Hospitality, asylum and education: around Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic readings

ABSTRACT

In reference to the article by Hanan Alexander ‘Education in nonviolence’, the text takes up the issue of reading Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic texts for the philosophy of education. It intends to positively answer the question about the value and potential of such inspiration, focusing on concepts from two of Levinas’s Talmudic readings. The first part of the text is devoted to the characteristics of the intellectual output of the thinker. The second part analyses and discusses Alexander’s commentary on one of Levinas’s Talmudic readings, ‘Toward the Other’. Alexander aims to show the specificity of the idea of education in nonviolence, heavily indebted to the Jewish tradition and thought. The third part of the text is an extension of Alexander’s comment, focuses on another Talmudic reading by Levinas, ‘Cities of Refuge’, and aims to outline the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum.

KEYWORDS:

• Nonviolence
• hospitality
• Levinas
• Talmud
• sacred study
• pedagogy of asylum

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the ‘Introduction’ to Levinas and the Philosophy of Education (Zhao 2018), made up of articles published in an issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory, Guoping Zhao noted a spike in the educators’ and education theoreticians’ interest in Levinas’s thought from the turn of the 21st century. She observed that ‘The areas of education scholars have explored with a Levinasian lens are varied, covering a wide range of educational concern’ (2016, 325). These areas include the purpose of education, curriculum issues and pedagogy, teacher–student relations, the educational aim of autonomy as contrary to heteronomy, art education. As she observes, ‘particular attention has been paid to the ethical implications of Levinas’s philosophy for education in areas related to moral education, diversity issues, multiculturalism, and the politics of recognition’ (325). In addition, this ‘trend in the Levinas scholarship in education, developing from an earlier cautious exposition and concern for faithful interpretation to the later more full-blown, critical analysis and creative extension of his ideas’ (325) has not waned. Furthermore, educational philosophy has for a long time been justly concerned about the ‘implications of these [Levinas’s] difficult ideas for educational practice’, as Paul Standish claims, in this way opposing ‘undue piety towards those ideas’ (Standish 2008, 57). However, references to Levinas’s philosophy to address the quality of educational practice has according to Michael Wimmer special consequences for pedagogy: ‘Levinas’s philosophy has far more impact on pedagogical discourses, as it pertains to both reconceptualizing culture and revising the concept of education since pedagogy must think itself as that upon which claims are laid’ (2008, 117). It can therefore be assumed that the constantly renewed effort to pedagogically study Levinas’s thought and to devote separate attention to this effort, of which this article can be an example, can contribute to countering the danger of reducing educational practice to ‘dressage, technique, agenda, and calculation’ (132). Precisely because this danger as risk is inscribed in educational practice, as in the relationship with the Other.

2. Such as Quatre lectures talmudiques (1968), Du sacré au saint. Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques (1977), L’au delà du verset. Lectures et discours talmudiques (), A l’heure des nations (1988), and Nouvelles lectures talmudiques (1996). Discussions with the tradition and thought of Judaism and modern Jewish culture are also included in his works such as: Difficile liberté. Essais sur le judaïsme (1963, revised and increased edition 1976), Noms propres (1975), Hors sujet (1987) – all these works have been translated into English and published.

3. In view of the important role of midrash in Judaism and the diversity of midrashic literature, a broader presentation of this issue is beyond the scope of this article. Daniel Boyarin’s (1994) book could serve as an interesting introduction to this issue for the philosophy of education. The relationship between Levinas’s Talmudic readings and midrash as a form of traditional rabbinic commentary is critically discussed by Wygoda (2005, 313–352), co-author of the Hebrew translation of Difficult Freedom.

4. Simon Crithley’s observation: ‘Levinas’s thinking manifests a deep-seated ignorance of and prejudice against non-Western cultures’ (Ma 2008, 600; Standish 2007, 89), referring to the philosopher’s much-discussed disparaging statements on Afro-Asiatic civilisations, along with Robert Bernasconi’s comment on the links between the notion of the Other with a concrete example as the weak, the poor, the widow, and the orphan, which refer to a specific tradition and historical and cultural formation (Ma 2008, 604–607), lead to an allegation of Levinas’s exclusive understanding of this notion. Naturally, the questions indicated here call for a separate discussion, yet it seems that it is possible to read Levinas in reference to the corpus of his texts, where this chauvinism or Occidentalism can be avoided, which the author of this article wishes to achieve.

5. The collection of essays Difficult Freedom (Levinas 1990a), whose first French edition appeared in 1963, includes his two previously published Talmudic readings. The book Quatre lectures talmudiques (Four Talmudic Readings) has been published in English as part of Nine Talmudic Readings (Levinas 1994b).

6. Alexander’s reading seems to be justified in the context of Levinas’s aforementioned declarations. However, one should be constantly mindful of the possible uncertainties associated with such a concept, e.g. the question of how far Levinas’s claims can influence the dominant educational and religious practices Alexander writes about. Orientations for possible discussions in the perspective of philosophy of education are provided in Paul Smeyers’ commentary on Alexander’s text (Smeyers 2014, 79–83).

7. At the end of the twentieth century, in view of the global intensification of migration (see Agier 2008, p. 73–101, 2016, p. 58–79), it was proposed to call the next century the ‘century of migration’, which certainly impacts the relevance of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum proposed in this article. However, since the article focuses on the philosophical and theoretical foundations of this idea on the one hand, and Levinas’s Talmudic readings on the other, the consideration of its possible applications to the practice of intercultural education and contemporary educational problems requires separate research and studies as well as the elaboration of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum itself.