3.3 The Relation as a Condition of Revelation
3.3.1 Atheism: Groundwork of the Home
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existence without any other powers coming to its aid.86 Consequently, atheism is the origin of the Same.
It is tempting to read Levinas’s project in TI as the overcoming of the Same, but that overcoming would place the Same in the competitive dialectical relationship of conflict with the Other, which Levinas explicitly rejected. The Other does not oppose the Same. Levinas goes out of his way to reiterate this every time he returns to the theme that the Other does not oppose me with another power. Instead, the Other questions the Same by calling the Same to goodness. This non-competitive relationship is important. The Other does not compete with me. If it did, then the Other would oppose my power with another power. It would be just another being that I could kill and maybe should kill in order to persist in being. For Levinas, the Other is the sole being I cannot kill. Though, of course, I can murder the Other. Levinas’s point is that the Other is not something that the Same need overcome precisely because the Other does not oppose me but rather calls me to goodness, and this is the reason he uses the term ‘murder’ to refer to the killing of the Other. Importantly, the atheistic separation of the Same is actually positive and necessary in order to maintain the relationship between the Same and the Other so that the two do not collapse into a new synthesis. Atheism is proof against that synthesis.
Recall that in Smith’s project, the separation between the one who receives divine revelation and the divine is accomplished by the divine’s apperception. The divine never gives itself entirely even in its reverse ontological participation. The divine, who created the finite, freely participates in the finite by virtue of the divine’s power to do so. The finite does not have
86 Levinas makes a throwaway comment in discussing the separation of the atheist from being: “. . . capable, eventually, of adhering to [Being] by belief.” « . . . capable éventuellement d’y adhérer par la croyance » (Levinas, Totalité, 52). In terms of the evolution of Western spiritualities, is not belief the capacity to adhere to God within one’s own separation from God? Within one’s own atheism? What a fascinating question.
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the power to limit its creator. Yet, while the divine is free to participate in the finite, and indeed does condescend to participate in the finite, the divine exercises its right not to give itself fully.
This voluntary withholding of itself, when it could have done otherwise, maintains its divine transcendence. Smith’s position is one of theological voluntarism. In turn, the one who receives revelation can only formally indicate the divine. Yet, the receiver is also supposed to be able to understand the partially-given divine in this revelation. Therefore, one understands the divine analogously, and the ‘concept’ formally indicates that analogous understanding. The Same is fully affirmed through Smith’s doctrine of revelation. Even God respects and must respect the integrity of the Same.
In both projects, the role of separation emerges as a condition of revelation. For Smith, divine withholding accomplishes separation between the divine and the finite. It is hard for modern persons not to perceive this withholding as a challenge, a temptation, or possibly even a seduction. What could more powerfully provoke my lust for domination than a power that exceeds my power withholding some knowledge of itself from me? This is the same modern epistemological context that provokes Bacon and Descartes to strip nature bare in their
domination of her. This modern spirituality is consistently reflected from Bacon and Descartes through Smith, even if Smith has insisted on celibacy. We cannot consummate our desire, but can only indicate it. We have to hold back by disciplining ourselves. Smith’s stance is painfully Evangelical.
In contrast, for Levinas, separation is not due to a divine striptease but rather is
accomplished by the egoism of the Same. The Same resists participation in Being because it has
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no need of Being. It has no need because the Same has established itself as its own causa sui.87 If it did not do this, then the Same would be an extension of a concept. There is something Kantian in how Levinas develops his metaphor of atheism as the Same seems to serve a regulating function, establishing the unity or totality of ideas.88
For Levinas, the Same is the source of concepts rather than being the extension of one. If, in contrast, the Same or the self were its own concept, then unity would be achieved through the Same’s conceptual participation in Being.89 It would require the Same to locate its ontological place. In this case, then revelation would be the vertical epistemological movement within the ontological hierarchy. We know this from Plato. Smith simply reverses that direction. The top of the hierarchy descends to where we are. When truth descends and makes its home at lower levels of the hierarchy and does not re-ascend, what salvific quality does that truth possess? Where is the Way and the Life here? How does that truth set us free from our imperialistic and colonizing endeavors? Where is the hope for the victim of our endeavors?
Therefore, in this curious way, the metaphor of atheism serves to account for the Same’s separation from Being. It is not because the Other resists me, as marking the limitation of my freedom that we are separate. Levinas says that through the psychism in which the Same establishes its inner life:
One can call atheism this separation so complete that the separated being maintains itself in existence all by itself, without participating in the Being from which it is separated—
87 Levinas, Totality, 58-9. Interestingly, the Same’s being its own causa sui, Levinas says, comes after the fact (Ibid., 54). Its effect determines its cause, thus reversing the logical order and flow of time. The past is reshaped by virtue of the Same’s hermeneutical power in the present, which is an example of the atheism of the Same.
88 See Udo Thiel, “The Critique of Rational Psychology,” in A Companion to Kant, Graham Bird, ed. (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006): 207-221.
89 Ibid., 59.
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eventually capable of adhering to it by belief. The break with participation is implied in this capability. One lives outside of God, at home with oneself; one is an I, an egoism.90 There is a form of peace that arises from this break with Being and this break with God. This peace arises from establishing one’s own home and coming to be at home in the world. All of this is accomplished through the power, labor, and capacity of the Same such that the
establishment of the home is equivalent to the establishment of freedom.
In a sense everything is in the site, in the last analysis everything is at my disposal, even the stars, if I but reckon them, calculate the intermediaries or the means. The site, a medium, affords means.91
This is the power of economy, the management or the law of the home. The home and its economy is power over even the stars, or perhaps a power over God. And all that it takes to establish this dwelling is putting down one’s roots along with a little bit of calculative thinking.
A little bit of belief. Perhaps a bit of analogy in which the Other is made like me. When the Other is made like me, alterity slips away, and the economy is complete.
While Levinas is clearly quite critical of the atheism of the Same, which is the seat of the Same’s egolatry and imperialism, Peperzak notes that it is “a condition for the possibility of transcendence and dedication to the nonego that is the Other.”92 That is to say, the relationship, which itself requires separation, is this condition.
I will note in the conclusion of this section that Levinas identifies atheism as the origin of the relation through a model of radical individuality rather than through a model of original sociality. This original individualism is a limitation of Levinas’s project.
90 Levinas, Totality, 58.
91 Ibid., 37.
92 Peperzak, Other, 136.
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