Asymmetry

Key to Levinas's understanding of the inter-human relation is asymmetry. The demand of the Other stands irrespective of reciprocity. In other words, I am responsible to you regardless of whether or not you reciprocate to meet my needs. Your desire or ability to meet my needs is entirely up to you, and does not impact the responsibility I have to you. Levinas has been criticized for the impracticality of actioning such a concept. Because of the asymmetrical nature of the intersubjective relation, it is often held that Levinas really doesn't have a true inter-human perspective. The situation is further complicated when one considers the "entry of a third" where in my responsibility to the Other is challenged by a competing claim from yet a second Other, and so on into infinity. Levinas writes in the vein of the Jewish maxim that "every Israelite is responsible for every other" (and so on into infinity) in the society of Torah. And so, how do I meet your need and the need of a second Other at the same time with out compromising one or the other. Here Levinas would argue that justice, or the meeting of needs and claims, is first, violence. In other words, I must make a choice between the two Others before me, and to choose one is to not choose the other, and so the one whose needs must come "second" is violated. Following Levinas, ethics is then the complex inter-subjective relational situation where needs and claims must be weighed by all so that needs are met (justice).

Jesus said it this way, "Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6:35-36).

So, how do we give without expecting anything in return? Levinas seems to put into phenomenological dialogue that which Jesus instructs in the gospel.

I would submit that one perspective on the issue of asymmetry and how to deal with "justice as first violence" is found in the story of Cain and Able. We often get boluxed up in this story trying to figure out what it was about Able's sacrifice that was better than Cain's. The fact of the matter is, we don't know, and that element is irrelevant. No command was given, no instruction was outlined on either how to bring the sacrifice before God, or what to bring as a sacrifice. Both men brought what they had from their respective places of work. God was faced with making a choice (as God certainly has the right to do). The fact that he chose Able (he gazed at it, which is more indicative of pleasure than it is a judgmental kind of regard), meant that Cain "came in second place" so to speak.

We need to keep in mind that the conversation recorded in Genesis 4 is between God and Cain, not between Able and God. Able has no words in this story. None. The instructive part of the story is actually the dialogue that God has with Cain. The issue is desire. Cain must learn to control desire or it will control him. Here in is a key to understanding the asymmetrical relation: we have to bring desire under control. Desire wants to collapse in on the self, to erase the Other so that the self can be satisfied at all cost. God's instruction to Cain was that if he continued to do right things would work out for him--in the Hebrew, it says there will be "uplift". But the sin that crouched at the door was the unbridling of desire, the giving of free reign to desire, emotions, raw instinct.

We know the rest of the story. Cain did not master desire. It welled up and resulted in killing his brother Able.

It is hard not to get what we want all the time. It is hard when you are my enemy by virtue of the fact that you do not behave according to my world view. Across the vistas of my understanding, your alterity interrupts my comfort and my logic. My desire wants to "set you straight", to totalize you, systematize you so that you become aligned with me--aka, my friend. But either you do not want to, cannot, or do not understand. You do not respond. You do not reciprocate.

What am I to do? Levinas says the first command from the face of the Other is "Thou shall not kill." Jesus says "Love your enemies."

It is in the pain of quelling desire that we actually enter into the face-to-face relation in all of its fulness and danger. In the Hebrew Bible, the "face" of anything is not a safe place. The "face" is a place of pain, darkness, danger, uncertainty, and wounding. Jacob wrestled with God at a place called Peniel or "the face of God", and there he was wounded, yet his life was spared. It is losing the match, that we come in contact with the alterity of the other, as well as our own weakness, frailty, and humanness. If wounding and suffering is to have any meaning, it is because it is a half-opening (to quote Arthur Frank) to beholding the face of the Other, and to respond to the invitation to serve the Other.