Entre Nous is an important piece within Levinas’ work, but trying to approach suffering (and Levinas’ thought) via Entre Nous is like trying to hammer our way thorough Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse without first digesting the revelations that he set out in Doctrine & Covenants. Indeed, reading King Follett without a decent understanding of the Doctrine & Covenants could lead to a dangerously skewed picture of what our Church is about. To use another example, it’s like me trying a Ronaldo fake step without first learning to kick the ball up and down the pitch properly.

So it is here with Levinas. The “canon” of Levinas’ work that underpins Entre Nous consists of “Totality and Infinity” and “Otherwise than Being”. I won’t recount here the entirety of Levinas’ work (guffaw), but as to the points that I raise above:

1. Suffering: Suffering within Levinas’ thought is adamantly not “meaningless” (nor does it have meaning solely in relation to the Other). In Section III.C.4 of Totality and Infinity, Levinas explains that suffering is “the supreme ordeal of freedom” where we “find ourselves backed up to being”.

I will pause here to unpack this thought. For Levinas, “freedom” is the manner in which we as human beings go about our daily existence, interpreting the world around us (what we see, feel, hear, taste, touch, comprehend) in such a way that those external phenomena become an integral part of who we are (the “determination of the other by the same”). Suffering interposes itself into this relation of freedom, stopping “freedom” dead. Our way of being no longer consists in actively seeking out the other (NB this “other” is not the “Other”), and suffering backs us “up to being”; you are right above when you point out the inherent passivity of the relation in suffering. (As an aside: through all of this Levinas is trying to underscore that suffering, and not death, is the ultimate ordeal of the will, which is a rebuff to Martin Heidegger and division II of Being & Time. Levinas, as we know, had very legitimate personal and quasi-legitimate philosophical beefs with Heidgegger.)

For Levinas, however, suffering poses a unique opportunity: “This situation where the consciousness deprived of all freedom of movement maintains a minimal distance from the present, this ultimate passivity which nonetheless desperately turns into action and into hope, is patience–the passivity of undergoing, and yet mastery of itself.” Extreme passivity, says Levinas, can give way to extreme mastery.

Thus, when Levinas says (as you note) that suffering is “the denial, the refusal of meaning”, he is not saying that suffering is inherently meaningless. What he is saying is that suffering interrupts the manner in which we usually make sense of the world. The “refusal of meaning” could also be stated as a “denial of freedom”. But, as we see, this creates more, not less, of an opportunity for the self to make sense of itself (as opposed to making sense of the other, the wider world).

2. The Other: You say above that “For Levinas then, suffering is meaningful if it becomes ‘a suffering for the suffering… of someone else’. Further it is this consciousness that ‘brings us closer to God’.” In this and the preceding comments, it seems to me as if you might be reading into Levinas a Mormon reading of the Other relation and how it relates to “God”.

(a) Levinas would not deny that a God beyond human being is possible, but confirmation or denial of this is beyond the scope of his work. “There can be no ‘knowledge’ of God,” he says, “separated from the relationship with men. The Other is the very locus of metaphysical truth, and is indispensable for my relation with God. He does not play the role of a mediator. The Other is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed.” Much more could be said here, but I will simply echo a couple of the comments above that caution against conflating Buber’s I-Thou and Levinas’s relation of infinity. They are clearly getting at a similar thought, but they take very different approaches with significantly different consequences.

(b) In Totality & Infinity, Levinas only hints at the direction that he takes his discussion of suffering and the Other in Entre Nous. “Thus alone,” says Levinas, “does violence remain endurable in patience. It is produced only in a world where I can die as a result of someone and for someone.” The “for someone” foreshadows the passages above that (quite rightly) captivate you so much above. Where suffering for others is concerned, I would only point out that for Levinas, the recognition of the height of the Other is an ideal of ethics. The reality of our daily existence is that we in fact inflict violence on the Other. By violence here I do not mean the physical molestation that brings about suffering, but rather the reduction of Other to the “same” that engages in the project of “freedom” mentioned above. I am working on a project at present to explore how all religious relations and affiliations are inherently violent within Levinas’ way of thinking and how that violence might be redeemed.

All interesting stuff. Again, thank you for posting this thought-provoking entry. It is a matter of the highest importance for careful Mormon thinkers to parse through these arguments and then pass them through the fire of faithful thought.

To the extent you may be interested, there is a Levinas conference in Toulouse this summer (http://www.sirel-levinas.org/dotclear/index.php?category/Toulouse-NALS-SIREL-Conference-2010). I will be heading down to present a paper and James Faulconer (the Church’s foremost Levinas scholar) will also (last I heard) be in attendance. Looks to be good fun.

PS We live very close to one another, it would be interesting to meet up sometime and chat.

#13 – I think those are valuable thoughts. His essay critique’s the attempt to provide a coherent theodicy exactly because an explanation will fail.

#14 – Sorry. I am from the UK and have never been to BYU.

#15 – Buber is an important source in Ostler’s work. You might well appreciate his work.

I think this philosophy is enriched in LDS theology by our notions of unity, especially through our sealing notion. We are all literally supposed to be one; by treating another person as an “It”, as a means to our own betterment, we are actually ignoring our own needs, because their needs are our needs, because we are one. This is important to me because I worry a lot about “service” and “help” having a potential to be condescending or even demeaning. But if we realize that, while helping others, we are literally fighting for ourselves as well, it can avoid the creation of that unequal social relationship.

I also like your conclusion (or Ostler’s) about suffering being “not unjust” when it is chosen. I came to the same conclusion after reading “The Brothers Karamazov”. There, they discuss the nature of forgiveness. He tells the story of a Russian landlord who tortures a serf boy, making him run from his dogs in the snow, and hunting him down for sport. They claim that, while the boy does have a Christian obligation to forgive the landlord, the mother has an obligation to NOT forgive the landlord. Her duty to her son is to not forgive the suffering caused to him unnecessarily. Does her obligation to her son supersede her obligation to her oppressor? Anyway, yeah, suffering is a lot easier to process if you think of it as an elective thing.

Now if only my crisis of faith wasn’t throwing into question that whole pre-mortal agency business…..

I usually start with a story or two about times I’ve been helped by someone in a way that was uniquely enabled by their having been through the same/similar thing. Often, it is just someone being able to honestly say, “I know exactly how you feel.” Sometimes, it is having insight into what kind of material help I need (when I was on bedrest, a lot of people brought me gifts and service, which I appreciated very much; but a friend who had been on bedrest for 5 months brought over a few other things that nobody else would have thought to bring that I really needed).

So I find that one of the ways I can extract some meaning, purpose, or sanctification out of suffering I’ve been through is to see how it has changed me into someone who will be able in the future to help someone else in a way that nobody else can. Riffing off Alma 7:12, in this way we can serve, in one tiny way, as Saviors for each other.

I’m not sure this idea ultimately helps with the theodicy question (we suffer so we can help others who suffer similar things? why not just no suffering?), but as a practical matter it has helped me feel better about some of my suffering, to feel that it can have some kind of positive outcome.

Anyway, thanks for the pointer to Lavinas, I’ll have to read that.

In either case, however, whether the suffering is self-imposed or entirely “a passivity”, the notion of your final statement is one I can wholehearted accept.

Thanks.

#4 – I take your point. I think for Levinas any explanation ever completely satisfies suffering. If it is explainable and tolerable then it is not by his definition suffering. He is not therefore trying to provide an adequate explanation for suffering but instead to promote a particular response to it (the only one he believes is viable).

#5 – First, I see Joy and suffering as compatible. I agree, with Ostler, that God suffers more not less because of his divinity. This stripping back I see as a mechanism through which we break down the layers of pride, envy and sin (which divide us) until we can enter into a divine relationship with God. I guess foundational entity was a woolly expression. I think what I was trying to get at was the idea that we have at root the capacity to be like God. This is what I meant by foundational identity.

#8 – I agree that Ostler’s argument is more complex. I tried to do justice to it in a short space.

#10 -Agreed.

Sure. Though seeing the “reward” is the negation of individual identity … kinda makes me squeemish about the whole enterprise. I don’t believe that the mission of Christ was to eliminate suffering. Cool. ~