Footnotes to Jacob Meskin on Ira Stone

1 [For this see inter alia two of Levinas' talmudic readings, "The Temptation of the Temptation" (in ]Nine Talmudic Readings[) and "Model of the West" (in ]Beyond the Verse[), and also several of his Jewish writings, in particular "Judaism and the Present" (in ]Difficult Freedom[).]

2 [In a related matter, although I can apprecaite the pedagogic necessities involved, Stone often chooses to present Levinas--or the talmud--as if members of his audience "really already knew" what this profound thinker, or this bottomless religious text, had to say. But this just goes along with the general problem I am documenting: Levinas does in fact hold that there are things we all have to learn, that there are realities higher than those of self, that religious life is a quest that will take us beyond our personal preconceptions. So to deprive the talmud of its potential to do just this--i.e. to contest our self-understanding and to urge us beyond wherever we happen to be--is to fail to do justice to it. Thus when Stone writes on pp.7-8 that Levinas is really not saying anything beyond our common sense, or on p.46 that the reader can discover the meaning of the text in his or her own life, I worry, although these remarks may well be nothing more than Stone's prudent concessions to his readers' prejudices.]

3 [It needs to be said, as well, that Levinas never seems insensitive to the fact that individuals may well find "extra-personal" obligations quite difficult personally. This is certainly part of what is behind the title ]Difficult Freedom[. Moreover, although Levinas himself shows a general disinterest in psychology, he often allows that his own work opens up the space in which to do psychology, because it delineates the factors which first create a "psyche", which may then be studied by scientific or humanistic methods. (See for instance ]Totality and Infinity[, p.228, where Levinas argues that "the will", which is brought about by the other making me self-aware, opens up "an unlimited field of investigation for psychoanalysis and sociology", in Lingis' translation.)]

4 [I also think that Stone rushes right by the very complicated issue of Levinas' account of the chosenness of the Jewish people. Thus on p.36 Stone cites a very deep and rich passage of Levinas, and concludes that it means just one of the many things it in fact means. Careful attention to this passage shows that Levinas is expressing a rather subtle view, that cannot be reduced to the one line Stone extracts from it. Again, I wonder whether this might not be Stone's wily pedagogic assessment of just how much of Levinas his audience can take.]

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