2005, p. 155).

Kaspar is the unknowable and remains unknowable during his short life in the town. However, this unknowability costs him his life. Although he becomes knowable at least to the extent he submits to the piano, to the boundaries of living in that town, to the learning of its language and to the holding of its books, ultimately in the minds of town’s people his unknowability surpasses his knowability. Kaspar must be totally known by the town’s people because it is the only way through which the society in which he lives protects its homogeneity. As the unknowable he remains a mystery, an element resisting being grasped and controlled. In a sense, he is a threat for a society in which everything should be crystal clear. This observation can be examined through Levinas’s (1969, 1987a) notion of ‘philosophy of the same’. But how does the philosophy of the same with its emphasis on knowability turns out to act as an ideological mechanism? Levinas’s (1987a) response is: through ‘its recourse to neuters’ (p. 50). Whilst the formation of the ‘I’ is initially bound up with the creation of an Other, the otherness of the Other, its alterity, should be flattened out if the society wants to be managed by a dominant normal structure. It is in this situation that, as Levinas asserts, ‘The foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in the inexpugnable fortress of its singularity, instead of facing, becomes a theme and an object. It fits under a concept already, or dissolves into relations. It falls into the network of a priori ideas’, hence being grasped, controlled and manipulated (p. 50). The philosophy of the same insists on knowing the Other, whilst Levinas (1987b) insists on the ‘impossibility’ of knowing the Other. According to Levinas (1987a), the insistence to know the Other causes the Other to lose that which distinguishes them from other entities: ‘Cognition consists in grasping the individual, which alone exists, not in its singularity which does not count, but in its generality, of which alone there is science’ (p. 50). According to Levinas, the exertion of power begins by knowing the Other, which inevitably results in defining the Other based on a priori formal structures. When the Other loses its singularity through being transformed into the general, the knowable, the explicit, they become a possession in the hand of the ‘I’ who seeks completion; ‘Only in possession does the I complete the identification of the diverse’ (p. 50). When the Other is possessed through being known, their independence is suspended. It is in the light of this possessive mechanism active in ‘the philosophy of the same’ that ‘freedom is realized as a wealth’ and ‘reason, which reduces the other, is appropriation and power’ (p. 50). The town’s insistence on transforming Kaspar into a ‘rational’ human who follows up the predetermined method of reasoning is the exemplar of such appropriation.

The discussion between Kaspar and the Professor who teaches logics and reasoning at an academic institution, or probably a German university, clearly reflects the above argument. When Kaspar tells his custodian, Professor Daumer, that he finds his coming to the world as ‘an unfortunate falling’, the professor asks of one his educated friends, who seems to have sophisticated knowledge of logics, to examine Kaspar’s understanding of his existence in the world through a problem of logics. The professor asks Kaspar to imagine he is standing at a crossroad and two of the roads reaching the crossroad lead to two villages. In one village there are people who just tell the truth and in another people live who just tell lie. Whilst standing at the crossroad, Kaspar sees a man who belongs to one of the villages, but he does not know to which village the passer-by belongs. The problem is that ‘how is it possible, just by asking one question, to realise whether that person belongs to the village of liars or the village of truth-tellers?’ Kaspar responds: ‘I won’t ask the man about his place of living, but I ask him whether he is a ‘tree-frog’. His justification for using this method is that the liar’s answer would be positive, but he can see that he is not a tree-frog. In this way, he can understand that he comes from the village of liars. The Professor who seems to have lost his temper by hearing such imaginative approach to solving the problem, rejects Kaspar’s approach, claiming that by the laws of logics there is just one question, and this question must be formulated using double negative. He argues then, ‘logic is deduction, not description. Understanding is secondary, the reasoning is the thing. In logic and mathematics, we don’t understand things’ (emphasis added). Kaspar’s reasoning is affected by his unmediated engagement, or as mentioned before, by his organic immediacy with the surrounding world. More importantly, in line with Deleuze’s (1986) analysis of Kaspar’s reactions in such moments as a being whose ‘tactile values’ enjoy a sort of ‘liberation’, Kaspar’s response is indicative of experiencing living in what Lewis and Kahn (2010) refer to as ‘zone of indistinction’. This is the zone from which Kaspar can see and challenge the restrictive human(ist) logic.

Infinity and the ethics of unknowing

As discussed above, according to Levinas, the insistence on knowing the Other is coterminous with the idea according to which the alterity of the Other, its inassimilablity, is a threat to the homogeneity of normal/normative society. According to Byung-Chul Han (2017), this idea, which in capitalist societies has turned into an ideology, consolidates consumerism. Han argues, ‘The negativity of the atopic Other refuses consumption. Therefore, the society of the consumer endeavours to eliminate atopic otherness in favour of consumable—heterotopic—differences’ (p. 2). In other words, consumerism essentially relies on eliminating the inassimilable, the negative. ‘Yet today,’ Hans asserts, ‘negativity is disappearing everywhere. Everything is being flattened out into an object of consumption’ (p. 2). Whilst the society of the consumer puts emphasis on knowing, grasping, controlling and consuming the Other, Levinas (1987b) believes that knowing the Other is not only ‘impossible’, but also ‘unethical’ on the ground that it creates a closure in the society through eliminating differences that make the Other singular and unique. As Zembylas (2005) remarks, in Levinas ‘the impossibility of knowing the Other is precisely the condition of ethics; the encounter which occurs between self and Other gives birth to an infinite ethical responsibility’ (p. 147). In a sense, the relationship between self and the Other is ethical as far as the alterity of each is acknowledged. When we accept the unknowability of the Other, we can desire that which makes them unknowable. And as soon as we get a clue of what makes the Other unknowable, we encounter the very thing that makes them Other; i.e. their alterity. According to Zembylas, ‘it is a desire for an end that never comes, but which energizes one’s desire and keeps it moving and searching’, hence the constitutive relationship between desire and infinity (p. 156). The desiring subject, albeit not in the sense that consumerist agendas conceive of it, for Levinas is the one who identifies with the infinite. In other words, ‘the relationship to the infinite is not a knowledge but a desire; we always feel an ‘absence’’’, and it is the presence of this very absence that makes us not be satisfied after achieving a goal (p. 156). In a sense, Levinas can be considered an imperfectionist because he envisages no ultimate end for one’s desiring. ‘Totality’ is a myth that only perfectionists believe in. As such, the ethical subject seeks no totality, neither in themselves nor in the Other. We are born imperfect, and this is the precondition for being an ethical subject.

Kaspar emerges in the society as the inassimilable, unknowable entity, hence being the inconsumable. In other words, because he cannot be known, he cannot be consumed as well. As the object of people’s scrutiny, he cannot be known, but, at a more important level, i.e. from his subjective/agentive position, he does not insist on knowing the Other; the Other embodied both in human and non-human forms. Instead, what he insists on is desiring, hence his investment in the infinite. Kaspar’s identification with the infinite has been exquisitely depicted in the scene where he is in a moribund state and is narrating the vision that has recently came to his mind. Kaspar insists that his story has no end, and that he only knows its beginning. Professor Daumer, who has always tried to listen to and respect Kaspar’s ideas and feelings, asks him to tell the story even if it has no end. This is Kaspar’s (hallucinatory) vision—in the Deleuzian sense of the term:

There is something, a story…It’s about a caravan…and the desert. But I know only the beginning. I see a caravan…coming through the desert…across the sands. And this caravan…is led by an old Berber tribesman. And this old man is blind. Now the caravan stops, because some believe they are lost, and because they see mountains ahead of them. They look at their compass, but it’s no use. Then their blind leader picks up a handful of sand and tastes it, as though it were food. My sons, the blind man says, you are wrong. Those are not mountains you see. It is only your imagination. We must continue northwards. And they follow the old man’s advice… and finally reach the city in the North. And that’s where the story begins. But how the story goes after they reach the city, I don’t know. (emphasis added)

In its very incompletion, Kaspar’s story is the embodiment of identification with the infinite. His statement (I don’t know) at the end of his unfinished vision is the realization a Levinasian ethical moment where the subject associates their unknowability with the infinite. Kaspar’s subjectivity has been formed around an epistemological gap, and this very gap allows him to think of the infinite. Accordingly, Kaspar’s death is the realization of an ethical infinite, where the infinite has been developed by subject’s desiring and his confession of not knowing.

Conclusion

Levinas is mainly known as a theoretician of the Other and ethics. The Other is the one who asks us to respond to them and be responsible for our deeds. In a sense, it is the existence of the Other that gives meaning to the notion of responsibility; without the Other to whom shall we respond? One can go even further and argue that it is in this relationship with the Other that we feel our existence in the world. Is not this formulation familiar in the context of education/pedagogy where the very existence of teacher and learner relies on a mutual relationship? Without the existence of leaners, teachers lose their status and vice versa. From a Leviansian perspective, when each side of such a relationship conceives of the Other as the one to whom they are obliged to respond, then the relationship is of an ethical nature, an ethics rooted in an infinite responsibility. Whilst this observation apparently seems to provide us with a new conception of subjectivity, which might also be applied in questioning the notion educational/pedagogical subjectivity, in reality, as Biesta (2003) remarks, it can be seen as an attempt ‘to account for the awakening of the singularity of the subject’ (p. 63, emphasis in original). The Levinasian subject, contrary to what we are accustomed to thinking of in educational/pedagogical contexts, is not a conscious subject ‘whose first relationship with the world (including other human beings) is a knowledge relationship’, a relationship based on which the subject communicates with others (p. 62). The subject in this sense cannot and should not know the Other, because the Other is unknowable. Accepting the unknowability of the Other is a precondition for any ethical relationship with the Other. The subject for Levinas is not ‘a substantial centre of meaning’, rather they find their meanings, and their being in the world, after they enter a relationship with the Other, a relationship ‘older than the ego, prior to principles’ (Levinas, 2006, p. 117).

Kaspar’s relationship with the new society where he emerges can be thought of as the embodiment of a relationship with the Other not based on prior principles. He does not possess any pre-defined knowledge about the town and its people. So, he tries to communicate with the ‘lack’, the unknowable space, of the town’s people. He is like a teacher, without aiming to act so, for whom all learners—without aiming to see people as such—have the right to see the world from the perspective of their very irrationality. He also acts as a learner by allowing the Other to see his imaginative irrationality. Through prioritizing irrationality in both roles he sets a ground to identify with the infinite.

Moreover, what, from a Levinasian perspective, can be learned from Kaspar’s short life is that human subjectivity should not be thought of as containing a particular nature or essence. Human subjectivity loses its singularity when considered to harbour a particular nature. This is because any essence can be studied and then known, and if one’s essence is known or grasped, that individual can be predictable and controllable. In a sense, the subject’s freedom is guaranteed as long as they are unknowable/ungraspable. The unknowability of the subject makes him/her non-integratable, where the latter preserves the uniqueness of the subject. Non-integratability of the subject is also that which puts them at the side of the infinite, where knowledge and the insistence to know the Other is suspended in order for the subject to sustain his/her desire to continue communication with the Other. Kaspar’s subjectivity is formed around his non-essentialist being. This can be seen in his unpredictable and anti-normative reactions to his surroundings, such as giving agency to an apple, presenting quite idiosyncratic responses to logics problem and his tears for the innocence of a baby. Kaspar learns from situations where no so-called profitable knowledge can be found and teaches us how to see things differently without sacrificing his unique, seemingly irrational perspective.

The emphasis that Herzog puts on irrational characters and practices in his films can be considered as an ethical act, thereby questioning the process of human’s socialisation. In Singer’s (2012) words, these ‘all seem to be signatures of an artist courting a mythos of transcendent spirit: one that flourishes under the implicitly irrationalistic sanctions of fictionality’ (p. 571). Given the fact that for Herzog rationality is coterminous with economisation of values, he resorts to irrationalistic fictionality in order to ‘license our aspirations for a natural immediacy untroubled by reason altogether’ (p. 571). ‘The director seems to taunt our faith’, Singer notes, ‘in a rapport with nature that surpasses the relative triviality of human, or ‘made’ history’ (p. 571). Accordingly, we can see the tangible critique of humanism in Herzog’s cinema.

Acknowledgment

I would like to sincerely appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments on the earlier draft of this paper. Ansgar Allen’s meticulous reading and enlightening comments tangibly changed the paper; I am immensely grateful to him. Maryam Izadi’s views on the film was truly insightful. My deepest thanks go to her. Last but not least, I am obliged to Keyvan Manafi who familiarised me with the cinema of Werner Herzog, among many others.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Sajad Kabgani

Sajad Kabgani is currently doing his PhD in philosophy at Deakin University, Australia. Sajad’s research is informed by continental philosophy (Deleuze, Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille, among others), psychoanalysis (Frued and Lacan), and critical race studies (Sylvia Wynter). He is interested in questions of subjectivity, time and ethics. He has published papers in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory. He previously earned a PhD in educational philosophy from UNSW.