Levinas between Philosophy and the Bible

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Acknowledgment

I want to thank Jason Harman, Jason Hoult, and Trevor Robertson for reading my essay-review and providing me with comments on it.

I discuss here the same basic issues that I addressed in my review essay “Levinas between the Bible and Philosophy” (The European Legacy 15, no. 5 [August, 2010]: 637–42).

Notes

1. The quotation continues (in concluding the book): “And it is in the name of this universal justice and not in the name of some national justice or other that the Israelites lay claim to the land of Israel.” A note on the citation protocol I follow: (1) When I cite in a single paragraph two or more passages from the same page of the book under review, I give the page number at the end of the last passage cited; (2) All emphases in quotations are in the original; and (3) the translations from Spinoza are my own.

2. See Kierkegaard, “Subjective Truth,” 189–250.

3. Hobbes, Leviathan, chaps. 14, 15, 17, and 26.

4. Spinoza, Preface to his Theologico-Political Treatise. Also see Chapter 13 in which Spinoza argues that the Bible teaches only “the simplest things,” and so obedience as the love of neighbor, and not the mysteries of philosophy, which, when examined, turn out to come from Aristotle, Plato, or the like.

5. Spinoza, Ethics, Part 4, Prop. 35, Corollary 2, Scholium; Prop. 18, Scholium.

6. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 442 (A 402). I have substituted “know” for “cognize.”

7. It is my unhappy responsibility to point out, as is evident in this paragraph, that the editing/proofreading of this book are manifestly deficient.

8. Buber: “In the beginning is the relation.” I and Thou, 69.

9. It is critically important to see that Hegel’s concept of absolute (infinite) knowledge is altogether congruent with Kant’s concept of transcendental reason as practice. In other words, Kant and Hegel use the term “knowledge” (Wissen/Erkenntnis) for very different (opposed) conceptual purposes. While it is not possible for me to discuss Hegel here, I do want to point out that his ethics and politics are manifestly biblical. Thus, he cites the Golden Rule in stating, again in agreement with Kant, that in the civil state, as distinct from the state of nature, the individual obeys “a universal, the will that is in essence and actuality will, the law; he behaves, therefore, towards others in a manner that is universally valid, recognizing them—as he wishes others to recognize him—as free, as persons.” Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, 172–73.

10. “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. … No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4.7–12 (Revised Standard Version).