Language and eschatology in the work of Emmanuel Levinas.

This paper discusses the relationship between language and eschatology in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. It will take into consideration the various concepts of eschatology in his work by regarding his philosophical writings as well as his Talmudic interpretations. As I will show, eschatology plays a significant role in the work of Levinas and is strongly linked to the notion of language. In this context, I would like to underline the relationship between the work of Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas regarding language and eschatology, especially in light of the recently published correspondence between Rosenzweig and Margit (Gritli) Rosenstock-Huessy, the so-called "Gritli" letters. Furthermore, this article aims at explaining the importance of the notion of the voice, in order to point out a new interpretation of the saying (le dire) and the said (le dit) in the later work of Levinas.

I. Introduction

This paper discusses the different concepts of eschatology in the work of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and plans to outline their importance for his views on language. First, by giving a short overview on the role of eschatology in Totality and Infinity as well as in some of Levinas's Talmudic interpretations, I outline the different notions of eschatology. Furthermore I would like to draw some parallels between Levinas and Franz Rosenzweig regarding their views on language and eschatology by taking into consideration the newly edited correspondence of Rosenzweig with Margit (Gritli) Rosenstock-Huessy. These so-called "Gritli" letters offer a new approach to the work of Rosenzweig which I will try to link to the notions of language and eschatology in the thought of Levinas. In conclusion, I will elaborate on these insights for a new interpretation of Levinas's conception of the saying (le dire) and the said (le dire), as worked out in his later book Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, by drawing special attention to the phenomenon of the voice, an aspect which has been less considered. However, it can offer an interesting new approach to reinterpreting the latter work of Levinas.

II. Eschatology in Levinas's Philosophical Writings and in His Talmudic Interpretations

At first sight eschatology seems to play a minor role in Levinas's thought because when we look at his first major work, Totality and Infinity, (2) eschatology rarely appears, apart from the foreword. (3) Nevertheless in this section it holds a remarkable position, because it is through eschatology that the totality and with it the "ontology of war" is broken up. (4) This function of eschatology expresses a crucial point in the philosophy of Levinas and is linked to the fundamental notions of the face as well as language, because eschatology appeals to "existents [etants] that can speak, rather than lending their lips to an anonymous utterance of history. Peace is produced as this aptitude for speech. The eschatological vision breaks with the totality of wars and empires in which one does not speak." (5) Since eschatology is realized through language, it is strongly linked to the notion of the face because it is the foremost characteristic of the face to speak: "It expresses itself," (6) as Levinas states. But it is a silent speech which is expressed by the face, a speech without words or moreover beyond the articulation of words. It is precisely for this reason that it opens up "the very possibility of eschatology, that is, the breach of the totality, the possibility of a signification without a context." (7) It is inevitable that the face expresses itself through a so-called "signification without a context" because it expresses the idea of infinity, which, as Levinas points out, cannot be "stated in terms of experience, for infinity overflows the thought that thinks it." (8) The function of eschatology lies exactly in the realization of this relationship of the same to the other, manifested in the experience of being faced by the other which relates the Same to a beyond of history: "Eschatology institutes a relation with being beyond the totality or beyond history." (9) But--and this is the crucial point in Levinas's notion of eschatology regarding its role for history and politics--this beyond "is reflected within the totality and history, within experience." (10) So although eschatology and history (respectively totality) are fundamentally different categories for Levinas, they are nevertheless linked together in an experience all of us have nearly every day: the encounter with another person face-to-face.

Furthermore, Levinas points out in his Talmudic interpretations that there are different concepts of eschatology:" [E]schatology possesses a number of styles and genres, and it was the Jewish Bible which probably discovered the one which consists in feeling responsible in the face of the future one hopes for others. Yet ever since the creation, it was to be found in the humanity of man. It cannot be the cause of wars." (11) Levinas draws a parallel here between the biblical heritage and the notion of eschatology, from which it can be derived that for him one aspect of eschatology is rooted in the Jewish tradition. An idea strongly related to this statement can be found in Totality and Infinity, where Levinas states: "Of peace there can be only an eschatology." (12) Hence it can be seen that the concepts of eschatology overlap in Levinas' philosophical and Jewish writings (a phenomenon which is not limited to the notion of eschatology), (13)

The aspect of various concepts of eschatology can also be found in some of Levinas' Talmudic interpretations published in his book Difficult Freedom under the title "Messianic Texts." In these texts eschatology is linked to the notion of a messianic subjectivity, which seems to mark the central aspect of ontology for Levinas as he postulates: "Messianism is no more than this apogee in being, a centralizing, concentration or twisting back on itself of the Self [Moi]. And in concrete terms this means that each person acts as if though he were the Messiah. Messianism is therefore not the certainty of the coming of a man who stops History. It is my power to beat the suffering of all. It is the moment when I recognize this power and my universal responsibility." (14)

The notion of eschatology is not a static idea in the thought of Levinas, but has to be considered as a dynamic configuration through which eschatology manifests itself in different concepts and at different places in Levinas's work. Through these various concepts Levinas tries to describe the idea of Infinity in its realization to temporality. Therefore, the notion of eschatology and of messianic peace is highly important also for Levinas's views on politics, because the deeds of men which are realized through temporality manifest themselves in history--and politics is the actual form of history. (15) Eschatology and language are also strongly linked together. I will show how closely these two notions are interwoven, first by comparing the concept of "speech-thinking" in the thought of Rosenzweig with Levinas's problem with philosophical thematization, especially in Otherwise than Being, and second by outlining the concept of a presence with voice in order to offer a fresh approach to the interpretation of Levinas's thought.

III. Echoes from within the Voice--Influences of Rosenzweig in the Thought of Levinas

In this section the methodological problem of Levinas elaborated above is situated in a broader philosophical horizon by drawing some parallels to the work of Franz Rosenzweig. The influence of (the latter on Levinas has been considered at length in the excellent studies of Robert Gibbs and Richard A. Cohen. (16) For my part, I would only like to accentuate some aspects of this highly complex intellectual relation, by taking into consideration the correspondence of Franz Rosenzweig with Margit (Gritli) Rosenstock-Huessy. (17) Many essential ideas of Rosenzweig's work, especially regarding the notions of language and eschatology, had a significant impact on Levinas's thought. The often cited statement in the foreword of Totality and Infinity which admits that Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption would be "too often present in this book to be cited" (18) is a highly interesting remark in this context. It underscores the fact that Levinas's discourse as a whole is so deeply penetrated by Rosenzweig's thought that Levinas does not even try to separate it through citation marks which would function as sort of demarcation lines between the original text and influences from other sources. The transitions to Rosenzweig's Star are thus fluidly inherent in the entire discourse of Totality and Infinity. Perhaps a metaphor is appropriate here in order to emphasize that the reader of Levinas's discourse hears the resonance of Rosenzweig's voice from within the voice of Levinas--two separated voices, which can no longer be distinguished in the developed discourse. To elaborate this metaphor, it is like speaking and hearing at the same time--at this very moment, to use Derrida's phrase. (19) It is as if I receive a diachronic echo from within my voice while speaking, which doubles my voice and renders it a polyphonic part of a discourse composed of a variety of voices. Levinas himself mentioned this phenomenon at the end of the first chapter of Otherwise than Being, with regard to the methodological problems he had to deal with in writing this book: "The different concepts that come up in the attempt to state transcendence echo one another. The necessitites of thematization in which they are said ordain a division into chapters, although the themes in which these concepts present themselves do not lend themselves to linear exposition, and cannot be really isolated from one another without projecting their shadows and their reflections on one another." (20)

In my view, this aspect to Levinas' problem with philosophical themarization could be seen in accordance with the concept of "speech-thinking" (Sprach-Denken) elaborated by Franz Rosenzweig. Therefore, it seems to me a promising task to compare Rosenzweig's thought to that of Levinas regarding the notions of language and eschatology that I have mentioned. There are two aspects I would like to accentuate: revelation and speech. The latter is at the core of the so-caIled"New Thinking" (das neue Denken) of Rosenzweig, which considers itself as a "speech thinking" and is unlike the abstract thinking of academic philosophy, which is a thinking for no one because it speaks to no one. (21) On the contrary, Rosenzweig explains "in the new thinking, the method of speech replaces the method of thinking, maintained in all earlier philosophies .... I do not know in advance what the other person will say to me, because I do not even know what I myself am going to say. I do not even know whether I am going to say anything at all." (22) The two main aspects on which this new method focused were the fact that the philosopher" needs another person, and takes time seriously--actually, these two thinking are identical." (23) Through his letters to Gritli these conditions were fulfilled: "In dialogue with her, language became living speech." (24) As for Rosenzweig, also for Levinas this living speech is central for his philosophy: "The banal fact of conversation ... quits the order of violence. This banal fact is the marvel of marvels." (25) It is the spoken word to a fellow man face-to-face where the idea of peace is realized. Therefore, dialogue holds a crucial position in the thought of Levinas. Nothing less than " the Infinite passes in the saying." (26) Rosenzweig stated the importance of the dialogue in a letter to Gritli in the following way: "Word must be answer, in order to be word." (27) His method of speech-thinking could in this context offer an adequate way to get past the "said" of linear thought, which is the main problem of Levinas' philosophical thematization, and to think in "sayings" rather than in "saids."

Furthermore, it is certainly not a mere accident that in the center of the Star Rosenzweig analyzes the Song of Songs. He considered this passage, which is Part Two of the second book of the Star, to be fundamentally hers [i.e., Gritli's]. (28) The "Song of Songs" also holds a central place in Levinas's thinking concerning the subject as one that is sick of the other, i.e., his subjectivity is founded in a status of pure passivity (29): "There is an assignation to an identity for the response of responsibility, where one cannot have oneself be replaced without fault. To this command continually put forth only a'here I am' (me voici) can answer, where the pronoun 'I' is in the accusative, declined before any declension, possessed by the other, sick, identical. Here I am--is saying with inspiration, which is not a gift for fine words or songs. There is constraint to give with full hands, and thus constraint to corporeality." (30) The condition of identity, constituted in the notion of the hostage, (31) was worked out in Otherwise than Being. To underscore this important aspect Levinas quotes in a footnote the phrase "sick of love" from the Song of Songs. (32)

The connection between language and the experience of love is expressed in the Star in a very radical manner: "Only the lover can and does say: love me!--and he really does so. In his mouth the commandment to love is not a strange commandment; it is none other than the voice of love itself. The love of the lover has, in fact, no word to express itself other than the commandment." (33) This sets a high standard for communication because for Rosenzweig only a lover has the ability to speak, and he does so in a form of authentic speech. This does not mean that one has to fall in love with the other in order to be able to communicate, but rather that in the simple fact of a conversation face-to-face there lies a secret which is revealed to us while speaking, as Levinas stated: "The banal fact of conversation ... is the marvel of marvels." (34) In a similar way, Levinas characterized eschatology as appealing to "existents [etants] that can speak, rather than lending their lips to an anonymous utterance of history." (35) Through the experience of eschatology, realized in the face-to-face encounter, human beings gain the ability to speak: "Peace is produced as this aptitude for speech." (36) This aptitude reveals itself as a commandment, as "the voice of love itself," as pointed out by Rosenzweig, and before this voice I cannot close my ears. The call from the other constitutes the ineluctable task of responsibility before which nobody can escape or replace himself, just as no one can be replaced when he dies. (37) As Levinas pointed out in one of his Talmudic lectures, "Revelation in the Jewish Tradition," this commandment is also the beginning of language:"Commandment rather than narration constitutes the first movement in the direction of human understanding; and, of itself, is the beginning of language." (38) This commandment conveys an impetus which causes the subject to, as they say, try over and over again to find new words for what has already been said and stated before during the centuries of human existence. However, this does not mean that new fields of knowledge were not discovered, and with them new expressions, for ongoing changes underlie every spoken language. A language is always in process. This is a fact that also has a strong impact on the process of discourse. I will return to this point in my concluding remarks.

Regarding the function of language and its relation to eschatology, it is certainly not a new discovery that the pivotal point in the concepts of Rosenzweig and Levinas lies in the notion of revelation, which constitutes a core aspect for both of them. (39) In considering Rosenzweig's work, Levinas considered "the concept of revelation to be closest to his philosophical-ethical worldview." (40) As we have seen, this revelation is experienced not in mystical adventures, but in a common experience each one of us makes nearly every day: the concrete, spoken word addressed to another human being. Hence, the two aspects I want to accentuate here, language and revelation, turn out to be strongly linked to each other: "Language is the instrument of revelation." (41) Ephraim Meir describes this connection for Rosenzweig as follows;" Rosenzweig situated revelation in the concrete encounter and believed in one fundamentally imperative speech that can and must be translated into a multitude of languages .... He wanted to hear God's word in this world as a word giving meaning to history. A view of the world without this exterior voice was inconceivable to him, as would be a voice without resonance in this world. Such a voice is heard only by mystics who do not understand that the divine voice is embedded in and wants to be heard by concrete human beings. The irreducible uniqueness of the human being stems from his being addressed by this ever-exterior voice in order to become non-identical with himself in dialogue with the Other." (42) This quotation underscores the function of the voice in the relation of the self to the other, to which I would like to draw further attention in the following section. It is through an exterior-voice that the I is called into his subjectivity. The voice conveys the word to the other and renders dialogue as such possible, in contrast to inner thinking, which silently remains in the bounds of one's own thought: "The situation of responsibility is speech; the situation of reflective consciousness is thought" (43) Therefore, for Rosenzweig as for Levinas it is not God but man instead who has the task to redeem the world. I would agree in this context with the conclusion drawn by Zeev Levy who pointed out that Rosenzweig and Levinas both conceived of "secularized eschatology as man's action." (44) Because, as pointed out above, one of the various eschatological aspects in the work of Levinas consists in the notion of a messianic subjectivity, in concrete terms "each person acts as if though he were the Messiah." (45) Furthermore, this notion of eschatology unfolds its whole significance only in the community. This is a crucial point which has its relevance for Levinas as well as for Rosenzweig. Regarding the latter, this has been clearly pointed out, for example, in the study of Leora Batnitzky: "The central human experience ... is community and not dialogue. The central human experience for Rosenzweig is not comprised of just two voices, but rather of a polyphony of voices." (46) For Levinas this aspect was worked out in the notion of the third party, which not only affects the face-to-face relation of the I to the other, but also the origin of language as such: "Levinas has offered an account of the origin of language (logos) which presupposes not two, but three personages: the Other, the same--and the third party. This is why there can be no simple origin ..., because there is no first relation (intersubjectivity) which would take place as it were in a vacuum." (47) Hence, the notion of language has to be conceived as a variety of voices. (48) The call from the other may be one, but the response is already addressed to all--even if I can only adequately respond to one person at one moment. (49)

IV. Presence with voice

"A voice comes from the other shore.
A voice interrupts the saying of the already said." (50)

In the following section I would like to outline some further ideas regarding Levinas's concept of the saying and the said and want to relate this concept to the recently expanded research literature on the phenomenon of the voice, by trying to show how these new approaches to the voice could offer a fresh perspective for Levinas studies. The notion of the saying appears throughout Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. (51) Levinas's focus in this work is the "subordination of the saying to the said" which is "the price that manifestation demands. In language qua said everything is conveyed before us, be it at the price of a betrayal." (52) Therefore, the said calls for the saying, because the said can never grasp the significance of the saying, since "to what could not be contained there corresponds no capacity." (53) The meaning exceeds the language: thought overflows the words which try to express it. This relates to the idea of Infinity described in Totality and Infinity and is stated by Levinas also in a minor article as follows:"In the Saying, by which the subject, driven out, leaves its clandestinity, the Infinite comes to pass." (54)

The saying must be conceived as a radical exposure to the other, "exposure without holding back, exposure of exposedness, expression, saying ... saying uncovering itself, that is, denuding itself of its skin, sensibility on the surface of the skin ... wholly sign, signifying itself." (55) It is "not an act at all, but a modality of passivity which in substitution is beyond even passivity. To be oneself ... as a pure withdrawal of oneself." (56) It is, therefore, strictly speaking, not the communication of the said, which immediately covers and extinguishes the said, but saying "holding open its openness, without excuses, evasions or alibis, delivering itself without saying anything said ... It is to exhaust oneself in exposing oneself, to make signs by making oneself a sign ... the saying of this very saying, a statement of the 'here I am' which is identified with nothing but the very voice that states and delivers itself, the voice that signifies." (57) At first, the notion of the voice seems to play a minor role in Otherwise than Being; however, it is through the voice that the saying expresses itself. The voice is the instrument through which the saying conveys oneself to the other. Saying is characterized as being wholly sign, signifying nothing but itself, and the saying of this very saying is the statement of the "Here I am" which is identified with the very voice. All this is exactly what is realized through the voice."'Here I am' as a witness of the Infinite, but a witness that does not thematize what it bears witness of ... It is by the voice of the witness that the glory of the Infinite is glorified." (58)

Let me now draw a broader parallel from Levinas's point of view to the recently increased interest in the voice. (59) It is not an overestimation to characterize the voice as the pivotal point of social sciences: "The humanities are, at their core, voice arts." (60) The voice constitutes the human being as a social being, a zoon politikon, linked through language with the other members of human society. However, before there is language, there is the voice. The function of language is founded on the transmission of the sound by the voice; otherwise it would remain a mere abstract figure without concrete existence. "The voice seems to possess the power to turn words into acts; ... a passage to action and an exertion of authority." (61) Through the voice one conveys oneself to the other, through its breath the words transport a meaning. Therefore, in many language there is an etymological link between spirit and breath; for instance, in Hebrew the word ruach means spirit, breath, and wind. So there is the voice as a medium, an instrument to convey a message, and the voice as pure sound. The latter is as such nothing but air, the most fugitive of the elements. At a closer look, as I pointed out above, it is exactly not just air, but breath and moreover the breath of a living spirit and a living body. The voice ties together these two elements, body and spirit, by constituting a unique identity of every human being. (62) But--and this is the point to which Levinas draws attention--the spoken word also stands for itself: saying has a meaning as such. (63) The act of speaking implicates a physical and an abstract aspect. A spoken word manifests an ephemeral presence that flows away with the breath that is exhausted. When the performance has finished, the presence has vanished. The voice expresses itself only in this vanishing and in its "consummation," (64) which is the sine qua non of its existence. Its presence is manifested by a constant withdrawal. The Levinasian subject is best described as a presence with voice. It is the living word, represented by the voice, that interests Levinas--just as for Rosenzweig the word became living speech through the encounter with Margit Rosenstock-Huessy. (65) However, regarding the limits of the voice, it has to be kept in mind that "no theme, no present, has a capacity for the Infinite," (66) as Levinas states in Otherwise than Being. The voice consummates the presence out of which it is born and, in this way, constantly withdraws itself and rejects the presence. To sum it up briefly in a paradox: The voice is pure presence, which is never present as such--leaving its echo, "catch me if you can." (67)

One way to escape this dilemma of language and eschatology lies in the concept of an exegetical reading, elaborated in the excellent study "Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy," by Richard A. Cohen. (68) Exegesis in this study is described as a "text interpretation not through explanation derived from objective context alone, but through understanding derived from the text's as well as the subject's own subjective context." (69) This requires an inspirational reading, which through its understanding goes beyond the borders of the text and arrives at a new horizon of meaning, unnoticed until now. (70) In this sense exegesis is seen as "the effort not to reduce transcendence," (71) which seems to me one of the main assignments of Levinas's philosophy. The "call for exegesis" (72) lies at the core of the relation between the said and the saying. Levinas himself has illustrated this call in the context of the essence of an artwork: "The exegesis is not something laid on to the resonance of essence in the artwork; the resonance of essence vibrates within the said of the exegesis." (73) The task of the philosopher is therefore constantly" to awaken in the said the saying," (74) which is by its nature an ongoing project, a work-in-progress, in which the philosopher's effort consists in "retaining an echo of the reduced said in the form of ambiguity, of diachronic expression." (75) In this connection exegesis can be seen as a sort of "spiraling movement [that] makes possible the boldness of philosophy, destroying the conjunction into which its saying and its said continually enter. The said ... thus maintains the diachrony in which, holding its breath, the spirit hears the echo of the otherwise."(76)

This "echo of the otherwise" calls to mind a popular song by Harry Nilsson, which in my view renders this experience in other words--autrement dit: "Everybody's talking at me, I don't hear a word they're saying, Only the echoes of my mind. / People stopping staring, I can't see their faces, Only the shadows of their eyes." (77) This seems to be, without knowing it, a very Levinasian pop song, because it picks up core aspects of Levinas's philosophy: neither the face nor even the eyes of the other can be seen--only "the shadows of his eyes," just as Moses is only allowed to see the trace of God's presence, but not God's face: "nobody can see Me and live on" (Exodus 33:20). Furthermore, the figure of the echo--H[? ?]--as a voice without a body is another core aspect of what I have called presence with voice. The notion of an echo in the mind highlights the aspect that the voice has a presence as such, which transcends the spoken word. (78) This voice we cannot get rid of, even when we close our ears--echo, this immortal sister of the living voice, reverberates on and haunts our spirits.

V. Conclusions--"Le roy est mort, vive le roy!" or the Immortal Body of Discourse

In his inaugural lecture at the College de France in 1970, Michel Foucault stated he would be very shy starting his lecture with a new discourse and that he would instead have preferred that there would have been a voice before him, through which he could easily slip into a discourse which has already begun. (79) This timidity is not only an academic fear of horror vacui, but also a widespread phenomenon which can be seen in everyday life; for example, we prefer to be introduced to people we do not know or to begin a letter or a book with a citation, as if these voices from without would help us to find our own voice and to express better what has already been said, but "what has already been ill understood in the inevitable ceremonial in which the said delights." (80) This can be considered an obligation, but at the same time--as the speaker himself is part of the very discourse he participates in--also a security. Then if he withdraws from speech, the discourse will go on without him. Levinas has characterized this aspect of the discourse as follows: "The discourse is ready to say all the ruptures in itself, and consume them as silent origin or as eschatology. If the philosophical discourse is broken, withdraws from speech and murmurs ... it nonetheless speaks of that." (81) Levinas points out that the "philosophical discourse" cannot be finished, but only interrupted. He denotes the act of philosophy as an intersubjective movement: "Philosophy thus arouses a drama between philosophers and an intersubjective movement which does not resemble the dialogue of teamworkers in science, nor even the Platonic dialogue which is the reminiscence of a drama rather than the drama itself .... [E]mpirically it is realized in the history of philosophy in which new interlocutors always enter who have to restate, but in which the former ones take up the floor to answer in the interpretations they arouse." (82) Using an exegetical reading formulated by Richard Cohen, (83) I have tried to outline a possible way for a perpetual reinterpretation which will arouse at every moment the saying in the said: "the multiplicity of people, each one of them indispensable, is necessary to produce all the dimensions of meaning." (84) This impetus can also be found in the writings of Levinas himself, for example, when he states in Otherwise than Being that a "reference to an interlocutor permanently breaks through the text that the discourse claims to weave in thematizing and enveloping all things .... And I still interrupt the ultimate discourse in which all the discourses are stated, in saying it to one that listens to it, and who is situated outside the said that the discourse says, outside all it includes. That is true of the discussion I am elaborating at this very moment." (85)

Therefore, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being there is a continuity in the search for an adequate method to express something that always escapes thematization: a search on behalf of a saying "which is supposed to escape discourse." (86) Language as a vivid expression of life is always in progress and can be conceived as an ongoing process. Hence, I concur with the conclusion drawn by Jan de Greef that the discourse in which the saying resonates "cannot close itself and have the last word; for in addressing itself to someone, it once again breaks open its own totality .... The final word therefore is that there is no final word." (87)

However, the link between the discourse and the sound of the voice, in which the saying expresses itself, is marked by a profound ambiguity. It shows itself in the fact that I can hear my own voice while speaking--and in fact I must do so to be part of the communication--and the uncanny experience of hearing one's own voice tape-recorded as a dislocated part of oneself. This emphasizes what we call the two bodies of the voice, in reference to Ernst H. Kantorowicz's study The King's Two Bodies. The voice is and is not dead at the same time because there is always another voice that picks up where my voice left off and continues to speak in my place. It is a substitution for the other without my approval. Even before a word is spoken, a voice calls upon me and there is nowhere to hide as in the saying of the me voice or "here I am." This polyphony of voices somehow constitutes an immortal body of discourse, in which one voice is mortal, but also at the same time immortal as it is always picked up by another. Le roy est mort, vive le roy! This discourse resonates not only through the written remnants of our culture, in archives and libraries, but also in our thoughts. La voix de la pensee, the voice of the thought, sounds in our mind and calls for a response. (88) In this context, "discourse would correspond to the totalizing movement of reason, or more generally, to the Western philosophical tradition, while the word would be the rupture of this totality, resistance to totalization. itself irreducible to exhaustive thematization through discourse." (89) Therefore, the voice plays an important role for the philosophy of Levinas because it is through the voice that the word is conveyed to the other. The voice can even be seen as a metaphor for the condition in which the Levinasian subject expresses itself, i.e., comes into being. To draw a parallel to contemporary French thought, Jean-Luc Nancy emphasizes this idea in a similar way, but without mentioning Levinas: "[V]oice frays the path for the subject, but it doesn't let it settle in. On the contrary, it avoids the subject .... It simply calls, which is to say that it makes the should tremble, arouses it." (90)

I will now sum up the main conclusions. As pointed out, the notion of eschatology is not only a crucial point in the thought of Levinas, but furthermore a notion that manifests itself in various concepts in his work. One of the most eminent positions of eschatology can be found in the foreword of Totality and Infinity. Insofar as Levinas states that his whole work attempts to describe the relationship of the same to the other, which is realized through language and the face, eschatology marks the whole background of the philosophical project Levinas wanted to research in his book. (91) The importance and complexity of this notion can be seen in the fact that there are different kinds of eschatology that can be found in Levinas's philosophical writings as well as in his essays about Judaism. Furthermore, there are symmetries between Levinas's views on language and eschatology and Rosenzweig's conception of language, which can be seen especially clearly with the help of Rosenzweig's newly edited "Gritli Letters." As shown, the research in this field is far from complete. Additionally, the voice plays a crucial role in this context, since language finds its highest expression for Levinas in the saying, and the saying is again expressed through the voice. The link between the saying and the voice can be seen in the notion of a presence with voice, which offers in my view an adequate metaphor for the condition sine qua non of the presence of the subject conceived by Levinas.

(1) I am indebted to Prof. Daniel Krochmalnik, who first introduced me to the philosophy of Levinas. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Hartwig Wiedebach and Mr. Shawn Sarvey, M. A., for their inspiring discussions and comments on this work at various stages.

(2) Usually Totality and Infinity (1961) and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974) are regarded as Levinas's first and second major works because in these two writings crucial notions of his thought are worked out in a broader context.

(3) Therefore, only a few studies are concerned with the aspect of eschatology, among which, for instance, are Theodore de Boer, "Beyond Being, Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas," Philosophia Reformata, Vol. 38 (1973): 17-29, and Graham Ward, "On Time and Salvation: The Eschatology of Emmanuel Levinas," in Sean Hand, ed., Facing the Other: The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996), pp. 153-172.

(4) Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 22. Henceforth TI. Totalite et Infini. Essai sur l'exteriorite (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), p. 6. Henceforth cited as Ti.

(5) Levinas, TI, p. 23/Ti, p. 8, my emphasis.

(6) Levinas, TI, p. 51/Ti, p. 43.

(7) Levinas, TI, p. 23/Ti, p. 8.

(8) Levinas, TI, p. 25/Ti, p. 10.

(9) Levinas, TI, p. 22/Ti, p. 7.

(10) Levinas, TI, S. 23/Ti, p. 7.

(11) Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. Gary D. Mole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. xv. See also the French version in L'Au-dela du verset. Lectures et discours talmudiques (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1982), p. 12: "Cependant, l'eschatologie a plusieurs styles et genres et celle qui consiste a se sentir responsable devant l'avenir qu'on espere pour les autres a probablement ete decouverte par la Bible juive. Elle se trouvait cependant, depuis la creation, dans l'humanite de l'homme. Ce n'est pas elle qui peut etre cause des guerres."

(12) Levinas, TI, p. 24/Ti, p. 9.

(13) This phenomenon of Levinas's work has been discussed in various studies. See for instance the German Ph.D. thesis of David Pluss, Das Messianische. Judentum und Philosophie im Werk Emmanuel Levinas' (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001). The author tries to build a bridge between the two genres of Levinas's oeuvre--the confessional and the philosophical writings--by elaborating the figure of the "messianic" in both of them.

(14) Emmanuel Levinas, "Messianic Texts," in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (London: The Athlone Press, 1990), p. 90. See for the French version "Textes Messianiques," in Difficile Liberte. Essais sur le judaisme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), p. 130.

(15) See Simon Critchley, "Five Problems in Levinas's View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them," Political Theory, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2004): 172-185, where Critchley states that there is "a deduction of politics from ethics" (p. 177). For an account of Jacques Derrida regarding the relation of politics and eschatology in the work of Levinas see also Robert Bernasconi, "Different Styles of Eschatology: Derrida's Take on Levinas' Political Messianism," Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 28 (1998): 12ff.

(16) See Richard A. Cohen, Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

(17) Franz Rosenzweig, Die "Gritli"-Briefe. Briefe an Margit Rosenstock-Huessy, ed. Inken Ruble and Reinhold Meyer, with a preface by Rafael Rosenzweig (Tubingen: Bilam Verlag, 2002). Henceforth cited as GB. For a review of the edition, see Michael Zank,"The Rosen-zweig-Rosentstock Triangle, or, What Can We Learn from 'Letters to Gritli'?: A Review Essay" Modern Judaism, Vol. 23 (2003): 74-98. Margit Rosenstock-Huessy, with whom Rosenzweig had a love affair from 1918 until 1922, was the wife of his friend Eugen Rosenstock. Unfortunately, the letters of Margit Rosenstock-Huessy to Rosenzweig seem to have been lost, so the edition of their correspondence only renders a one-sided image of the relationship. However, there is no doubt that these letters are of significant importance for the life and work of Rosenzweig and offer the possibility of rereading his oeuvre in a new light. The first attempt at this research was made by Ephraim Meir in his innovative and excellent book, Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig's Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). Due to the limited scope of this paper I cannot attempt to elaborate all the inspiring parallels between Levinas's notions of language and eschatology and Rosenzweig's concepts of them in the light of the Gritli letters. Nevertheless, I would like to draw attention to the rather surprising fact that Rosenzweig developed his thought through the help of love letters and how this fact is interwoven with his notion of language and eschatology.

(18) Levinas, TI, p. 28/Ti, p. 14.

(19) See Jacques Derrida," En ce moment meme dans cet ouvrage me voici," in Francois Laruelle, ed., Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Place, 1980), pp. 21-60; Derrida, "At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am," trans. Ruben Berezdivin, in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley, ed., Re-reading Levinas (London: Athlone Press, 1991), pp. 11-48.

(20) EmmanueI Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 19. Hereafter cited as OBBE. Autrement qu'etre (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1974), p.23. Hereafter cited as AE.

(21) Nahum N. Glatzer, "The Concept of Language in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig," in Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed., The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1988), p. 183.

(22) Franz Rosenzweig, "The New Thinking," in Nahum N. Glatzer, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken, 1953), pp. 198-99; Rosenzweig, "Das neue Denken," in Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), pp. 386-87.

(23) Rosenzweig, "The New Thinking," p. 200; for the German version, p. 387. This "need" of another person is to be understood primarily to avoid solipsism, not as erotic love or desire. Nonetheless, desire and erotic love are not an unimportant aspect, as can be seen from Rosenzweig's interpretation of the Song of Songs in the center of the Star, which plays a crucial role in his study.

(24) Ephraim Meir, Letters of Love, p. xiv.

(25) Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics and Spirit," in Hand, ed., Difficult Freedom, p. 7. See for the French version"Ethique et Esprit," in Diffcile Liberte, p. 19.

(26) Levinas, OBBE, p. 147/AE, p. 188.

(27) Rosenzweig, GB, 26.8.1920:"Wort muss Antwort sein, um Wort sein zu konnen," p. 648. The cited English version is my translation.,

(28) Rosenzweig, GB, 2.11.1918: "nicht Dir aber--dein" ["not for you, but yours," my translation], p. 177.

(29) Levinas, OBBE, p. 14/AE, p. 18:" Subjectivity . .. comes to pass as a passivity more passive than all passivity."

(30) Levinas, OBBE, p. 142/AE, pp. 180-81.

(31) In his later work, especially in Otherwise than Being, Levinas elaborated the notion of the hostage to highlight the status of the subject in his thought, see OBBE, p. 112/AE, p. 142:"A subject is a hostage," and p. 114/AE, p. 144:"Responsibility for another is not an accident that happens to a subject, but precedes essence in it .... I have not done anything and I have always been under accusation--persecuted. The ipseity ... is a hostage." "Ipseity" (composed of "ipse," the Latin word for "self," and the ending" ity") here means the kernel of subjectivity which is according to Levinas always under accusation, i.e., a hostage. For an excellent further reading on this topic see Menachem Feuer, "The Hostage Crisis in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot: Is It a Hostage Crisis for Jewish Identity?," paper presented at the Inaugural North American Levinas Society Conference at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A), 13-15 May 2006, unpublished.

(32) Levinas, OBBE, p. 198, note 5/AE, p. 181, note 5: " I am sick with love," The Song of Songs, 5:8, For a detailed consideration about Levinas in the Jewish context, especially the French-Jewish context, see Daniel Krochmalnik, "Emmanuel Levinas im judischen Kontext," Allemeine Zeitschrift fur Philosophic Vol. 21 (1996):41-62 and Krochmalnik, "Emmanuel Levinas und der 'Renouveau Juif"', in Thomas Freyer and Richard Schenk, eds., Emmanuel Levinas-Fragen an die Moderne (Vienna: Passagen, 1996), pp. 95-136.

(33) Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption rans. from the second edition of 1930 by William W. Hallo (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 176. For the German version see Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlosung (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), p.197.

(34) Levinas,"Ethics and Spirit," in Hand, ed., Difficult Freedom, p. 7. See for the French version"Ethique et Esprit" in Difficile Liberte, p. 19. On the notion of the miracle see also Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Rosenzweig's Concept of Miracle," in Jens Mattern, Gabriel Motzkin and Shimon Sandbank, eds., Judisches Denken in einer Welt ohne Gott. Festschrift fur Ste-phane Moses (Berlin: Verlag Vorwerk, 2000), pp. 53-66.

(35) Levinas, TI, p. 23/Ti, p. 8.

(36) Levinas, TI, p. 23/Ti, p. 8, my emphasis.

(37) To illustrate this situation Levinas cites in "Transcendence and Height," a paper delivered in 1962 before the Societe Francaise de Philosophie, the example of the prophet Jonah, as someone who finds himself before a responsibility from which he cannot escape or steal away. See also Alan Udoff, "Levinas' Turn to Rosenzweig at the End of Philosophy," in Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, ed., Franz Rosenzweigs "neues Denken." Internationaler Kongref Kassel 2004 (Freiburg/Munchen: Alber Verlag, 2006), Vol. I, p. 259.

(38) Emmenuel Levinas, "Revelation in the Jewish Tradition," in Beyond the Verse, p. 144, my emphasis. For this aspect see also John Llewelyn, "Levinas and Language," in Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 136: "[M]y speaking is a response to another's command, by perception of that command is my signifying of it in obeying it. The calls is understood in the response. I am diachronically in command and commanded."

(39) However, Levinas preferred the terms epiphanie and devoilement in his writings.

(40) Ze'ev Levy,"On Emmanuel Levinas's Relation to Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy," in Luc Anckaert, Martin Brasser and Nobert Samuelson, eds., The Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig.: Collected Essays (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), p. 135.

(41) Glatzer,"The Concept of Language in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig," in Mendes-Flohr, ed., The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, p. 175. For a further account of the relation between language and transcendence in the work of Levinas see Etienne Feron, De I'idee de transcendence a la question du langage. Litineraire philosophique de Levinas, (Grenoble: Editions Jerome Millon, 1992).

(42) Meir, Letters of Love, pp. 13, 25-26.

(43) Udoff, "Levinas' Turn to Rosenzweig," in Schmied-Kowarzik, ed., Franz Rosenzweigs "neues Denken," p. 261.

(44) Levy,"On Emmanuel Levinas's Relation," in Anckaert, Brasser, and Samuelson, eds., The Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig, p. 136, my emphasis.

(45) Levinas, "Messianic Texts," in Hand, ed., Difficult Freedom, p. 90. See for the French version "Textes Messianiques," in Difficile Liberte, p. 130.

(46) Leora Batnitzky, Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 113.

(47) Peter Atterton, "Levinas and the Language of Peace: A Response to Derrida," Philosophy Today, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1992): p. 68.

(48) See also Michael Eskin,"A Language Before Words: Levinas's Ethics as a Semiotic Problem, "Semiotica, Vol. 129 (2000): 41:"I am indeed semethically infinitely response-able. My semethical response will have always been already polyphonic," and Bernhard Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede. Studien zur Phanomenologie des Fremden. Vol. 4 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999). (The term "semethics" is used here in reference to ethics in the third sense, i.e., ethics as the object of Levinas's philosophical discourse on ethics. This neologism morphologically fuses "semiotics," "semantics," and "ethics" in order to highlight Levinas's emphasis on the emergence of sense in and through original semiosis, i.e., the production of meaning)

(49) Jacques Derrida stresses a similar aspect in his study Le monolinguisme de l'autre ou la prothese d'origine (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1996), when he emphasizes that there is no primordial language. Hence, the cultural field of translation has to deal with a paradoxical situation: One speaks always only one language (or one idiom) and, at the same time, one speaks never just one language, i.e., there is no pure idiom.

(50) Levinas, OBBE, p. 183/AE, p. 230.

(51) See Bernhard Waldenfels, "Levinas on the Saying and the Said," in Eric Sean Nelson, Antje Kapust and Kent Still, eds., Addressing Levinas (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2005),pp.86-97.

(52) Levinas, OBBE, p. 6/AE, p. 7. On this topic see also the article of Tina Chanter, "The Betrayal of Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas's 'Otherwise Than Being," Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 23, No. 6 (1997), pp. 65-79.

(53) Levinas, OBBE, p. 11/AE, p.13.

(54) Emmanuel Levinas, "Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony," in Adriaan T. Peperzak, ed., Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 107, my emphasis.

(55) Levinas, OBBE, p. 15/AE, p. 18. See also Jan de Greef, "Skepticism and Reason," in Richard A. Cohen, ed., Face to Face with Levinas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 159-179: "Ethical language is not an exposition but an exposure ... an asymmetrical structure between the subject and the other" (p. 172).

(56) Levinas, OBBE, p. 138/AE, p. 176.

(57) Levinas, OBBE, p. 143/AE, p. 182.

(58) Levinas, OBBE, p. 146/AE, p. 186.

(59) See for example Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: The MIT Press, 2006); Michel Poizat, Variations sur la voix (Paris, 1998); Jean-Luc Nancy, A I'ecoute (Paris: Editions Galilee, 2002); Friedrich Kittler, Thomas Macho and Sigrid Weigel, eds., Zwiscben Rauschen and Offenbarung. Zur Kulturund Mediengeschichte der Stimme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002); Cornelia Epping-Jager and Erika Linz, eds., Medien/Stimmen (Cologne: Dumont, 2003) and Doris Kolesch and Sybille Kramer, eds., Stimme. Annaherung an ein Phanomen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2006).

(60) John Durham Peters, "The Voice and Modern Media," in Doris Kolesch and Jenny Schrodl, eds., Kunst-Stimmen (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2004), p. 85.

(61) Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, p. 55.

(62) Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, p. 22: "We can almost unfailingly identify a person by the voice .... The voice is like the fingerprint, instantly recognizable and identifiable." On this and the following see also Doris Kolesch, "Die Spur der Stimme. Uberlegungen zu einer performativen Asthetik," in Epping-Jager and Linz, eds., Medien/Stimmen, pp. 267-81.

(63) See also Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes and others, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 234: "Voice has nothing to do with speech. Obviously there is no speech without voice, but there can be voice without speech."

(64) Levinas, OBBE, p. 181/AE, p. 228.

(65) See the previous chapter," Echoes from within the Voice--Influences of Rosenzweig in the Thought of Levinas."

(66) Levinas, OBBE, p. 146/AE, p. 186.

(67) See also Ward, "On Time and Salvation": "The present is never available, as such. The present 'moment' cannot present itself" (p. 154).

(68) Richard A. Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy.: Interpretations after Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

(69) Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, p. 239.

(70) This notion of an inspirational reading elaborated by Cohen can be seen in relation to the notion of the voice and, furthermore, breathing. The latter plays an important role in Otherwise than Being, as Levinas points out: "That the breathing by which entities seem to affirm themselves triumphantly in their vital space would be a consummation, a coring out of my substantiality, that in breathing I already open myself to my subjection to the whole of the invisible other, ... is to be sure surprising. It is this wonder that has been the object of the book proposed here"(OBBE, p. 181/AE, p. 228). With this in mind, I am inclined to say that the whole discourse of Otherwise than Being clings to the notion of breathing, which takes shape in the voice. Therefore, the notion of the voice has, in my view, a similar importance for the topic of Otherwise than Being, as the notion of the face has in Totality and Infinity. Just as the face appears as a singular trace of alterity, an unique aura is inherent in the voice, which makes it in a sense comparable to the face. For further reading see Dieter Mersch, "Prasenz and Ethizitat in der Stimme," in Kolesch and Kramer, eds., Stimme, p. 220.

(71) Mersch, "Prasenz und Ethizitat in der Stimme," in Kolesch and Kramer, eds., Stimme p. 226.

(72) Levinas, OBBE, p. 41/AE, p. 53.

(73) Levinas, OBBE, p. 41/AE, p. 53.

(74) Levinas, OBBE, p. 43/AE, p. 55.

(75) Levinas, OBBE, p. 44/AE, p. 57.

(76) Levinas, OBBE, p. 44/AE, p. 57.

(77) This song from Harry Nilsson is called "Everybody's Talkin."

(78) Regarding Derrida's criticism of the voice as a central aspect of his general diagnosis of the "phono-logocentrism" of Western metaphysics, I would like to argue that the voice is not just to be seen as a medium of meaning, but has a presence as such. The subordination of the voice as a mere significant to a signifie disregards in my view the proper qualities of the voice, which lies mainly in sensuality. The performance of the voice transcends in a sense the conveyed meaning of the words. It shows more than it states. The mise-en-scene of the subjectivity, which takes shape in the voice, contains something which goes beyond the meaning of the "said". Rhetorically this notion is expressed in the use of an allegory or a metaphor. The latter is one of the main rhetoric figures of poetry. In this context it is remarkable that in central places in his work Levinas uses citations from literature and poetry: e.g., Totality and Infinity starts with a quotation of Rimbaud and ends with one of Baudelaire. In a similar way Rosenzweig makes constantly allusions to the work of Goethe throughout the Star. However, he does this without quotation marks, so that a reader unfamiliar with the work of Goethe does not recognizes these allusions at first sight. This effect of a polyphonic text is made intentionally and shows that a text is always a woven texture of many voices. For a further reading on this topic regarding Derrida see Dieter Mersch, "Writing and Event" Semiotica, Vol. 143, No. 1/4 (2003): 61-68; Mersch, Was sich zeigt. Materialiat. Prasenz, Ereigms (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002); and Jill Robbins, Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

(79) Michel Foucault, Lordre du discours. Lecon inaugurale au College de France, prononcee le 2 Dec. 1970 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).

(80) Levinas, TI, p. 30/Ti, p. 16.

(81) Levinas, OBBE, p. 169/AE, p. 215.

(82) Levinas, OBBE, p. 20/AE, p. 25.

(83) Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy.

(84) Levinas, Beyond the Verse, pp. 133-34.

(85) Levinas, OBBE, p. 170/AE, pp. 215-17, my emphasis.

(86)Levinas, OBBE, p. 170/AE, pp. 215-17.

(87) de Greef, "Skepticism and Reason," in Cohen, ed., Face to Face with Levinas, p. 165.

(88) See Francis Wybrands, "La voix de la pensee," in Jacques Rolland, ed., Emmanuel Levinas (Lagrasse: Editions Verdier, 1984), pp. 73-77.

(89) de Greef, "Skepticism and Reason," in Cohen, ed., Face to Face with Levinas, p. 160, my emphasis.

(90) Nancy, The Birth to Presence, p. 247, my emphasis.

(91)Levinas, TI, p. 26 ("This book ... will recount how infinity is produced in the relationship of the same with the other ...")/Ti, p. 11.

Silvia Richter

Hochschule fur Judische Studien

Heidelberg, Germany

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