On Being Human: A Conversation With Lonergan and Levinas (Marquette Studies in Theology, #35,)

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On Being Human

A Conversation with Lonergan and Levinas

Marquette Studies in Theology Andrew Tallon, editor

Frederick M. Bliss. Understanding Reception Martin Albl, Paul Eddy, and Rene Mirkes, OSF, editors. Directions in NewTestament Methods Robert M. Doran. Subject and Psyche Kenneth Hagen, editor. The Bible in the Churches. How Various Christians Interpret the Scriptures Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., editor. Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk. Contributions of African American Experience and Thought to Catholic Theology Karl Rahner. Spirit in the World. CD Karl Rahner. Hearer of the Word. CD Robert M. Doran. Theological Foundations. Vol. 1 Intentionality and Psyche Robert M. Doran. Theological Foundations. Vol. 2 Theology and Culture. Patrick W. Carey. Orestes A. Brownson: A Bibliography, 1826-1876 Patrick W. Carey, editor. The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson. Volume I: The Universalist Years, 1826-29 Patrick W. Carey, editor. The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson. Volume II: The Free and Unitarian Years, 1830-35 Patrick W. Carey, editor. The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson. Volume III: The Transendentalist Years, 1836-38 John Martinetti, S.J. Reason to Believe Today George H. Tavard. Trina Deitas: The Controversy between Hincmar and Gottschalk Jeanne Cover, IBVM. Love:The Driving Force. Mary Ward’s Spirituality. Its Signiﬁcance for Moral Theology David A. Boileau, editor. Principles of Catholic Social Teaching Michael Purcell. Mystery and Method: The Other in Rahner and Levinas W.W. Meissner, S.J., M.D. To the Greater Glory: A Psychological Study of Ignatian Spirituality Virginia M. Shaddy, editor. Catholic Theology in the University: Source of Wholeness Thomas M. Bredohl. Class and Religious Identity: The Rhenish Center Party in Wilhelmine Germany William M. Thompson and David L. Morse, editors. Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation: An Interdisciplinary Debate and Anthology

Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Firstborn of Many: A Christology for Converting Christians. Volume 1: To Hope in Jesus Christ Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Firstborn of Many: A Christology for Converting Christians. Volume 2: Synoptic Narrative Christology Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Firstborn of Many: A Christology for Converting Christians. Volume 3: Doctrinal and Practical Christology Stephen A. Werner. Prophet of the Christian Social Manifesto. Joseph Husslein, S.J.: His Life, Work, & Social Thought Gregory Sobolewski. Martin Luther: Roman Catholic Prophet Matthew C. Ogilvie. Faith Seeking Understanding: The Functional Specialty, “Systematics” in Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology Timothy Maschke, Franz Posset, and Joan Skocir, editors. Ad fontes Lutheri: Toward the Recovery of the Real Luther: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Hagen’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday William Thorn, Phillip Runkel, and Susan Mountin, editors. Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Esssays Michele Saracino. On Being Human: A Conversation with Lonergan and Levinas Ian Christopher Levy. John Wyclif: Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the Parameters of Orthodoxy

On Being Human

A Conversation with Lonergan and Levinas

Michele Saracino

Marquette University Press

Marquette Studies in Theology No. 35 Series Editor, Andrew Tallon Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Saracino, Michele, 1971On being human : a conversation with Lonergan and Levinas / by Michele Saracino. p. cm. — (Marquette studies in theology ; no. 35) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87462-687-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Man (Christian theology) 2. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. 3. Levinas, Emmanuel. 4. Catholic Church—Doctrines. I. Title. II. Marquette studies in theology ; #35 BT701.3.S27 2003 233--dc22 2003015115

© Marquette University Press 2003 All rights reserved.

Table of Contents Dedication .................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements...................................................................... 11 Introduction ................................................................................ 13 Chapter One: Philosophical Foundations ....................................................... 23 1.1 Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophical Background ................... 24 1.1.1 René Descartes............................................................. 27 1.1.2 Immanuel Kant ........................................................... 29 1.1.3 Friedrich Nietzsche ...................................................... 35 1.2 Emmanuel Levinas’s Philosophical Background ................. 38 1.2.1 Martin Heidegger ........................................................ 38 1.2.2 Jacques Lacan .............................................................. 43 1.3 Compatible Terrain ............................................................ 48 1.4 Conﬂicting Traditions and Assumptions ............................ 57 1.5 Conclusion ........................................................................ 60 Chapter Two: The Open Posture of Lonergan’s Subject .................................. 61 2.1 Transition from Faculty Psychology to Intentionality Analysis .......................................................... 62 2.2 Lonergan’s Authentic Subject ............................................. 73 2.3 Openness of the Subject as Gift.......................................... 82 2.4 The Embodiment’s of Lonergan’s Subject ........................... 86 2.5 Conclusion ........................................................................ 91 Chapter Three: Levinas’s Subject as Postured for-the-Other................................ 93 3.1 Levinas’s Notion of the Face ............................................... 94 3.2 Implications of Openness ................................................. 102

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Michele Saracino On Being Human

3.3 Subjectivity as a Posture of Openness for-the-Other .......... 107 3.4 The Corporeality of Levinas’s Subject ............................... 121 3.5 Conclusion ...................................................................... 126 Chapter Four: The Issue of Alterity ............................................................... 127 4.1 Problems in Interpreting Otherness.................................. 128 4.2 Lonergan on Being Human in the Midst of the Other ..... 139 4.3 Revisiting Levinas’s Other ................................................ 146 4.4 Conclusion ...................................................................... 156 Chapter Five: Figuring Subjectivity in Postmodern Context: The Protean Subject ........................................................... 157 5.1 Openness as Gift as Answer to Postmodern Questions of Otherness ................................... 160 5.2 The Connection between Openness and Freedom............ 171 5.3 Openness: An Invitation to Solidarity .............................. 175 5.4 A Figure of Open Embodied Subjectivity: The Protean Subject ............................................................... 183 5.5 Conclusion ...................................................................... 190 Chapter Six: Conclusion ............................................................................ 193 6.1 Avenues for Further Theological and Philosophical Research ........................................................ 194 6.1.1 Gender and Race Theory in Christian Anthropology ...................................................... 195 6.1.2 New Questions for Sacramental Theology..................... 196 6.2 Evaluation of the Dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas ......................................................... 201 Bibliography.............................................................................. 208 Index ......................................................................................... 219

Introduction

9

Dedication For my father

Acknowledgements This study brings together so many of my interests spanning from my love for the Catholic tradition to my afﬁnity for what some call a postmodern sensibility. Writing this book, which examines the signiﬁcant connection between religion and culture on what it means to be human, has been a privilege, even a gift, that would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of colleagues, friends, and family. So much about being human is related to gift—an openness to another without expectation of reward or compensation. The following scholars have given me the greatest gifts any person could want: intellectual challenge and emotional support. While writing this work, my mentor, M. Shawn Copeland, was a source of knowledge, wisdom, and care. By encouraging me to attend Marquette University to study Roman Catholic thought at the doctoral level, she opened me not only to a world of ideas, but to a community of scholars. I have a great deal of affection and respect for each of the following thinkers, as I worked closely with them as they served on my dissertation committee, in which this work originated. From the Theology Department, my teacher and friend, Bradford Hinze, continues to be a person with whom I share ideas and learn from, as his excitement for the intellectual life is inspiring and contagious. Christine Firer Hinze and Philip Rossi also nurtured and reﬁned my research by challenging me on the issues of justice and modernity, respectively. Cliff Spargo, of Marquette University’s English Department, proved invaluable in helping me work through the rigors of contemporary continental theory. Introducing me to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Cliff went beyond supporting a project outside of his discipline, to committing to its fulﬁllment by engaging in reading groups as a way of further developing my understanding of Levinasian thought. As each of these teachers has helped to hone my work through careful questioning and proofreading, Andrew Tallon, the Director of Marquette University Press, pushed me further on the question of subjectivity, especially

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Michele Saracino On Being Human

in terms of affective intentionality. I am extremely appreciative of his commitment to this project. I would also like to acknowledge the support that my family has provided throughout this endeavor. My parents, Guy and Phyllis Saracino, have shown me the gift of being loved and supported unconditionally. My sister and brother, Carolynn and Mark, were encouraging of this project in innumerable ways, from comedic relief to monetary support. Carole Einhorn, my mother-in-law, was helpful in proofreading early drafts of the text. And ﬁnally, I want to acknowledge my husband, Kenneth Einhorn, who aside from opening himself to brain-storming, proofreading, and impromptu analysis, has challenged me to risk being human not only in theory, but also in practice. It is within the context of family that I can only begin to imagine the possibility of being human for others.

Introduction

13

Introduction

T

he history of the Other has been a history of suffering. The Shoah, the Middle Passage, the Crusades, and now the rise of international terrorism are instances in which humanity continues to cause the Other’s suffering. One wonders why suffering still occurs. This is perhaps most surprising considering the progress made in the areas of rights, freedom, and justice since the Enlightenment. Could it be that humanity has become anesthetized to suffering? Or maybe, we have become forgetful of the anguish of the past, and blind to that of the present? While these questions inﬂuence our engagement with others, they are mere symptoms of a deeper problem: an inability to deal with difference. Grappling with difference, whether it be in relation to class, gender, race, or religion, is difﬁcult. Under the current pretense of tolerance, it has become unfashionable to assert that one person’s opinion on the issue of diversity is more legitimate than that of another. This failure to speak about the implications of difference is linked to another issue—a lack of conﬁdence in religion to help us understand the question of difference. Whereas religious communities used to provide a foundation for thinking about being human in relationships, many people are avoiding organized religion for a variety of reasons. In place of religion people substitute a secularized, relativist ethics in order to deal with outsiders. Clearly, in the current postmodern, pluralist context, both religious and secular worldviews need to be analyzed. The human response to suffering can neither be a nostalgic retreat into religious idealism nor an outright capitulation to a relativist mentality. Success in understanding diversity depends on the very way in which we negotiate between theological and secular interpretations of being human. In other words, both trajectories of anthropology, religious and secular, are necessary in fostering community in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Secular interpretations of the subject are not to be taken lightly. They are grounded in a sophisticated theoretical account of metaphysics

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that describes the subject as enmeshed in and emerging from a matrix of competing narratives, schema, and perspectives. This theoretical account of being human can be traced to much of contemporary continental thought, in which the subject’s identity is theorized to be an effect of various discourses—stories that fragment and decenter the subject. In this predicament, the subject is burdened by “a contestation of multiple, conﬂicting discourses … making it difﬁcult if not impossible to account for agency” (Cady 1997, 22). Hence, related to the conﬂicted and fragmented nature of such subjectivity is the human person’s inability or refusal to make accurate judgments about what is true and good. Alternatively, theological accounts of being human, speciﬁcally within the Christian worldview, maintain a stable notion of subjectivity in which the human person is capable of and responsible for judging and acting in the face of change and diversity. Put another way, Christian theology claims that even though human beings have distinctive experiences, come from various social locations, and are in complicated relationships with God and their neighbor, these contingencies need not lead to fragmentation. What’s more, for Christians, fragmentation is not interpreted as normative, rather is explained pejoratively as the alienation resulting from sin, from the fall of humanity. Yet the concrete suffering of the Other in history prohibits theologians from dismissing the fragmented experience of being human. Fragmentation is not a myth. It is the confused identity born of the subject’s lived experience. When this confusion escalates from the individual to societal realm, it has a way of leading to a “cycle of decline”—giving rise to the effects of the social sins of colonialism, racism, sexism, and classism (Copeland 1997, 5). Undoubtedly, theologians need to take the fragmented life of the person quite seriously. In an effort to reverse this cycle of decline, theologians need to consider both secular contemporary theory, with its receptivity to the intricacies of otherness, and Christian theology, with its call for judgment in the midst of such otherness. Most people live between two worlds, secular and religious, both of which inform their decisions and behavior. Both discourses speak to our modern dilemma of how to be human in the face of the Other.

Introduction

15

In an effort to tease out some of the issues complicating the interpretation of being human in the midst of alterity, I have brought a continental Jewish thinker, Emmanuel Levinas, into a posthumous conversation with a Roman Catholic theologian, Bernard J.F. Lonergan. Together these two thinkers emphasize the tensions within our culture regarding our engagement of difference. While Levinas is not the straw man for secular, relativist thought, his distinct strand of contemporary continental theory underscores the complexity of alterity in society. At the same time Lonergan, while not the only voice who can articulate a theological anthropology of substance, remains certainly one of the few theologians to link anthropology most directly with knowing, acting, and loving for others. For some, Lonergan and Levinas may seem like unlikely dialogue partners. Although they are contemporaries in age, their religious backgrounds and philosophical projects are quite distinctive. Let me explain further. Lonergan was born in Buckingham, Quebec in 1904 and entered the Society of Jesus in 1922. He spent his life attempting to modernize Roman Catholic thought by freeing it from the shackles of classicist notions of culture, static theological manuals, and ahistorical propositions. Lonergan wrote with a clear memory of the atrocities of World War II, as well as within a Canadian society entrenched in an economic depression. As a result, he was attentive to questions about the human good, order, and civilization. Judging from his goals and career, many want to categorize Lonergan’s thought as in line with the aims of modernity. Even as the notion of modernity is contested, one could argue that modernity refers to a worldview consumed with questions of freedom, autonomy, knowledge, domination, progress, and rationalism. Nonetheless, it is incorrect to type Lonergan as modern in the sense that he blindly embraces rationalism. Rather, he can be understood as modern since his work is grounded in a concrete struggle to adequately engage human reason. In Lonergan’s thought there is an explicit critique of the weaknesses of modern or Enlightenment interpretations of subjectivity. As he tests the limits of rationalism, he transcends the crude and commonsense label of modern and reaches the boundaries of contemporary continental thought. Furthermore, Lonergan understands the subject beyond cognition, thus again transcending the boundaries of mo-

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Michele Saracino On Being Human

dernity. Speciﬁcally, he explains that authentic subjectivity emerges in religious experience and conversion. Through feeling for others by way of incarnate being, the subject is converted into a position of being-in-love-with-God—an idea which echoes postmodernity’s emphasis on the dislocated subject. Ultimately, for Lonergan, it is in the affective, that is, intuitive and non-conceptualist relationship with the Other that we become authentically human. Born in Lithuania in 1906, Levinas on the other hand, is often categorized as postmodern. Like modernity, a universal understanding of postmodernity is contested. In the 1930’s, postmodernism referred to changes in art and architecture. Turning from art to theory, the term postmodernism becomes nuanced.1 The postmodern worldview, according to Paul Lakeland, is characterized by a suspicion of the notion of a neutral standpoint and master or meta-narratives that erase otherness. Moreover, for Lakeland, postmodern philosophers must be like the bricoleur and paste various theories, ideas, and notions together (1997, 88-89). The way in which Levinas juggles his engagement of the Hebrew Scriptures, his employment of the language of disruption and alterity, as well as his rejection of the primacy of ontology, colors his work as thoroughly postmodern. At the same time however, Levinas attends to questions of freedom and suffering, both of which are easily typed as issues of modernity. During World War II, Levinas was recruited as an interpreter of Russian and German and eventually imprisoned in a German labor camp. It is not surprising that for Levinas suffering is a theme not only in his work, but also in his life. Writing in the shadow of the Shoah, Levinas struggles against Western notions of ontology due to their explicit and implicit violence, totalization, thematization, and bias towards the Other. In addition to problematizing the idea of being, Levinas offers a critique of theology because of its ontological and positivist orientation. Speciﬁcally Levinas insists that theology too often confuses humanity with divinity, thus thematizing God into an object or thing. Levinas’s disavowal of ontology and positivist theology, as we 1

For a comprehensive exploration into the breadth of postmodern discourse see, Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism (1989) and A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (1988). In both those texts, she explores the connections among the postmodern presence in art, media, and theory.

Introduction

17

will begin to understand, is related to his feelings for the Other who suffers—compassion extending from the trauma of those who were tortured in the Shoah to the plight of the physically handicapped. Therefore, even though Levinas is postmodern in the sense that he is attentive to alterity and the powers that threaten it, he is modern in his concern for suffering and demand for justice. A more nuanced way to describe his thought is in the discourse of contemporary continental theory, for his stark rejection of modern notions of being, objectivity, and reality locate him in the camp of such contemporary continental thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. From this brief sketch, we can begin to apprehend how both thinkers encourage us to understand the subject as social and open for the Other. While some scholars insist on lumping each thinker into either a modern or postmodern camp, we will come to realize that these thinkers defy and overﬂow those categories. While Lonergan, Catholic and theological, and Levinas, Jewish and theoretical, may employ different discourses in their discussion of what it means to be human, it becomes clear that only in conjunction with one another, through both theology and theory, can we speak to the contemporary predicament of being human in relation to others. Signiﬁcantly, both Lonergan and Levinas implore us to think about being human in terms of gift. Being opened, oriented, and postured by the Other is a gift of relationship. As some may be aware of, gift is a frequently employed term in theology and philosophy, so it is easy to confuse its meaning. In my study, gift is rooted in Derrida’s work: A gift is something that never appears as such and is never equal to gratitude, to commerce, to compensation, to reward. When a gift is given, ﬁrst of all, no gratitude can be proportionate to it. A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for. As soon as I say ‘thank you’ for a gift, I start canceling the gift. I start destroying the gift, by proposing an equivalence, that is, a circle which encircles the gift in a movement of reappropriation. So a gift is something that is beyond the circle of reappropriation, beyond the circle of gratitude (1997, 18).

Through Derrida’s work, we can realize the paradoxical nature of gift. While we desire to encircle, devour, and engulf the gift, it always leaves

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Michele Saracino On Being Human

a remainder, a wrapping, and a trace. The subject’s gifted or graced relationship with the Other is similarly beyond reappropriation and satisfaction. The Other turns the subject inside out, that is, opens the subject to being human for others. Humanity emerges in the performance of service, charity, and obligation—shouldering the burden of another. And even as we may try to free ourselves from obligation, our responsibility for others is limitless. This means that we can never do enough to release ourselves from obligation. All social relations and practices bring about new responsibilities. My discussion of gift does not end with Derrida, indeed for Levinas the notion of gift is even radical. Levinas argues that the subject should approach the Other not in gratitude or appreciation, but in personal obligation. This approach is not based on familiarity and/or on knowledge, but in risk and the unknown—the subject becomes humble and vulnerable in the face of the Other. The response of the Other is not one of thanks and appreciation, but of ingratitude. The notion of ingratitude underscores the asymmetrical relation and limitless obligation between subject and Other. Levinas, like Derrida, maintains that gratitude and thanks cancel the radical generosity of the gift and the intangible nature of the relation. Moving beyond Derrida, Levinas refers to ingratitude as a sense of being awake and vigilant to the complex alterity of the situation. The Other’s ingratitude prohibits the subject from becoming complacent, for the subject is always obligated to the Other. Hence, the relation of being open forthe-Other is a gift of an obliged subject who demands not thanks, but ingratitude. Lonergan also understands the openness of the subject in terms of gift. Gift is not explained explicitly in terms of alterity, but implicitly by way of the language of grace and conversion. According to Lonergan, religious experience wakes us from our slumber and reorients us in a posture for the Other. God calls us into a graced state of being human. For Lonergan, a graced state is one in which we reach toward God in desire; and, authentic subjectivity emerges in this relationship of transcendence. Notice for Levinas and Lonergan, the gift of openness is not merely cognitive or volitional, but affective—a call and desire from outside the subject, from above. The affective dimension

Introduction

19

of being attentive to alterity is at the heart of my discussion of gift, and of our task of being human in the midst of the Other. As I discuss being human in terms of gift, methodologically, my work remains in the ﬁeld of interpretation. Interpretation involves three moments: understanding the text; judging your understanding of the text; and stating your judgment of the text (Lonergan 1971c, 153-173). Understanding the text in question is not a matter of scanning a book or taking a look, but of exacting the meaning of the text, even if the meaning contradicts one’s original understanding. Arguably, the process of understanding involves a generosity on the part of the interpreter in that if there appears to be a discontinuity in the text, the reader questions his/her integrity, instead of that of the text. Beyond the stage of understanding is the task of judging, in which the interpreter needs to know not only what the author means, but must realize his/her biases in order to avoid imputing only his/her questions onto the text. A sense of intellectual honesty ought guide the interpreter as s/he struggles simultaneously with his/her intentions as well as with the author’s. At some points in the discussion, one might have to argue that one scholar’s idea and/or argument is incommensurable with another’s claim. Consequently, honest interpretation is not correlative or reductionist, but rather dialectical and dialogical. As I engage the discontinuities within and between Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work, I highlight both the commonalties and conﬂicts that emerge from an encounter between these unique thinkers. After understanding and judging, I articulate my understanding of both of these thinkers’ writings on being human and anticipate how this study has implications for the way that theologians explain the doctrine of anthropology. The plan of my study is as follows. Above, I have attended to the problem, context, interlocutors, and method of the book. A brief biographical review of Lonergan and Levinas served to situate my analysis of their writings. To further contextualize these thinkers, I clarify the philosophical background of Lonergan’s and Levinas’s anthropological projects in Chapter One. I begin by addressing the philosophical legacies of René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche in order to explain Lonergan’s critique of the Enlightenment subject. Much of Lonergan’s work on the subject builds on the inadequacies of these thinkers’ interpretations of subjectivity. Later in that chapter,

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I investigate the thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan in order to comprehend Levinas’s concerns about being human. These philosophers, each in their distinct way, set the stage for Levinas’s work on identity and alterity. In the second half of Chapter One, I discuss both the overlapping and incommensurable themes in the dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas. In the second chapter, I explore Lonergan’s thought on Christian anthropology. By way of an introduction, I discuss Lonergan’s transition from faculty psychology to intentionality analysis, as well as map his thoughts on bias and conversion. Then, I formally begin my investigation of Lonergan’s anthropology by pinpointing three important characteristics of his normative subject: wonder, transcendence, and intersubjectivity. Through an analysis of these characteristics, we will begin to understand that humanity is opened to otherness on three levels, fact, achievement, and gift. As I investigate all three levels, I focus on openness as gift: the point at which the subject falls in love with God and others. Through falling in love with God, the subject is called to be attentive to the complexity of otherness. Lonergan’s thoughts on the corporeal character of personhood and relationship conclude this chapter. The stress in contemporary continental thought on the complexity of subjectivity, speciﬁcally in the work of Levinas, is the focus of Chapter Three. There I denote Levinas’s subject as postured for-the-Other in four phases. First, I explore Levinas’s notion of facing in which the Other demands that the subject open and transcend his/her egoism. Second, I highlight the complexity of openness and its connection to questions of freedom and responsibility. Third, the ways in which speech, time, and posture mark the subject’s relation for-the-Other are examined. Levinas’s gendered description of the relationship between the subject and Other concludes my study. Importantly, the notion of shouldering is introduced as a way of explaining the subject’s responsibility for others in non-gendered terms. Both the second and third chapters link the issue of subjectivity to notions of embodiment, as we cannot adequately address what it means to be human without explaining the body of the human person. In the current theological and philosophical context, however, the meaning of embodiment is not easily understood. William La Fleur argues that

Introduction

21

the subject of the body is a relatively new ﬁeld of 20 to 30 years old (1998, 36-54). Alternatively, many theologians and philosophers object to the assumption that the study of the body is new. They claim to the contrary that the question of body and sacramentality has been the question of Christian life and thought for two thousand years for “sacred knowledge was encountered through the body” (Mellor and Shilling 1997, 78). Nonetheless, La Fleur’s point ought not be dismissed: the ways in which the contemporary medical and social sciences grapple with issues of body are growing exponentially. A number of questions arise in this discussion. How does the body relate to knowledge? Is there such thing as a normative body or are bodies texts and canvases to be invented? How is embodiment related to the construction of gender, race, and class? How does embodiment connect with subjectivity? Overall, in this study I assume body to mean the ﬂeshiness of body, that is, the shape, pigment, size, and posture of the body that is an integral dimension in our engagement with others. The issue of body is so important to my analysis for a number of reasons. Not merely because as subjects we react and relate to others through expression, gesture, and posture, as well as assumptions about our expressions, gestures, and postures, but also because the body is the site of our relationship of obligation with others. For too long Western theology and philosophy has linked our relations with others in terms of knowing and willing, by way of cognition and volition. What we will realize as we interrogate Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work is that being open for the Other is not only a function of our mind and will, but also of our feelings. While the body is not the location of the feelings, it is most obviously that by which feelings are sensed. Hence, embodiment is my starting point for an analysis of how feelings affect being human for others. The conversation does not end there. While feelings and affection are in a commonsense manner connected to our interpretation of body, it is more important to my investigation to exact how Lonergan and Levinas explain feeling as part of our understanding and relating to the Other. In Chapter Four, I consider how Lonergan’s and Levinas’s claims about the embodied subject’s openness relate to the current quandary over how to interpret difference. We often ignore the concrete reality of difference by democratizing it, fetishizing it, and erasing it. It is here

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Michele Saracino Lonergan and Levinas

that I outline how Lonergan and Levinas can help us reframe and even change our destructive behavior toward others. In this chapter, moreover, I consider explicitly how the gift of openness has the potential to orient the subject in his/her freedom and move toward justice. It will become clear that a new, both secular and theological trope to capture what it means to be human, is needed in the contemporary discussion of anthropology. Signiﬁcantly, I designate protean subjectivity, with its emphasis on the open, changing, evolving, and developing orientation of the human person as this new trope. Accordingly, in Chapter Five, I detail the notion of proteanism in order to highlight the resilient, sacriﬁcial, and communal dimensions of being human. I claim that proteanism captures the positional and interdependent character of being human upheld in religious thought, while at the

1~Philosophical Foundations

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1 Philosophical Foundations

T

his chapter explores the philosophical foundations of Lonergan’s and Levinas’s projects. It is an imposing task, for both thinkers relate to a variety of philosophers. Rather than cataloguing the overwhelming number of thinkers who have shaped both of these scholars’ life’s work, I highlight only those philosophers who have inﬂuenced their interpretation of subjectivity. In my analysis important questions about being human emerge, including how subjectivity is connected to knowledge, related to the body, and rooted in intersubjectivity. It is my hope that by understanding these issues, we can appreciate how Lonergan and Levinas interpret subjectivity in terms of a corporeal responsibility for the Other. My exploration into the philosophical background of these two thinkers unfolds in four stages. First, I demonstrate how Lonergan rethinks subjectivity beyond a commonsense Cartesian empiricism, Kantian idealism, and Nietzschean existentialism. Reworking the anthropology of Enlightenment philosophy, Lonergan develops a reﬁned notion of authentic subjectivity. Second, I explain Levinas’s account of being human by focusing on his critique of ontology, exempliﬁed in the work of Martin Heidegger, as well as on his rejection of psychoanalytic theory, as presupposed by the analysis of Jacques Lacan. In contrast to these ontological (Heideggerian) and psychoanalytic (Lacanian) trajectories, Levinas explains subjectivity in terms of a prophetic ethical relation, of being for-the-Other. In the third and fourth sections, Lonergan’s and Levinas’s overlapping concerns, as well as some incommensurable issues are addressed. The way in which they appropriate phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, proves integral to these last two sections.

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Michele Saracino Lonergan and Levinas

1.1 Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophical Background Pinpointing whose philosophical or theological voice is most present in Lonergan’s life’s work is a painstaking process. Thomas Aquinas is an obvious presence in Lonergan’s worldview, particularly since Lonergan wrote his dissertation on this thirteenth century theologian (Lonergan 1971b). It could be argued that Edmund Husserl is an equally important ﬁgure in Lonergan’s thought because rethinking phenomenology is at the heart of Lonergan’s project. One cannot ignore the inﬂuence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Lonergan’s work, especially in relation to his investigation of the corporeal reality of being. All of these inﬂuences undoubtedly will be explored as my investigation of openness unfolds. To begin with, however, it is crucial to focus on Lonergan’s understanding of subjectivity in terms of knowing and intending reality. Even as the importance of Lonergan’s work needs to be grasped beyond the scope of cognition, it is in his understanding of cognition that Lonergan began his study of the subject. Lonergan’s research into the cognitional process of the subject took form during the years of 1949-1954. Following that period, he published two key works on cognitional theory, Insight (1997) and Method in Theology (1971c), both of which demonstrate the connections between adequate understanding and theological inquiry. In 1968, Lonergan delivered Marquette University’s Aquinas Lecture entitled, The Subject, in which he discussed the modern “neglect” of the human subject in philosophy and theology. By using the term “neglect,” Lonergan signaled the way philosophers have insufﬁciently explored the dimensions of being human by ignoring the complex process of cognition. The texts mentioned above provide the basis for my discussion of cognitional theory. Lonergan’s theory of cognition attempts to isolate and study the operations involved in the human process of knowing. These operations include the acts of “seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, formulating, reﬂecting, marshaling and weighing the evidence, judging, deliberating, evaluating, deciding, speaking, writing” (Lonergan 1971c, 6). By delineating the process through which human beings understand, Lonergan

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distinguishes among the operations of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. According to Lonergan, human cognition unfolds in four stages. Initially, the person experiences or encounters sense data, which provokes a question (what is it?). What follows is an attempt to understand and judge the sense data by marshaling and weighing evidence (answering the question of is it so?). Third, the person reﬂects on the legitimacy of the judgment and asks whether what s/he proposes can be veriﬁed as true (is it really so?). Finally, the subject acts on what s/he has veriﬁed to be true, that is, decides on and commits to a course of action (since it is true, I must do x). Only when all four operations are integrated does the authentic knowing subject begin to emerge. Lonergan argues that Enlightenment thought, developed in the work of Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche, fails to address these issues of understanding and being adequately. Modern consciousness as explicated by these three thinkers leads to truncated, immanentist, and alienated notions of subjectivity—all of which are unsuccessful at capturing the complex experience of being human. Lonergan deﬁnes the problematic truncated subject as a person who does not know him/herself, because s/he equates reality with what is sensed, indulging in picture-thinking. By the phrase picture-thinking, I refer to the way that the truncated subject fails to question and evaluate what s/he senses or sees. Instead, the truncated subject assumes what is seen is real, upholding the commonsense logic that to see is to believe. As s/he correlates the seen with a static idea of the real, the truncated subject fails to question his/her presuppositions. Without questioning his/her experience, this truncated subject assumes that his/her particular experience is normative and refuses to transcend the world of positivist, picture-thinking. For better or for worse, Lonergan associates this truncated subject with the Cartesian subject. The second type of inauthentic subject that Lonergan discusses is the immanentist subject, who is trapped within him/herself. The immanentist subject originates from a Kantian idealism, which proposes that all knowledge is enmeshed within representations and ideals. Whereas the truncated subject equates the world of sense with reality, the immanentist subject infers that the world of sense is merely a representation of reality. Thus, any judgment in regard to that ideal

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reality is merely a decision based on representations. Lonergan maintains that such “thinking” leads to relativism. The stance of the relativist leads to Lonergan’s third kind of inauthentic subject in modernity, the alienated subject. This alienated subject is entrenched, for Lonergan, in the philosophy of Nietzsche. Arguably, all of Nietzsche’s writings are not problematic for Lonergan. Only those writings and interpretations of Nietzsche that foster a nihilistic, reckless, and inauthentic subjectivity are disputed. Even though Lonergan does not explicitly state in The Subject that Nietzsche’s theory is problematic, he argues that those existential theories that uphold the “death of God” mentality are “absurd” and dangerous (1968, 32). Moreover, in an essay, “Time and Meaning,” Lonergan charges Nietzsche with espousing the death of God mantra (1996a, 106). Connecting these rather vague references, I will explicate the issues of the alienated subject in terms of Nietzsche’s anthropology, which for Lonergan is grounded in an extreme existentialism. There are two forms of existentialism for Lonergan. On the one hand, there is a praiseworthy form of existentialism, which supports the subject’s option for the human good through a process of openness and conversion. On the other hand, there is an extreme form of existentialism, which tempts the subject toward a posture of relativism, a disposition to apathy in which all opinions and views are valid. As the “good existentialist” sorts and understands the differences between positions and counterpositions, the “extreme existentialist” is lulled into a sense of alienation. Alienation occurs by way of the person’s refusal to commit to the human good through engaging in the dynamic structure of knowing, acting, and loving. Thus, the alienated subject understands him/herself as alone, powerless, hopeless, ineffective, and ignorant, rather than connected, powerful, hopeful, capable, and knowledgeable. Lonergan privileges the existential subject because s/he is free and responsible; yet at the same time, Lonergan acknowledges that an extreme existentialist attitude could lead to a reckless posture and inauthentic living.1 Having only brieﬂy introduced the ways in which Lonergan’s understanding of the subject implicitly offers a critique of the Enlightenment subject, below I will develop his argu1

For an informative essay on Lonergan’s relationship to existentialist thought, see Mark D. Morelli, “Lonergan and Existentialism” (1998a).

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ment further through an exploration of the speciﬁc ideas of Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche.

1.1.1 René Descartes (1596-1650) Even as a contested term, modernity can most easily be deﬁned as the worldview inaugurated by the emphasis on the ocular gaze of the subject, a gaze that became conﬂated with reason and knowledge. Descartes’s interpretation of subjectivity is typiﬁed by the attitude of cogito ergo sum and epitomizes the modern tendency to equate vision (seeing or looking) with knowing. This collapse of seeing the world into knowing the world becomes Lonergan’s deﬁnitive problem with Cartesian theory. In an effort to get at the heart of Cartesian theory, it might help to turn to philosopher Robert C. Solomon, who points out that Descartes did not so much discover subjectivity, as “establish the centrality of the human mind” or the cogito (1988, 5). Descartes’s turn to the subject, according to Solomon, can be summarized in three points: his method of doubt; his egocentric predicament; and his emphasis on point of view. For the purpose of this analysis, I will concentrate on the egocentric predicament of the subject. With the phrase “egocentric predicament,” Solomon refers to the way in which the subject takes his/her being and perspective for granted. In other words, the Cartesian egocentric subject posits him/herself and assumes his/her being to the extent that there is no rigorous questioning of subjectivity or objectivity. As previously mentioned, Lonergan is troubled by the empiricist inclination of Cartesian theory because it equates reality with experience alone, and disregards further investigation and veriﬁcation. This conﬂation of looking with reality leads to a naïve notion of objectivity. What’s more, this insufﬁcient notion of objectivity results in an unsatisfactory account of subjectivity, which is the key problem for Lonergan. Another issue which arises in Cartesian theory is a dichotomy between mind and body. In Discourse on Method, as Descartes conﬂates the cogito with the soul, he reduces subjectivity to the realm of the rational (Veitch 1969, 39-96). This chasm between body and mind is more explicitly developed in the Sixth Meditation, where he draws

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a stark separation between the location and function of the body, as well as of the soul. Descartes states: I certainly do possess a body with which I am very closely conjoined; nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unthinking thing, it is certain that I [that is, my mind, by which I am what I am] am entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it (Veitch 1969, 165).

It becomes evident that as Descartes distinguishes the mind from the body, he privileges the mind over the body. In other words, to the extent that the mind can survey both the mind and body through a process of introspection or an activity of simple looking, Descartes’s philosophy empowers the mind over the body. Indeed, the cogito comes to know itself through the act of perception or looking. Related to the way in which Descartes privileges the mind over the body is his claim that the mind is “indivisible” and the body “divisible” (Veitch 1969, 171-172). Descartes writes: There is a vast difference between mind and body, in respect that body, from its nature, is always divisible, and that mind is entirely indivisible. For in truth, when I consider the mind, that is when I consider myself in so far only as I am a thinking thing, I can distinguish in myself in no parts, but I very clearly discern that I am somewhat absolutely one and entire … But quite the opposite holds in corporeal or extended things; for I cannot imagine any one of them [how small so ever it may be], which I cannot easily sunder in thought, and which, therefore, I do not know to be divisible (Veitch 1969, 171-172).

Notice that Descartes assumes that consciousness is uniﬁed, monolithic, and thus objective. Corporeality appears fragmented in comparison to the uniﬁed mind, is subordinated to the site of reason, and even is disconnected from reason and knowledge altogether. Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo argues that when taken to an extreme, the Cartesian cogito, in fact, erases the body (1987). The ﬂesh of the subject becomes disconnected from the activity of the cogito. Even if Descartes privileges

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the body because of the emphasis he places on the act of perception, he severs cognition from any concrete bodily source. In other words, although Cartesian thought ﬁgures cognition in sensual metaphors, it fails to scrutinize, phenomenologically or otherwise, how the subject’s body is implicated in the activity of understanding. Lonergan rejects the truncated subject found in Cartesian metaphysics for two main reasons. First, he argues that philosophy’s obsession with the soul and the conﬂation of the soul with the cogito has led to an inadequate understanding of objectivity. Too often objectivity is correlated with the picture-thinking or ocularcentric logic previously mentioned. Second, Lonergan disagrees with the facile separation between body and mind. Lonergan’s understanding of cognition demonstrates the inextricable link between bodily experience and the activity of knowing, thereby complicating Descartes’s assumption that the mind and body are separable. By isolating the distinct and discrete levels of the self-assembling activity of the structure of human knowing, including the operations of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, Lonergan integrates the body and mind in authentic subjectivity and reads subjectivity in terms of a holistic, embodied experience. The holistic approach to knowing which Lonergan upholds demands that we are attentive not only to the rational aspect of being human, but also to the intuitive and affective dimension of being human. The failure to mention the importance of corporeality and affectivity in Descartes’s explanation of subjectivity pushes Lonergan into rethinking being human in terms of not only reason and will, but also in terms of feeling—a point addressed in more detail in the next chapter.

1.1.2 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) As we turn our focus from Descartes to Kant, we can discern a shift in emphasis from the person to the world. It is fair to suggest that this change from a presumed Cartesian cogito to an idealized Kantian subject occurred during the “eighteenth century, [when in] German philosophy there is a change from the orientation of introspection to intersubjectivity” (Mohr 1995, 41). As Descartes claims that the subject is known before the world, Kant asserts that the subject can

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only be known through the world. Put another way, as Cartesian thought takes the cogito for granted and interprets introspection as a real possibility, Kantian logic doubts the validity of the cogito and is skeptical of any knowledge derived from introspection. For the sake of simplicity, I will discuss Kant as Lonergan understood him. It must be admitted, however, that while Lonergan’s authentic subject emerges in response to what he reads as inadequate interpretations of subjectivity found in the theories of Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche, Lonergan may have failed to grasp the nuance of Kantian philosophy. Lonergan adheres to the dominant interpretation of Kant, in which Kant is thought to uphold an atomistic, individualistic, and intuitionist interpretation of anthropology. In The Subject, Lonergan maintains that the Kantian subject is trapped in an idealist state and unable to move forward by judging and deciding (1968, 13-18). Lonergan scholars, moreover, have extended Lonergan’s assumption that Kantian analysis is based on intuition (Sala 1994). Nevertheless, contemporary scholarship, as demonstrated in the work of philosopher Onora O’Neill, shows that Kant did not intend to totally debunk the notions of knowledge or reason in his project (1989, 12). Even as Kant identiﬁed the problem of an extreme and arbitrary rationalism, he insisted that judgment is necessary in order to move forward and construct community. Still, Lonergan’s interpretation of Kant on this point is crucial to his critique of idealist subjectivity and its inadequacies. Clearly, Lonergan conﬂates the immanentist subject with the Kantian subject, which he associates with the anthropology of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1998). By the term immanentist, Lonergan refers to the inauthentic subject of modernity who refuses to know, thereby living in a world of intuition—a milieu in which seeing is equivalent to knowing. Lonergan’s repudiation of the Kantian, immanentist subject becomes clariﬁed when connected to his investigation of the Cartesian subject. In Lonergan’s view, the Cartesian, truncated subject leads to the Kantian, immanentist subject. Recall that the truncated subject correlates what s/he sees with reality, an activity that leads to the danger of picture-thinking. According to Lonergan, the truncated subject begins to doubt the reality of what s/he sees and this doubt results

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in immanentism. The immanentist subject professes that what s/he sees is mere appearance and is unable to make any truthful judgments about reality. This insidious skepticism, which Lonergan associates with the Kantian subject, renders the subject powerless to make any infallible judgments. The assumption that all judgments are fallible is problematic, for such an assumption is vulnerable to the charge of circularity. Lonergan, ﬁnally, is frustrated with the attitude of the immanentist subject who refuses to know. By contesting this reluctance to know reality, Lonergan attempts to transcend the immanentism and skepticism of the Kantian subject. Ironically, Lonergan’s concern for certainty and infallibility seems strangely Cartesian. According to Lonergan, the Kantian subject’s inability to know reality is linked to the subject’s inadequate notion of objectivity. Kant understands objectivity as “objects in relation to subjects: it is not the objectivity of ‘things-in-themselves’” (Brown 1955, 23). This means that as human beings understand and situate the world in relation to themselves, they cannot escape consciousness or transcend experience to know anything for certain. Since Kantian theory interprets objectivity as conditioned by perception, Lonergan argues that the Kantian subject’s knowledge of reality can never transcend perception. Lonergan insists, however, that perception alone is not knowledge. If human beings live only by experience or perception, the operations of understanding and judgment become obscured; and, the subject becomes reduced to picture-thinking. The trap of picture-thinking becomes exacerbated when one applies this idealism to the question of the self. Lonergan explains that it is problematic to think that because experience shapes our knowledge we can never obtain anything more than ideal knowledge of ourselves. Self-knowledge transcends ideals of self. Self-knowledge, for Lonergan, is performative because the subject only knows him/herself by appropriating and afﬁrming him/herself as a knower, actor, and lover. Alternatively, intuition about the self does not constitute objectivity because it lacks understanding, judging, and deciding—that is, it remains only at the level of description. Lonergan’s insistence on the necessity of objectivity allows him to distinguish between the activities of description and explanation.2 De-

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scription refers to the activity of interpreting things solely in relation to one’s own experience, whereas explanation refers to the complexity of understanding things in relation to and among themselves. Arguably, the Kantian subject is an immanentist subject because s/he understands objectivity only at the level of description, only in relation to self. In order for the subject to avoid being immanentist and become authentic, s/he must transcend this self-centered, ideal-oriented, descriptiveridden world. Such transcendence is only possible when the subject knows him/herself. According to Lonergan, “[G]enuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity” (1971c, 292). Objectivity then, is the ability to distinguish and explain what is true, and is only possible when one transcends an egoist posture and becomes rationally self-conscious about one’s cognitional process. Authentic subjectivity emerges when one afﬁrms that s/he is a knower. The Kantian subject, that is, the immanentist subject, never achieves genuine subjectivity because s/he does not follow through to the level of reﬂective questioning. S/he refuses to ask whether what appears true is indeed true. Since the Kantian subject never asks the question of, “Is it so?”, judgment remains simultaneously idealized and immanent. Lonergan scholar, Giovanni Sala clariﬁes how Kant’s model of knowing is an intuitive model in which there is no gap or second step between a thing being intuited and a thing being known. Moreover, Sala explains that there is no judgment “by which we know reality” (1994, 29). He demonstrates that Kant’s theory fails to attend explicitly to an expansion of consciousness from the realm of sense and intuition to the realm of critically mediated knowledge and responsible action. In Lonergan’s estimation, Kant’s understanding of subjectivity and knowledge remains at the level of experience; so judgment remains a representation of reality. All these conclusions about Kant can be traced to his statement about representation: “Judgment is therefore the mediate cognition of an object, hence the representation of a representation of it” (1998, A68, B93, p. 205).

2

For a discussion of the connection between Kant’s interpretation of phenomenon and noumenon and the activities of description and explanation, see Lonergan (1997, 362-366).

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In order to avoid the idealist stance of the Kantian subject, Sala supports Lonergan’s interpretation of judgment as a deﬁnitive yes or no answer based on the dynamic process of answering such questions as, “What is it?”, “Is it so?”, and “Is it really so?” For Lonergan, objectivity is possible through the responsible performance of authentic subjectivity, through experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Put another way, responsibility, according to Lonergan, emerges out of the integration of one’s embodied, cognitive process of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Responsibility brings forth authentic subjectivity. Issues of embodiment and sensuality are related to the responsible performance of authentic subjectivity. Lonergan’s authentic subject is a ﬂesh and blood person with feelings and goals. Such feelings and affection for others are integral to being human in that they signal human values and ground ethical interactions with others. In Lonergan’s view, Kant problematically devalues the body, or at the very least, denigrates the human aspects of feeling and sensuality. Kant seeks a middle ground between the rationalist tradition that explains knowledge a priori, by way of proofs, and the empiricist tradition that understands all knowledge as a posteriori, based on experience. Furthermore, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental and the empirical self by contrasting a person determined by will and a person imprisoned by sense inclination. For Kant, then, these two aspects of the person are differentiated and opposed. In this polemic between the rational and the sensual, a hierarchy favoring the active over the passive develops: Kant works with an opposition between the sensuous will and the rational will, an opposition conceived of in terms of passivity and activity. The rational will, activated by representations of principle, which are valid and in force in all circumstances, is activated always, wills always, is the ideal state of the will. The sensuous will, that activated by representations or sensuous particulars, is activated from the outside; it is dependent, servile, reactive. And it is activated by the promise of pleasure the representations of sensuous particulars contain; it is thus activated contingently. Kant devalues

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Michele Saracino Lonergan and Levinas the sensuous will, alleging its contingency and its dependency, its servility. The rational will is a will motivated from within, by its own representational faculty, and motivating itself always (Lingis 1989, 100).

As Kant links passivity to a negative reading of sense and feeling, he degrades human sensuality and implies that the passive subject is trapped and bogged down by feeling. Indeed, Kant’s understanding of feeling impedes human freedom. It is not too much to suggest that Lonergan would understand this pejorative connotation of sense experience as an obstacle to religious experience and ethical responsibility. Lonergan would reject the dismissal of religious experience and ethical obligation to which this position might tend, because feeling and responsibility are integral parts of conversion to genuine subjectivity. Indeed, for Lonergan religious feeling and openness are the culmination of appropriation. It is at the juncture between the head (reason) and the heart (feeling for others beyond self ) that authentic subjectivity emerges. Philosopher Charles Taylor links Kant’s interpretation of freedom to that of Rousseau’s in which freedom thrives in an immanentist environment which is driven by self-determination (1985, 319-337). It is interesting to note that whereas Descartes validates humanity’s dependence on God, that is, on the Inﬁnite, both Kant and Rousseau devalue any sort of dependence on God or others. Furthermore, a posture of passivity, dependence on others, and/or reliance on the transcendent is deemed as a vice of the subject. The ideal subject for Kant and Rousseau is self-sufﬁcient, self-determined, and self-made. At the same time, however, Lonergan views the Kantian subject as enmeshed in the world of intuition. This understanding of Kant’s theory proves contradictory for Lonergan, for how could a subject enmeshed in experience and intersubjective relationships achieve autonomous freedom? Even though Kant afﬁrms self-autonomy and abhors passivity, his insistence on the primacy of experience makes it impossible for the subject to be truly free. Lonergan argues that in its commitment to self-sufﬁciency, the Kantian subject is incapable of transcending its own experience. Ultimately, for Lonergan, the Kantian, immanentist subject is inadequate precisely because the

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subject refuses to transcend the level of experience. The problems of the immanentist subject lead to even more serious issues related to the alienated subject.

1.1.3 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Similar to the way in which Lonergan interprets Descartes and Kant in accordance with the dominant reading of their work, Lonergan reads Nietzsche’s anthropology, particularly in The Subject (1968), in terms of a person who dismisses God and morality. Contemporary commentators on Nietzsche might reject Lonergan’s assumptions about Nietzsche. A.J. Hoover, in Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Thought, discusses the ambiguity of Nietzsche’s reference to the ‘Death of God,’ and claims that mantra has been over used, abused, and largely misunderstood by scholars (1994, 83). With this said, it becomes clear that this discussion of Nietzsche is based on Lonergan’s rather sketchy references to him and his reaction to Christianity. Put sharply, it is fair to say that Nietzsche might not recognize himself in Lonergan’s writings. Nietzsche offered a critique of Christian and humanistic morality because it led to dogmatic thinking or what he termed a herd mentality. He contended that it was the responsibility and destiny of the human person to overcome such passivity. As with Kant, passivity has negative connotations. Nietzsche’s The Will to Power (1968) was compiled from scholarly notes and papers after his death. In that text, Nietzsche’s thought on subjectivity, knowledge, and power is brought to light, and we are presented with an understanding of subjectivity that Lonergan interprets as existential. Lonergan emphasizes the importance of existentialism and ethics through the delineation of the subject as authentic not only on the levels of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, but also on the level of doing, that is, choosing and acting. Lonergan asserts: “By his own acts the human subject makes himself what he is to be, and he does so freely and responsibly; indeed, he does so precisely because his acts are the free and responsible expressions of himself. Such is the existential subject” (1968, 19). Nietzsche’s subject ﬁts Lonergan’s deﬁnition of

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existentialism by becoming subject in his/her actions; yet Lonergan rejects the Nietzschean brand of extreme existentialism because it alienates the subject from goodness. Recall how the immanentist subject of Kantian metaphysics is trapped in a myriad of representations, all seeming valid. This maze of ideals, ﬁctions, and representations paralyzes the subject and renders him/her powerless to make any judgments about what is good. This impotent subject becomes alienated from goodness, value, as well as self, when faced with having to choose, act, and love in the midst of all these dubious representations. Questions such as these arise when existential reﬂection turns into a “trap” (Lonergan 1968, 30). How do we choose when we cannot be sure of the choices? How do we act when one decision seems to have the same effect as another? What is the point of acting when we cannot be sure the world is good anyway? The alienated subject is unable to understand and judge adequately; and, poor ethical and moral decision-making and human relating is a result. According to Lonergan, Nietzsche’s subject is a casualty of the trap of extreme existentialism. As Nietzsche’s subject interprets the world as a jumble of choices and perspectives, s/he refuses to choose the good (moral) over the bad (immoral) options. Instead, at any cost, the alienated subject chooses for him/herself in the wake of the dogmatic slumber and instability of the world. Arguably, Lonergan should embrace the way Nietzsche’s subject implicitly offers a critique of dogmatism and apathy. However, while Lonergan commends Nietzsche for acknowledging the need for cultural reform in the face of malaise and regress, Lonergan does not accept the violence associated with the subject’s overcoming both of God and nature. From a Lonerganian perspective, the Nietzschean subject is an alienated subject who is unable and unwilling to engage his/her own authentic subjectivity through appropriating the dynamic structure of knowing, doing, and loving. This alienated subject of Nietzsche’s theory is an extreme existentialist subject who maintains that the world is a multiplicity of perspectives—all of which are vying for the truth and power. Yet Nietzsche’s subject goes to great lengths to make his/her particular perspective known and prominent. Even so, Lonergan’s notion of the human good is absent from the horizon of the alienated

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subject, that is, from the worldview of the Übermensch. The situation of the Übermensch is one of man over and against nature, man over and against man. As Lonergan validates the existential subject who opts for relationship and the human good in moments of crisis, he rejects the Nietzschean subject who opts merely for self. Nietzsche understands the self as a point in which vision fails, perspective is limited, and language becomes inadequate, thus categorizing subjectivity negatively, in terms of its limits. In his interpretation of the ‘I’ and perspectivism, Nietzsche claims that we deﬁne the ‘I’ as we “set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins, at which we can see no further” (1968, 267). Thus, his notion of subjectivity evolves into an ideal grammatical ﬁction. “The ‘subject,’” Nietzsche declares, “is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is” (267). Contemporary continental theorists, such as Derrida and Lyotard, have developed this theme in which, according to Nietzsche, subjectivity is interpreted as a ﬁction because it is limited and particular. Lonergan rejects the notion of a subject as ﬁction in order to demonstrate how subjectivity should be perceived in terms of history and perspective. It is not as if Nietzsche gives up on the notion of subjectivity altogether. He develops various caricatures or ideal types of subjectivity, none of which, including the saint, the scientist, the atheist, or the priest, can explain the nature of total man. Only his notion of a superman or Übermensch describes the complete potential of humanity. This overman or Übermensch aggressively stamps out meaning for him/herself in overcoming nature. The overman’s posture of egoism and disregard for others is discarded by Lonergan. The reckless freedom that accompanies Nietzsche’s rendition of subjectivity is rejected out-right by Lonergan, since Lonergan wants to emphasize not only the possibilities, but also the responsibilities associated with being human. Above I have attempted to show that Lonergan’s understanding of subjectivity is predicated upon the inadequate descriptions of the subject found in Cartesian, Kantian, and Nietzschean thought. I now turn to a discussion of how Levinas’s construction of subjectivity develops. Central to the development of Levinas’s subject are his concerns about the unsatisfactory account of being human in ontological philosophy and psychoanalytic theory.

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1.2 Emmanuel Levinas’s Philosophical Background Like Lonergan, many important thinkers inﬂuenced Emmanuel Levinas’s work. Plato’s notion of beyond being frames Levinas’s critique of ontology. Catholic thinkers, including Jean Wahl, ground Levinas’s appropriation of phenomenology and existentialism. Both Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s readings of intentionality and corporeality, respectively, provide Levinas with a basis for imagining an incarnational ethics. Levinas not only studied with Husserl, but also wrote his dissertation on the father of phenomenology (1973). Nevertheless, below, I will emphasize that Levinas’s interpretation of being open for others can be understood best from the inadequacies in the work of two other important thinkers, namely Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan. Many links can be made between Levinas’s understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and alterity and the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan. These theorists are not as easily typed postmodern as are Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault. Nonetheless, Heidegger and Lacan both grapple with some postmodern issues that are encompassed by Levinas’s theory. Heidegger’s emphasis on the contingent and anti-foundationalist predicament of the subject, that is, the situation of being thrown into the world, surfaces in contemporary continental theory’s attention to the dislocated and unstable dilemma of the subject. Moreover, Lacan’s preoccupation with desire and the splitting of the subject are two key questions that arise in poststructuralist accounts of the human person. In the following section, I explore the contributions that these philosophers have made to the conversation on subjectivity and difference in order to bring to life the milieu in which Levinas lived and researched.

1.2.1 Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Levinas’s relationship with Heidegger was undoubtedly complicated. As Heidegger’s former student, Levinas respected the rigor of Heidegger’s philosophical insights. On a personal level, however, Levinas

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lamented Heidegger’s involvement with the Nationalist Socialist Party. It is in light of these two opposing factors that the divergence of Levinas’s thought from that of Heidegger’s seems more poignant than a mere in-house scufﬂe between master and disciple. In what follows, I scrutinize the way in which Levinas departs from Heidegger’s understanding of subjectivity and difference. My discussion will focus on three points—how Heidegger ignores individual difference, valorizes independence and isolation, and conﬂates openness with seeing. Levinas’s criticism of Heidegger’s notion of openness will be developed most fully because it relates to questions of freedom, power, and responsibility, which are signiﬁcant issues in our contemporary pluralist context. First and foremost, Levinas accuses Heidegger’s anthropological subject of being unable to engage someone who is different, the Other. As Levinas commends Heidegger for pinpointing the inadequacies of the notion of being in relation to subjectivity, he denounces him for not examining subjectivity in relation to individual differences. This same point is made by Rüdiger Safranski in his intellectual biography of Heidegger: Heidegger, the inventor of “ontological difference,” never conceived of developing an “ontology of difference.” Ontological difference means the distinction of Being from that-which-is. An ontology of difference would mean accepting the philosophical challenge of the disparity of people and the difﬁculties or opportunities arising as a result (1998, 265).

For Heidegger, the subject (the existent) is always individual: the one being there, Dasein. And yet, Heidegger’s anthropology tends to disregard any notion of a plurality or fecundity of relations among existents. It overlooks the large numbers of distinctive individuals within any given community.3 As such, Heidegger’s subject acts as if 3

Similar to the way in which Levinas found Heidegger’s account of being problematic in that it ignores a fecundity of relations, Hannah Arendt is troubled by the private and individualistic character of Heidegger’s openness. According to Safranski, “Like Heidegger, Hannah Arendt is guided by this idea of openness, but she is prepared to see this idea realized also in publicness. She expects openness not from the transformed relationship of the individual with himself —that is, not from Heidegger’s ‘authenticity’—but from the consciousness of plurality, from

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he is anonymous and alone. Moreover, he is understood as legitimate in participating in his independent and isolated adventure of being there. The independent and disconnected predicament of Dasein is a second implication of Heidegger’s theory that worries Levinas. Heidegger’s Dasein is constructed in opposition to the Cartesian static ego/cogito, and refers speciﬁcally to the subject “existing in this [free] playing ﬁeld in [an] open manner” (Safranski 1998, 180). Dasein’s engagement of the world is an existential quest requiring isolation and independence. According to Jean-Luc Marion, Dasein, unlike cogito, knows itself only by knowing its uncertainty (1998, 77-107). This ﬁeld of uncertainty, according to Marion, opens up possibilities for the subject. As a result, Dasein lives either authentically or inauthentically according his/her actions in the face of such incertitude. Dasein creates himself by enacting his freedom in the uncertain world. Safranski writes: “Man is the being that does not, unquestioning, rest in Being, but that must, in a precarious situation, always ﬁrst establish, map out, choose, his relation with Being” (1998, 347). By construing the subject’s engagement with Being in existentialist terms of autonomy, freedom, and individualism, Heidegger returns to the Greek idea of being. “To Greek thinking the world is a stage on which man moves among the others like him and among the things, in order to act there and to see, and to be acted on and be seen…. Man is the open spot of being” (Safranski 1998, 295). In response to Heidegger, Levinas wants to maintain the contingent character of Dasein, yet positions the subject not in front of a myriad of possibilities, but as obligated to the Other. For Levinas, before the self, there is the Other. And, the trace of the Other positions the subject into a posture of being open for others. Here Levinas rejects Heidegger’s emphasis on selfmastery and unbridled freedom that is rooted in a notion of subject as independent and disconnected from others. As Levinas rejects Heidegger’s Dasein because of the correlation between being and freedom, he contests Heidegger’s understanding of being in terms of seeing. In other words, Levinas resists the thematizaour realization that our Being-in-the-world means sharing a world with ‘many’ and being able to shape it. Openness exists only where the experience of human plurality is taken seriously” (1998, 380).

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tion that emerges in Dasein’s survey of openness. In an essay entitled, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Levinas writes: Comprehension for Heidegger ultimately rests on the openness of being…. It is this that Heidegger describes, in their most formal structure, the articulations of vision where the relation of the subject with the object is subordinated to the relation of the object with light, which is not an object. The understanding of a being will thus consist in going beyond being (l’étant) into the openness and in perceiving it upon the horizon of being. That is to say, comprehension, in Heidegger, rejoins the great tradition of Western philosophy: to comprehend the particular being is already to place oneself beyond the particular. To comprehend is to be related to the particular that only exists through knowledge, which is always knowledge of the universal (1996, 5).

From this passage, it is evident that Levinas worries about Dasein’s tendency to thematize difference by way of vision. In contrast to Heidegger’s Dasein, Levinas’s subject is unable to neutralize difference or more importantly, the one who is different, with a preconceived term, idea, or image. For Levinas, the Other positions the subject in a posture of passivity, into a position of being open for others, rather than for self. As Levinas opposes Heidegger’s thematizing notion of subjectivity, he implicitly rejects the modern way in which we reduce what is in front of us (alterity) to ourselves (the same)—through visualization. Therefore, aside from opposing both Heidegger’s lack of attention to individual difference and Heidegger’s interpretation of subjectivity as isolated and autonomous, Levinas also disputes the way that Heidegger conﬂates vision with the openness of the subject. This is the third way in which Levinas departs from Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s openness is not a humble disposition of the subject, but an aggressive, gazing posture of the person in power. Accordingly, openness as being is not peaceful and responsible, but totalizing and violent. On Safranski’s account, seeing in the classical world is correlative with being: “[F]or Plato the highest being was—as an idea—assigned to seeing” (1998, 295). Similarly, Heidegger understands freedom and being in relation to the subject’s openness. For Heidegger, the sub-

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ject emerges in this openness: “If this openness did not exist, man could not distinguish himself from what surrounds him. He could not even distinguish himself from himself ” (Safranski 1998, 218). In this scenario, being takes shape as a person sees and is seen, rather than as the person acts responsibly toward others. In this openness, Dasein sees things and people as tools to creates himself; thus Dasein is concerned (Sorge) only for himself. Levinas, alternatively, rejects this subject’s utilitarian posture toward the world and asserts that “the things we live from are not tools, nor even implements in the Heideggerian sense of the term” (1969, 110). Levinas regards sensation in terms of desire, not in terms of instrumental value. In the Introduction to Levinas’s Otherwise Than Being, Alphonso Lingis comments: “[F]or Levinas prior even to this operative gearing-in with the ﬁeld of instrumental connections, there is the sensuous contact with the material” (1998e, xxvi). For Levinas and Heidegger, therefore, the sensual, material world is there. But for Levinas, it already exists before it is useful to the subject. This sensual world not only exists, but also impinges on the space of the subject. It orders and postures the subject for both desire and responsibility. The world of the sensible, then, is not to be grasped, compartmentalized, or engulfed in open spaces or in the panorama, rather the world of the sensible structures the humanity of the subject. The world of the sensible, that is, desire for-the-Other, opens humanity to alterity. In summary, the focus of Heidegger’s philosophy is the singular man, Dasein, who maps out the world for himself, at all costs. Roger Burggraeve, in Emmanuel Levinas: The Ethical Basis for a Human Society (1981), writes of the self-centered focus of Dasein: [This] I makes itself the focus of a totality: the world is there for him. Thus it tries increasingly to draw the world into its own circle of existence as a means of existence and at the same time it tries as much as possible to consolidate and expand this circle. This is only possible by reducing the other to itself, by positing itself as the law and ‘measure of all things.’ The I is allergic to the other as other, precisely because of its natural egocentrism that manifests itself in the untiring and never ending struggle of self-afﬁrmation and self-development” (8-9).

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Levinas resists the way Heidegger privileges man as the egocentric surveyor, cartographer, discoverer, or scientist, and argues that Dasein’s attitude of egoism and ‘mineness’ (Jemeinigkeit) undermines the signiﬁcance of the incarnate revelation of the human and divine Other. Importantly, Levinas’s rejection of this self-centered egoism is evident in the manner in which he reworks Heidegger’s formulation of substitution. Heidegger’s Dasein deals with others by putting himself in the perspective of others—seeing it from their view, seeing the world from being there. However, Levinas’s thought goes beyond a legislated moral code, which attempts to see another person’s perspective. Furthermore, Levinas’s work deﬁes a volitional intentionality; instead, his ethical project proposes that people are interchangeable with others on the basis of their feelings and desire for-the-Other. As Levinas reorients our understanding of subjectivity as one born of desire for-the-Other, he contests the thematizing, egocentric, and aggressive posture of Dasein. We will soon grasp that Levinas repudiates a similar utilitarian orientation in psychoanalytic theory.

1.2.2 Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) Contemporary continental theory owes much of its theoretical rigor regarding alterity to the contribution of Jacques Lacan. This psychoanalytic philosopher has inﬂuenced greatly the way in which otherness is accounted for in Western culture. Although Levinas and Lacan did not have any known scholarly communication, the issues that absorb both of these thinkers have implications for our understanding of subject and Other in the postmodern context. The connections between these thinkers are so strong that a collection of essays was written to exemplify that point, entitled Levinas and Lacan: The Missed Encounter (Harasym 1998). In what follows, it will become clear that Lacan’s brand of psychoanalysis understands the relationship between subject and Other in terms of lack, which poses a problem for Levinas’s reading of subjectivity as for-the-Other. Moreover, aside from rejecting the tenets of psychoanalysis, especially its emphasis on lack, Levinas implies that the West’s fascination with psychoanalysis has undermined the importance of (Jewish) religiosity and spiritual transcendence (1989, 192). These problems with psychoanalytic theory arguably could be

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one of the reasons that Levinas explains being human through the rhetoric of need and obligation. Lacan’s project reinterprets subjectivity in relation to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis as well as in light of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy regarding the relationship between the subject and Other. Sigmund Freud, a twentieth century pioneer of continental psychoanalysis, developed a model for explaining the self based on biology and desire. In his “commitment to determinism in the domain of the psyche, a penchant for biological modes of explanation,” Freud traces human behavior back to an organic origin and a pathological rationale (Dews 1987, 47). According to Freud, the foundation of the human subject is the biological. As a result, eros becomes the foundation of the death and sex drives. Lacan resists a Freudian reductionist and deterministic model of self-consciousness in his insistence that the subject’s pathology cannot be reduced to biology or history alone. Critical theorist, Peter Dews explains: Lacan’s opposition to organicism and reductionism—whether inside or outside psychoanalysis—leads him to oppose this view: the oscillation between love and aggression, fascination and rivalry, which is characteristic of many human relationships, cannot be traced back to a biological foundation, but is rather a consequence of the ontological precariousness of the ego, of its fundamental alienation or being-other (58).

In Lacanian analysis, self-consciousness emerges in the ego’s negotiation with alterity. The state of being other, however, is not due to some pathological cause as in the case of Freud, but actually ensues from the relationship between the subject and Other. To further explicate the relationship between subject and Other, Lacan grapples with Hegelian theory. Employing Hegel, Lacan upholds the idea that self-consciousness is relational. Yet contrary to Hegel, Lacan proposes that two subjects are never present simultaneously in relation. Hence, in response to Hegel’s supposition that self-consciousness is only possible in the presence of two subjects, Lacan argues the subject only reaches self-consciousness through an object in which the subject dissolves or dissipates. Lacanian psychoanalysis differs from Hegelian dialectical theory in that Lacan asserts that there is always

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an absence or lack which prohibits the presence of two subjects. Lacan further argues that an asymmetrical relationship between the subject and Other develops due to this lack. Reworking the philosophical orientations of Hegel and Lacan, Levinas claims that the association between subject and Other is neither one of presence as in the case of Hegel, nor one of asymmetrical lack as in the discourse of Lacan. Instead, Levinas intuits the association between subject and Other as asymmetrical, yet lacking nothing. Levinas’s position that the relationship between subject and Other lacks nothing becomes even more clear when continuing to analyze Lacan’s thought on subjectivity and otherness. Lacan’s subject depends on an object that s/he is lacking. Since this lack can cause the subject sickness or pathology, it is projected onto an illusory object/Other, thereby creating the illusion that the subject is fulﬁlled completely by that object/Other. The term lack, as Lacan understands it, is translated from the French term, manque. Lacanian translator, Alan Sheridan, notes that Lacan reworks the notion of lack, creating the expression, manque-à-être that is translated into English as ‘want-to-be’ (Lacan 1977, xi). Lacan’s subject wants to be someone s/he is not, wants to possess whatever s/he lacks. This lack eventually is deferred or displaced onto an Other; consequently, the Other becomes a tool, instrument or, more strongly put, a foil for the subject. The subject’s stability depends on the lack or void in the Other, what Lacan terms objet petit a. But even as the fulﬁllment of the subject’s lack is always temporary, this ﬂeeting parasitic relationship provides the subject with jouissance (pleasure). The desire for desire is pleasurable and enjoyable, yet insatiable. The desire for what the subject lacks breeds more desire.4 4

This lack of satisfaction and unending desire is rooted in the mirror stage. Lacan understands the mirror stage as the moment in which the ego is shattered, i.e. the point at which the subject becomes fragmented. See “The Mirror Stage as Formative Function of the I” (Lacan 1977, 1-7). When we as children ﬁrst encounter our reﬂection in the mirror, we mistake the image for ourselves. The image is mistaken as long as we pretend it is fully us. We will never be satisﬁed by the image in the mirror; and thus we will always desire more. We desire that thing that cannot be fully signiﬁed. The other or the objet petit a helps the subject negotiate this desire to ﬁnd the signiﬁer to represent itself. This gap or remainder, which cannot be signiﬁed or satisﬁed fully, leads the subject to speak. This speech is the material of Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Interestingly, for Levinas, speech is gift.

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Signiﬁcantly, for Lacan, desire is self-serving, while, for Levinas, desire is the seed of obligation to others. In his interpretation of metaphysics, Levinas privileges the notion of desire over need. Levinas complicates matters when he discusses the predicament of the Other not in terms of a Lacanian lack, but in terms of a real material need. In other words, the predicament of the Other, for Lacan, is one of projected lack, deﬁciency, deformity, and stigma. Alternatively, Levinas understands the predicament of the Other to be one that signiﬁes a concrete, material need. In this instance, the term ‘need’ does not connote the need for oneself, that is, an egoism that utilizes the world for me; instead, need refers to the demand of the Other. According to Levinas, the need of the Other is exterior to the unconsciousness of the subject, rendering the Other free from the mind (gaze) of the subject. To burden subjectivity further, Levinas understands the subject as a hostage for the Other. He writes: “Vulnerability, exposure to outrage, to wounding, passivity more passive than all patience, passivity of the accusative form, trauma of accusation suffered by a hostage who substitutes himself for the others: all this is the self ” (1998e, 15). As hostage for-the-Other, the subject substitutes him/herself for-the-Other not out of vanity, egoism, or pride, but out of responsibility. Lingis explains: “To acknowledge the imperative force of another is to put oneself in his place, not in order to appropriate one’s own objectivity, but in order to answer to his need, to supply for his want with one’s own substance” (Levinas 1998e, xxii). Substitution for Levinas, hence, is not due to the subject’s lack, but motivated by the desire to fulﬁll the need or demand of the Other. Need is not some spiritual, illusive window dressing: it is a real emergency. The subject desires the Other and postures for-the-Other in order to provide materially or spiritually for that need. Lacanian and Levinasian theory presents us with distinct explanations of subjectivity and desire. Lacan’s subject struggles in an egoist posture to secure his/her identity through the use of the Other. The Other, for Lacan, is conjured by the subject de facto, in order to ﬁll the holes in the subject, to secure the gap or openness of the subject. Paradoxically, the Other is unattainable in its fullness, because it is of some other time, context, or past. Even as the Other is unattainable, Lacan contends that the desire for the illusory Other causes the subject to speak. The

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ego (moi) splits from the I (je) during the subject’s speech act. Indeed, the ego is split from the presence that is speaking (Lacan 1977, 91). Each time the subject attempts to represent him/herself by speaking, s/he is thwarted because the utterance only works to overdetermine the lack. In each attempt at speech there is always something more to be said, something more to be accounted for: “Lacan describes it as a ‘remainder,’ (un reste) or a ‘piece of waste’ (un déchet): it is that which is always left behind in every attempt of the subject to represent itself ” (Dews 1987, 104). Lacan’s subject attempts to account for this waste by saying even more, fabricating stories and lies. Nonetheless, the reckless pursuit of trying to represent him/herself as real and whole is ultimately futile, for there is always something left to say. Notice that in Lacanian theory language is employed for the self, rather than for the Other. Alternatively, Levinas contests this self-serving rendition of language. By relying on the Hebrew Scriptures and the notion of revelation, he claims that speech is for-the-Other. Simply put, speech bears witness to the Other, answers the Other’s command. Importantly, the Other is not known through the subject’s lack, but is sensed by a radical passivity or a posture of peace. In this way, Levinas’s always, already, primordial Other refuses to be an object or an ‘it’, that is, a product of our thematization de facto. It is worth noting that Levinas’s rejection of psychoanalysis, speciﬁcally Lacan’s objectiﬁcation of the Other, seems to echo Martin Buber’s thought on interpersonal relations. Still there are some notable differences. Even as the existential relation of the subject and the Other (the ‘Thou’) is of primary importance to Levinas, the connections between Levinas and Buber ought not be extended too far. Levinas debunks Buber’s I-thou relation because it ultimately reduces the thou to a theme (du). Moreover, he accuses Buber’s interpretation of the I-thou (du) relation of being too informal and not allowing for enough distance. Levinas refuses to interpret otherness as simplistically a near and familiar friend or an obscure and distant God. He replaces Buber’s notion of the thou with the notion of Illeity. By emphasizing the notion of Illeity, which stems from the pronoun he (il) rather than from the pronoun you (du), Levinas attempts to avoid facile thematizations of the Other. Simon Critichley explains that for Levinas, “Illeity describes my non-thematizable

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relation with the Inﬁnite, the direction of transcendence; it does not buttress any positive theology” (1992, 114). Again, this term guards against thematizing and familiarizing the Other. Alterity, according to Levinas, is not familiar, but mysterious, and jars the subject from his/her contentment, for-the-Other.5 Above we have learned that Levinas’s notion of subjectivity departs from that of Lacan’s. First, as the Lacanian subject desires the Other in order to become someone who s/he is not, the Levinasian subject desires the Other in order to fulﬁll the need or emergency of the Other. Second, according to Lacan, speech stabilizes the subject for self, while, in the discourse of Levinas, the signiﬁcation of speech comes from the Other. Arguably, as he departs from the utilitarian and aggressive theories of Heidegger and Lacan, Levinas attempts to glorify the particular predicament and demand of the Other.

1.3 Compatible Terrain Among these diverging philosophical backgrounds, Lonergan and Levinas share some common ideas in regard to the question of being human in the midst of otherness. First, both thinkers argue that modernity fails to depict the subject in relation to otherness. This lack of attention to a relationship of transcendence is largely due to the way in which the modern subject is locked up within him/herself, that is, imprisoned by a posture of immanence. Second, both Lonergan and Levinas argue that the modern obsession with seeing frustrates responsible behavior among human beings. Third, both Lonergan and Levinas afﬁrm the importance of feeling and corporeality in any contemporary interpretation of subjectivity. Below, I will explain each of these commonalties further. Special attention will be given to their appropriation of questions of incarnation and corporeality.

5

For Levinas’s thoughts on Buber, see “Martin Buber’s Thought and Contemporary Judaism,” “Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,” and “Apropos of Buber: Some Notes,” in Outside the Subject (1993, 4-48).

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Lonergan and Levinas contend that being human involves more than egoism, it demands relationship with others, thus making selftranscendence a key feature of subjectivity. I already discussed that both thinkers problematize the modern subject because s/he is consumed by self, too immanentist or paralyzed by the needs of the self. As I noted earlier, Lonergan’s critique of Kantian idealism argues that immanentist thinking thwarts authentic subjectivity. Immanentist logic limits the subject’s capacity for knowledge to the level of experience and representation, therefore blocking any movement toward judgment and decision. For Lonergan intellectual, moral, and religious conversion draw the person away from an inward carriage of egoism to an outward stance of openness. Conversion toward the human good culminates in religious experience, in falling in love with God. When the subject falls in love with God, s/he surrenders him/herself to the good of the community and the needs of the Other. The way in which the subject is opened for others when falling in love with God will be explored in the following chapter. For now it is important to note that Lonergan rejects the immanentist subject on intellectual, moral, and religious grounds. Therefore, at no point should Lonergan’s work be understood as too intellectualist, for the gifted posture emerges most fully in the intense, mystical relationship with God. Like Lonergan, Levinas also contests the immanentist subject through a discussion of both philosophy and religion. One cannot help but notice Levinas’s frequent references to Plato’s Good as beyond human apprehension. The distance between humanity and Goodness allows Levinas to explain alterity as coming from the hither side of our freedom, from beyond being, that is, “being’s other or the otherwise than being” (Levinas 1998e, 19). Aside from relying on Platonic and Neo-Platonic sources, Levinas draws on the rich resources of Jewish prophecy and revelation to offer a critique of a posture of immanence. Levinas contends that immanentism is problematic because Scripture illustrates that humanity, when faced by a stranger, opens from the posture of for-itself to a relationship of for-the-Other. Michael Purcell, a philosopher who has written extensively on the connections between the thought of Karl Rahner and Levinas, outlines Levinas’s position against the posture of immanentism and utilitari-

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anism (1998). Purcell elucidates Levinas’s position by exposing how philosophy traditionally has been a project of the Greeks. By adverting to the adventure of Odysseus, Levinas laments that the subject remains trapped within himself and for himself. Levinas, according to Purcell, contrasts this Odyssean philosophic tradition with the Abrahamic religious tradition in order to expose the radically different dispositions of the immanent and transcendent subjects. Odysseus journeys for his own purpose in violence and conquest, but then circles back to Ithaca. Abraham leaves his home in obligation to the God of Israel and never returns. By way of typology, Levinas illustrates that the Abrahamic subject does not desire transcendence in and of itself, nor does the Abrahamic subject seek to return to the comfort of him/herself, but is constantly displaced by and disposed for the needs of the Other. He is the ethical subject. On the other hand, the Odyssean immanentist stance is unethical because it denies relationship with others in a return to self. By exploring the metaphysical grounding of Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work, we can comprehend why they both jettison the idea of the subject as immanentist. As I argued earlier, a stance of immanentism is exacerbated by the trap of picture-thinking. The second commonality between Lonergan and Levinas is derived from their critique of the ocularcentrism of the West and their discrediting of the idea that seeing is equivalent with knowing persons and things. Cultural theorist David Michael Levin clariﬁes the commonsense connection between the notion of being and seeing in modernity: “For all of us that can see, vision is, of all the modes of perception, the one which is primary and predominant, at least in the conduct of our everyday lives” (1993, 2). Levin questions the ocularcentrism of modernity and discusses how conﬂict arises between vision and knowledge; vision and ontology; vision and power; and vision and ethics. Echoing Levin’s concern, Lonergan’s cognitional theory debunks the idea that seeing is equivalent to knowing. Sight is only one of the several means of experience and, more importantly, experience is only one of the four levels in the activity of knowing. Therefore, seeing does not equate to knowing. Instead, knowing is constituted in the experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding in regard to one’s experiencing (seeing); the experiencing, understanding,

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judging, and deciding in regard to one’s understanding (of what one thinks one sees); the experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding in regard to one’s judging (of what one knows one sees); and the experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding in regard to one’s deciding (of what one is to do because of what one sees). According to Lonergan’s explanation of cognitional theory, picture-thinking does not allow for the image that is seen to be questioned or contextualized. Picture-thinking allows only for the image to be taken at face value. Furthermore, Lonergan asserts that such abstract, one-dimensional thinking leads to the trap of conceptualism. As picture-thinking identiﬁes what one sees with reality, it fosters a conceptualist attitude that disregards context, meaning, history, and development. Lonergan writes: “[C]onceptualism ignores human understanding and so it overlooks the concrete mode of understanding that grasps intelligibility in the sensible itself. It is conﬁned to a world of abstract universals, and its only link with the concrete is the relation of universal to particular” (1968, 11). Conceptualism denigrates, even ignores, the development of meaning and reality through historical change and cultural particularity. In his explanation of cognitional theory, Lonergan poses a more dynamic relationship between universal and particular forms of knowledge. He renounces the rigidity of static concepts and exposes how the dangerous underside of classicist mentality can deem one group as normative, universal, and ideal and the other as barbaric, incomplete, and contingent. As Patrick Byrne explains: By ‘conceptualism,’ Lonergan meant the position that real knowledge of anything is only in grasp of the concepts under which it falls. Concepts are formed by abstracting the universal from particular matter, so that conceptual knowledge consists in knowledge of the universal. Furthermore, such knowledge is knowledge of the eternal, universal, necessary, and unchanging…. This quality of concepts stands in sharp contrast with the changeableness of the world of particular circumstances (1986, 2-3).

As Lonergan rejects conceptualism, Levinas repudiates the gaze of modernity that thematizes and claims to know the Other. In “Diachrony and Representation,” Levinas comments on how vision has been

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privileged in Western metaphysics: “The sphere of intelligibility—the reasonable—in which every day life as well as the tradition of our philosophic and scientiﬁc thought maintains itself, is characterized by vision. The structure of a seeing having the seen for its object of theme—the so-called intentional structure—is found in all the modes of sensibility having access to things” (1987, 97). For Levinas, such ocularcentric logic leads to a conceptualization or thematization of difference. Levinas, in his consideration of the subject’s relation with the Other, focuses on the way in which humans want to know and understand each other, yet insists that the relation itself, that is, the commitment for-the-Other, precedes any concept of the Other. As a result, he claims that human beings are beyond ﬂat concepts and facile thematizations. In “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Levinas explains: Our relation with the other (autrui) certainly consists in wanting to comprehend him, but this relation overﬂows comprehension. Not only because knowledge of the other (autrui) requires, outside of all curiosity, also sympathy or love, ways of being distinct from impassible contemplation, but because in our relation with the other (autrui), he does not affect us in terms of a concept. He is a being (étant) and counts as such (1996, 6).

According to Levinas, we recognize the Other not merely by a vision, image, or concept, but in an encounter ﬁrst, by speech (address or command) and then by concept. In an effort to diffuse further the hegemony of ocularcentric logic, in “Diachrony and Representation,” Levinas explicitly rejects knowing with seeing: “In thought understood as vision, knowledge, and intentionality, intelligibility thus signiﬁes the reduction of the other [Autre] to the Same….” (1987, 99). Through examining the similarities between conceptualism and thematization, we can ascertain how Lonergan and Levinas both refute the assumption that seeing is a key feature of subjectivity. Lonergan’s objection to a static conceptualist mentality is furthered by Levinas’s ethical concern for alterity. It is the ethical, intersubjective feeling for the Other that cuts across the ocularcentric gaze. In other words, for Lonergan and Levinas affective intentionality supercedes representational intentionality.

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The allusion to affective intentionality leads to the third commonality between Lonergan and Levinas—the way in which they explore issues related to embodiment when discussing subjectivity and otherness. Lonergan takes the body for a fact, and the factuality of the body is due to the body’s connection to the dynamic structure of knowing, acting, and loving. Lonergan, unlike Descartes and Kant, attempts to integrate sensual experience with a person’s potential for knowledge. Recall how knowing for Lonergan is a four-step activity of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Implicitly, then, the body is a key source of sense experience. Lonergan details a variety of patterns of experience including, but not limited to, the biological, aesthetic, intellectual, dramatic, social, psychological, and religious. On reﬂection, however, it becomes clear that the biological pattern, certainly important in and of itself, also inﬂuences the subject’s dramatic pattern of life, that is, the subject’s journey through the world and encounter with other persons (Lonergan 1997, 204-214). Lonergan’s emphasis on embodiment in relation to the structure of knowing is a departure from the view of modernity that conﬂates subjectivity with disembodied minds. Lonergan’s emphasis on issues of embodiment is not limited to a discussion of patterns of experience, but also encompasses an emphasis on the importance of feelings, desire, and love in intersubjective relations. These emotions are inextricably connected to our being human, particularly when being human is framed in terms of right-relationship with God and others. Affectivity, for Lonergan, compliments reason and action and leads to conversion and transcendence. Levinas, too, is concerned with the relationship between person and body. But unlike Lonergan, his articulation of the importance of body is not explicated in the construction of subjectivity. Instead, Levinas’s interest in the body is evident in his sensual and lush description of the relation between subject and Other in bodily metaphor. He explains the Other in terms of fecundity, voluptuosity, and excess and the subject’s relationship with the Other in terms of desire, love, and material and spiritual giving. The category of substitution as lending one’s body for another underscores Levinas’s concern for an affective, incarnational interpretation of being human. It is not too strong to suggest that his thinking privileges body and sensuality to such an

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extent that the analytical and cognitive capacities of the subject are rendered nearly inconsequential, deﬁnitely secondary. Of course not all thinkers are as convinced as Lonergan and Levinas that contemporary philosophical anthropology ought to pursue an inquiry into the body. Such ambivalent attitudes toward corporeality have led to polemical readings of embodied subjectivities in modern and postmodern or contemporary continental theory. Susan Bordo discusses the dichotomy between these two discourses. She asserts that the modern reading, as illustrated in Cartesian theory, subjugates the body to the mind, while the contemporary continental reading fosters accounts of body that essentialize and reify the body. She writes: My point can best be seen through examination of the role of the body—that is, of the metaphor of the body—in their (seemingly contrasting) epistemologies of ‘nowhere’ and ‘everywhere.’ For Cartesian epistemology, the body—conceptualized as the site of epistemological limitation, as that which ﬁxed the knower in time and space and therefore situates and relativizes perception and thought—requires transcendence if one is to achieve the view from nowhere, the God’s-eye view…. [According to postmodern epistemology] the body, accordingly, is reconceived. No longer an obstacle to knowledge (for knowledge in the Cartesian sense is an impossibility, and the body incapable of being transcended in pursuit of it), the body is seen as the vehicle of human making and remaking of the world, constantly shifting location, capable of revealing endlessly new points of view (1993, 227).

In this passage, Bordo demonstrates that as modern theory erases the body from the parameters of subjectivity—leaving the body nowhere, postmodern thought fetishizes the body—rendering the body everywhere. Appropriating the insights of Merleau-Ponty, Lonergan and Levinas avoid the extreme modern and postmodern positions of the body as nowhere and everywhere. Born in France in 1907, Merleau-Ponty was a contemporary of both Lonergan and Levinas, and is cited by each on various occasions. Lonergan esteems Merleau-Ponty’s work: “He is brilliant on the signiﬁcance of one’s own body in one’s own perceiving; sentient and sensible (spatio-temporal); neither purely pour-soi nor

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purely en-soi; not ghost in machine, but incarnate subject; neither subject nor body intelligible without the other” (1957, 8). Similarly, picking up on the protean quality of corporeality, Levinas frequently cites Merleau-Ponty’s work (see “Ethics as First Philosophy,” in 1989, 79). Important for both Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work, Merleau-Ponty’s school of phenomenology fosters both an ambiguous and incarnational approach to consciousness and relationships. In Phenomenology of Perception (1992), Merleau-Ponty interprets the body-subject as dynamic, rather than static. This body-subject moves, enacts with, and transforms the life-world, instead of merely taking up space. In her commentary on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, Monika Langer explains the subject’s action in the world as an “incarnate intentionality” in which the body “inhabits space and projects itself towards a perceptual world” (1989, 48). As the site of incarnate intentionality, the body-subject is not an inactive receptor of sensory associations, but an embodied subject vigorously embracing the world. Echoes of Merleau-Ponty can be heard in Lonergan’s thought. Speciﬁcally, one could link Merleau-Ponty’s insistence upon an embodied intentionality, a gesturing toward the world with Lonergan’s work on incarnate meaning and phenomenology of a smile. Signiﬁcantly, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, the body-subject’s engagement with the world is often complicated and ambiguous because s/he can never separate him/herself from the experience of it. Merleau-Ponty urges human beings to revel in the ambiguity of corporeal subjectivity. Here, Levinas’s emphasis on the excessive, voluptuous, and mysterious tendencies of intersubjectivity can be detected. In her attempt to move beyond intellectualist and empiricist interpretations of the human person, Mary Rose Barral asserts that MerleauPonty has constructed a “coherent doctrine of human embodiment,” that demonstrates how subjectivity and embodiment are interlocked rather than other and alienated entities (1984, 271). Barral further grasps in Merleau-Ponty’s work that the body is an expression of the subject, just as the word is an expression of thought. It is through gesturing, or more relevant to our purposes, through posturing, that the body-subject lives in the world. Both Lonergan and Levinas, each in their own discourse, work out how the body-subject ought to be postured. Feeling and sense ground this posture or way of being

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open to others. Again, incarnate being prevents the ocularcentrism previously addressed. Aware of the inﬂuence of Merleau-Ponty’s anthropology, Andrew Tallon emphasizes the affective dimension of being human, employing the work of both Lonergan and Levinas to illustrate the signiﬁcance of feeling and sense in our relation to others (1997). While commonsense often limits our understanding of feeling to that of the body or material realm, Tallon explains that feeling is integral to the human potential for transcendence for God and others. Working through contemporary continental theory, existential philosophers, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Tallon argues that it is our affective impulse for intersubjective relationships that supersedes our reliance on reason. Ultimately, Tallon attempts to demonstrate the triune character of being human, that is, the integrated affective, cognitional, and volitional dimensions of our relating to others. His insights are signiﬁcant to our mapping of the dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas as he brings to light the affective foundations of both their anthropologies. In the section above we explored how Lonergan and Levinas share similar concerns in regard to the question of subjectivity. They both emphasize the importance of a relationship of transcendent. Both Lonergan and Levinas contest the modern preoccupation with ocularcentric logic through the ignorant and aggressive habits of conceptualism and thematization. And, by brieﬂy working through the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and other relevant thinkers, we learned how they both emphasize the connection between subjectivity and embodiment. In the concluding section, we will locate the points at which dialogue between the modern theology of Lonergan and the postmodern theory of Levinas breaks down.

1.4 Conﬂicting Traditions and Assumptions Even amidst all the commonalties, Lonergan’s and Levinas’s distinctive backgrounds lead them to different conclusions about being. The opposing ways in which they interpret being also causes an additional

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conﬂict, the inconsistency between the ways they regard knowledge. In the next few paragraphs, I will elaborate on some of these noteworthy distinctions in Lonergan’s and Levinas’s worldviews. Lonergan’s work is grounded in a Roman Catholic theological worldview, which is based on the assumption that God is the ground of all being. Implicit in Lonergan’s work is the belief that the incarnation of Christ is the exemplary performance of authentic subjectivity. Consequently, all Christians desire to live in the image of God, to imitate Christ in their being. In contrast to the Roman Catholic worldview of Lonergan, there is a deﬁnitive Judaic grounding to Levinas’s writings. By giving special attention to Platonic thought, Jewish Revelation, and Talmudic commentary, in an essay “Ideology and Idealism,” Levinas maintains that God is beyond being, and that humanity’s “direct encounter” with God is a Christian axiom (1989, 247). To be sure, Levinas is not concerned with modeling being in light of the Christ event. He is preoccupied with an ethics that moves beyond being as imitation or as forced morality. ‘Beyond being’ is an important mantra for Levinas. As Seán Hand eloquently conveys in his introductory remarks to The Levinas Reader, “In the age of Auschwitz, Levinas shows that to be or not to be is not the ultimate question: it is but a commentary on the better than being, the inﬁnite demand of the ethical relation” (Levinas 1989, 7-8). God, for Levinas, enters the relationship between subject and Other in the face of the Other, that is, in the voice or demand of the Other. According to Levinas’s interpretation of Judaism, God is the Third Party who impinges on the relationship between subject and Other. Levinas’s comprehension of Jewish Revelation in terms of mystery and hiddenness, as we will realize further in Chapter Three, prevents him from being overconﬁdent with the notion of being. Alternatively, Lonergan, working within the Neo-Thomist tradition, problematizes and complicates the notion of being in order to rewrite what it means. Being for Lonergan is not something that already exists as an alreadyout-there-now-real; rather, being is the unrestricted desire to know, act, and love for others. The discord between their viewpoints on the topic of ‘being’ leads to the second obstacle that blocks dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas: their rival deﬁnitions of knowledge.

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The difference in the ways they value knowledge is largely due to the distinctive ways in which they appropriate Husserlian phenomenology. Phenomenology is “an account, description, presentation of the data structured by insight,” and Husserl ﬁxes the subject as the center of that world of account and description (Lonergan 1957, 7). Although Husserl maintains that there is a reality apart from what the subject thinks about it, he concerns himself mostly with the truth of the subject’s experience. Speciﬁcally, Husserl urges that the subject attends to his/her experience by suspending his/her interests and commitments through the operation of the transcendental reduction or the “Epoche” (Dews 1987, 6; Husserl 1990; and Lonergan 1957, 7-14). In this process, the subject withdraws from the world of the ‘really real’ and focuses on his/her intending, that is, experiencing the world by way of making meaning, symbol, and representation. Lonergan upholds Husserlian phenomenology by emphasizing the notion of intending or intentionality as referring to how meaning is always contextualized. In other words, Lonergan interprets Husserl’s phenomenology as claiming that meaning is not natural or essential to an object or human being, but mediated by consciousness. As Husserlian intentionality attends to how consciousness mediates the world, according to Lonergan, it actually prohibits any gesture of thematization or assimilation of otherness of the thing or person in question. We will return to Lonergan’s interpretation of intentionality in the next chapter, for Lonergan’s relationship to Husserlian phenomenology is more complicated than ﬁrst presented here. Even though Lonergan ﬁnds Husserl’s theory helpful for understanding knowledge and truth because it fosters an understanding of meaning as constructed, he rejects Husserlian phenomenology in total because it fails to move beyond description to explanation. In Insight Lonergan mentions that phenomenology can easily turn into an exercise in empiricist and immanentist thinking (1997, 440). Against Husserlian immanentism and Kantian skepticism, then, Lonergan believes in reason and insists that human beings can know. This is a powerful argument. Yet, it is imperative that we recall that knowledge is not a commonsense assumption based on picturethinking, but is the fruit of the dynamic process of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. He further contends that too

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often knowledge is rooted in a naïve realism, which assumes a simple correlation between the empirical and the real. Unlike many idealists, Lonergan refuses to claim that the sensual root of human experience prohibits people from understanding and judging. Indeed, his critical realist approach allows him to argue that being, the desire to know, intends toward the real through experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. It is only through the subject’s weighing the evidence and sorting out positions and counterpositions that s/he can make a judgment and commence action. Alternatively, Levinas disputes the validity of Husserl’s transcendental reduction on other grounds; speciﬁcally, he equates the subject’s act or movement to know reality as a violent event of thematization. Levinas problematizes intentionality in the essay entitled “Nonintentional Consciousness” (1998c, 123-132). In the intentional act of making meaning or representing the subject, the subject erases the individuality of the Other, that is, ﬁxes the Other as object in the subject’s consciousness. In this thematization, the thing or person that the subject is intending to know is stripped of all its particularity and distinctiveness and is assimilated into the need and use of the subject. Levinas ﬁnds the traditional act of knowing hostile toward the integrity of the Other. Therefore, Levinas, when compared to Lonergan, is less conﬁdent in the meritorious intentions of knowing. Instead of reworking knowledge as he rewrites subjectivity, Levinas seems to give up on the possibility of knowledge altogether. He claims that knowledge is synonymous with thematization and rejects the primacy of the rational in hope of constructing, what Hand calls a “post-rational ethics” (Levinas 1989, v.). Levinas associates knowing with a grasping, a handling that he interprets as an aggressive act that assimilates otherness into the self. For Levinas, hence, before grasping there is a desire for the Other. This feeling, not reason or knowledge, grounds intersubjective relations. Even with this said, it will become apparent in the following chapters that Levinas later develops a more nuanced understanding of reason and knowledge. For now, however, it is important to keep in mind two fundamental points that appear to cause conﬂict in the dialogue between Lonerganian and Levinasian thought. First, Levinas’s understanding of being is distinct from that of Lonergan’s thought.

Second, these conﬂicting notions of being relate to disparate interpretations of knowledge.

1.5 Conclusion In this chapter we have mapped the way in which Lonergan’s and Levinas’s renditions of subjectivity are shaped by particular philosophical problems. Lonergan, while working within the modern tradition of interpreting the subject as rational and free, became dissatisﬁed with the Enlightenment’s version of subjectivity. At the same time, Levinas, found the existential and psychoanalytic approaches to subjectivity inadequate. In the second half of this chapter, we examined the ways in which Lonerganian and Levinasian analysis can be understood to be both dialogical and incommensurable. They agree that the immanent posture of the modern subject is problematic, that this posture leads to an egregious ocularcentrism, and that integrating questions of corporeality would enhance the current interpretation of subjectivity. However, Lonergan’s and Levinas’s positions seem incommensurable because they conﬂict over the deﬁnitions of being and knowing. Signiﬁcantly, their common concerns about the importance of intersubjective relations temper the seemingly polemical issues.

2 The Open Posture of Lonergan’s Subject

I

n the previous chapter, we interrogated Lonergan's and Levinas's respective philosophical backgrounds.By sketching Lonergan’s understanding of Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche, we were able to grasp how Lonergan both contests the Enlightenment renditions of the subject and proposes a notion of authentic subjectivity. In this chapter Lonergan’s contribution to Christian anthropology is further explored. Arguably, Lonergan’s greatest achievement is urging theologians to advert to their cognitional operations, to enter into the process of self-appropriation, and to interrogate the interconnectedness of knowing and doing. Equally important, however, is his discussion of how we are not only obligated to know and act in the face of the Other, but also how we are compelled to be attentive to our feelings for the Other. Each of these issues is signiﬁcant to any discussion of subjectivity in the postmodern, pluralistic world. In order to sufﬁciently address Lonergan’s contribution to this conversation, I focus on four themes: his transition from faculty psychology to intentionality analysis; his interpretation of three dimensions of authentic subjectivity; his investigation of the subject’s openness to alterity; and his concern for the embodiment of the subject. It is important to note that the following analysis of authentic subjectivity highlights Lonergan’s later work in which he ﬂeshes out his ideas on intentionality analysis and historical consciousness. David Tracy (1970) maps Lonergan’s thought in three phases. These stages range from his earliest work on Aquinas, to a new context which shifts the focus from Aristotelian theory and the Manualist Tradition to questions of intelligibility, and ﬁnally to a modern context that moves past the question of intelligibility to the culminating issues of meaning and history. It is during this last period, which emphasizes meaning and history, in which Lonergan presented his paper, The Subject (1968), and wrote Method in Theology (1971c). These two

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works are very important to our conversation. If we fail to grasp the shifts in Lonergan’s thought and contextualize his work solely within a Thomistic framework, we run the risk of missing both the expansiveness and distinctiveness of Lonergan’s contribution to Roman Catholic theology, as well as his emphasis on affective intentionality, which is integral to the subject’s openness to alterity.

2.1 Transition from Faculty Psychology to Intentionality Analysis Lonergan’s goal was to bring Roman Catholic theology up to the level of the times by freeing it from the stagnant language of faculty psychology. The Encyclopedia of Psychology asserts that faculty psychology originates in Greek thought and refers to the belief that the mind is an aggregate of “separate powers or faculties” (1994, 6). In On the Soul and On Memory and Reminiscence, Aristotle explains the human being in terms of ﬁve faculties of sense, including common sense, imagination, memory, active mind, and passive mind (1941, 534-617). These categories remained part of philosophical analysis through the medieval period, during which Aquinas reformulated Aristotle’s claims in terms of the powers of will and intellect. Lonergan reworks these notions in order to avoid the compartmentalization of knowledge and being. He eschews the language of faculty and essence because such rhetoric fails to account for the dynamic development of the subject. Contrary to the discourse of faculty psychology, Lonergan explains human cognition in terms of time, decision, choice, and destiny. Interestingly, this shift allows him to speak of the intentional and existential dimensions of being human. In the Foreword to Bernard Tyrrell’s book, Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of God, Lonergan writes about the shift to intentionality analysis: Where faculty psychology leans to a priority of intellect over will, intentionality analysis has to conceive questions and answers for deliberation as sublating questions and answers both for reﬂection and for intelligence. There follows a fuller and happier apprehension

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of the human person and, in particular, of the human person’s approach to God (Tyrrell 1974, ix-x).

As we have already discussed in the previous chapter, Lonergan employs the language of intention in order to highlight how the subject intends meaning and being in human knowing. For some, like Levinas, the rhetoric of intending may seem to connote a conceptualist view of knowing—if one intends something, one already has an idea of what that thing or person is. Yet, according to Lonergan’s appropriation of Husserlian phenomenology, the activity of intending is a rigorous and open survey of the situation. If we intend a question, we both grapple with the question and are opened by it. It becomes clear that Lonergan uses the Husserlian term ‘intentional’ in opposition to a natural or essentialist reading of a person or thing. For Lonergan, Husserlian intentionality refers to the process of aiming toward something, but not necessarily in an objectifying or aggressive manner. In other words, intentionality does not refer to an opposition between being active or passive and/or a dichotomy between subject and object; rather, it aims at understanding the external object in itself, in all its particularities. From Lonergan’s perspective, intentionality aims at an explanatory understanding of something, including its particularity and difference. Furthermore, we will soon realize that intentionality can and should be understood in terms of affectivity in addition to cognition and volition. Intending a relationship with another transcends cognition and will, and involves feeling and passion. By appropriating Husserl’s intentionality analysis on a number of levels, Lonergan is able to emphasize the rational, existential, and affective nature of being human. This allows Lonergan’s authentic subject to be a developing subject who demonstrates most fully his/her authenticity in knowing, in decision, and in responsibility. Below, we will continue to explore Lonergan’s rewriting of subjectivity in terms of intentionality through an analysis of the human person as a developing subject whose consciousness ﬂows and becomes differentiated as s/he opens for God and others. As Lonergan transitions from explaining being human beyond faculty psychology, through the discourse of Husserlian phenomenology, he emphasizes the subject as an ideal, rather than as an essence. The

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notion of ideal does not relate to idealism, but points to the potential of all people to develop into what Lonergan deems authentic subjects. This means that all people have the capacity to become rational, self-conscious subjects by engaging the empirical, intellectual, reasonable, and rational levels of the structure of human being. To deﬁne the human in terms of a potential or an ideal instead of as a static essence underscores the notion of a person on a journey of becoming an authentic subject. Protean and malleable, the human being is not some x or essence, but rather a dynamic and developing subject: “The concrete being of man, then, is being in process” (Lonergan 1997, 648). Put even more graphically, the subject is not some lump of carbon compounds, water, blood, and spirit, but a complex unity of the spiritual and biological dimensions of corporeality. It might help to note that Lonergan’s rejection of essences is related to his stance against the theoretical positions of positivism (a naïve realism) and conceptualism. A positivist attitude correlates the world that is seen or taken for granted with the world of reality, what Lonergan calls the already-out-there-now-real. This world is posited by the naïve person without any attention to how meaning mediates the world. Indeed, conceptualism thrives in such a milieu. Again, conceptualism is the practice by which we impute meaning onto persons and objects without sufﬁcient investigation into the particularities of the person or thing in question. Conceptualist thought renders the subject, as well as the object, in essentialist terms, without any regard for meaning and development. In understanding the subject as an ideal, rather than as an essence, Lonergan avoids both dangers of positivism and conceptualism. To further ﬂesh out how Lonergan understands this tension between essence and ideal it is necessary to examine his interpretation of what he calls classicist and pluralist mentalities. According to Lonergan, a classicist notion of culture derives from European and European-American approximation of Greek ideals. This approximation conceives of itself normatively, and claims that it alone represents culture, that all else is uncultured. This static view of culture problematically ignores historicity or contingency. Lonergan rejects this arrogant, classicist notion of culture, and instead develops and privileges a notion of culture as

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pluralist, that is, changing and diverse. A pluralist mentality assumes culture to be contingent, dynamic, and developing. Lonergan’s understanding of the human subject and human culture as ideal and pluralistic, respectively, poses signiﬁcant implications for theological anthropology, both for inculturation and for constructing theology in a postmodern context. For instance, if cross-cultural evangelization is to be appropriate, Christians must grapple with cultural diversity. As Lonergan states, “a classicist would feel it was perfectly legitimate for him to impose his culture on others. For he conceives culture normatively, and he conceives his to be the norm…. In contrast, the pluralist knows a multiplicity of cultural traditions,” and he works within those traditions to communicate the Christian truth (1971c, 363). In addition, Lonergan’s emphasis on the development of the human person as well as on a pluralist mentality makes new demands for the theologian. For theology to be effective in a global, postmodern milieu it needs to be open to questions about otherness and justice. The pluralist not only allows for these questions to emerge, but demands that they do. Signiﬁcantly, as Lonergan’s notion of pluralism strongly considers the development of humanity and issues related to cultural diversity, it does not fall prey to relativism. The ground of all his claims is that being human demands not only being attentive to otherness, but also engaging it through understanding, action, and love. According to Lonergan, although human beings are diverse in their bodies, worldviews, and cultures, they are uniﬁed by the operations of the human mind and the desire for transcendence. And, even though meaning certainly depends upon context, understanding the context is always possible. The process of knowing is not assuming you know what someone needs, wants, or how they live, but humbly and ardently asking questions about the complex reality through which other people live. As we begin to think about human beings as having the potential to know in their particular context rather than being static and all the same, we move toward a pluralist attitude. In his discussion of pluralism, Lonergan highlights two distinctive notions of humanity which emerge from classicist and empirical mentalities. The classicist mentality grasps humanity as a static and unchanging abstraction (essence), while historical mindedness empha-

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sizes the development and performative orientation of subjectivity and culture (ideal). In “Transition from a Classicist World-View,” Lonergan privileges the performative and protean subject in his comparison between the “two different apprehensions of man”: One can apprehend man abstractly through a deﬁnition that applies omni et soli and through properties veriﬁable in every man. In this fashion one knows man as such; and man as such, precisely because he is an abstraction, also is unchanging…. On the other hand, one can apprehend mankind as a concrete aggregate developing over time, where the locus of development and, so to speak, the synthetic bond is emergence, expansion, differentiation, dialectic of meaning and of meaningful performance (1996b, 5-6).

As we continue to explore being human in postmodernity, we will grasp more ﬁrmly how a protean, developmental notion of subjectivity, to which Lonergan alludes, is a helpful heuristic for discussing openness to alterity. As you might have already anticipated, Lonergan’s interpretation of the subject as an ideal implicitly emphasizes the notion of the person as subject, rather than as substance. Speciﬁcally, Lonergan delineates the difference between substance and subject by comparing the subject’s cognitive activity during the states of waking, sleeping, and dreaming. When a person sleeps, s/he is not a subject, but rather is a substance. In “Existenz and Aggiornamento,” Lonergan declares “To be a subject, one must at least dream” (1988, 222). Yet, dreaming does not represent a subject in his/her fullest, most “luminousness” being, for authentic or luminous being can be enacted only through responsible actions, in waking (222). According to Lonergan, subjectivity is never merely given, but achieved through rigorous engagement with and appropriation of our conscious and intentional operations. In other words, the person is not automatically a subject, but becomes a subject, that is, appropriates his/her subjectivity by being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible in relation to the world. Self-appropriation, a term frequently used by Lonergan and Lonergan scholars alike, refers to the way in which “[o]ne discovers one’s true self, one consciously possesses one’s dynamic self to the extent that

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such a conscious self-possession transforms one’s very life and effects a self-transcendence” (Naickamparambil 1997, 45). This process of discovery seems to echo Heidegger’s interpretation of being. Still, Lonergan’s notion of self-appropriation concerns the subject’s capacity for self-transcendence for God and others, while Heidegger’s subject lacks such capacity. Thomas Naickamparambil, in his study of cognitional self-appropriation, illustrates how self-appropriation invites the person to move beyond the world of immediacy (data of sense) to the world of consciousness (the interior cognitional process of the subject) in order to access the transformative potential of the subject (71). Furthermore, M. Shawn Copeland adds that self-appropriation not only asks people to discover who they are, but to understand the implications of their knowing for the human good (1991, 34-38). For Lonergan readers, the human cognitional process, which leads to self-appropriation, is critical to social development and progress. Self-afﬁrmation and self-appropriation of the subject are inextricably connected to his/her responsibility, choice, and decision. It is not that the subject decides to be active, but that s/he is thrown into a situation that already demands understanding and responsibility. Like the existentialist predicament of being ‘thrown’ (geworfen) into a situation, Lonergan’s subject is thrown into a process of desiring to know. As Terry Tekippe puts it: The German Existentialists used that word [geworfen] to characterize the human situation: we do not choose to be; we ﬁnd ourselves already thrown into existence. No one asked our opinion; we are simply here, and have to make the best of it. Knowing is simply a particular case: we are thrown into knowing, without ever having been consulted about it. By the time we become explicitly aware of it, it is far too late to decide whether we want to become knowers or not; we already are (1996, 112).

The subject is opened, jarred, and reoriented to knowledge as well as to obligation by way of this thrownness. Such openness constitutes normativity in the human subject. This normative subjectivity transcends the conﬁnes of substance by being continually opened by asking and answering questions, thereby developing into a subject.

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The second shift in Lonergan’s explanation of the subject in terms of intentionality is to the notion of ﬂow and differentiation of consciousness. Lonergan refers to the ﬂow of consciousness in terms of a “succession of enlargements of consciousness, a succession of transformations of what consciousness means” (1997, 636). These “enlargements” occur through transformations in the dynamic structure of the ﬂow of consciousness: Waking replaces dreaming. Intelligent inquiry emerges in waking to compound intelligent with empirical consciousness. Critical reﬂection follows understanding and formulation to add rational consciousness to intelligent and empirical consciousness. But the ﬁnal enlargement and transformation of consciousness consists in the empirically, intelligently, and rationally conscious subject: (1) demanding conformity of his doing and his knowing, and (2) acceding to that demand by doing reasonably (636-637).

Consciousness expands and grows with the progression of the disinterested and detached desire to know; and as our consciousness ﬂows and expands, we become more attentive to the actual knowing process. Here, understanding unfolds and enlarges in time. Related to Lonergan’s thought that the human ﬂow of consciousness enlarges in time is Husserl’s theory that human existence is embedded in a temporal ﬂow. For Lonergan, the category of consciousness determines the subject’s authenticity. Lonergan is very ﬁrm on this point. Still, in theology and philosophy, a consensus on the meaning of consciousness is difﬁcult, if not impossible to reach. For instance, Lonergan understands consciousness differently than Levinas. Although both thinkers support the notion of a disinterested desire (to know, in Lonergan’s case, to be for-the-Other, in Levinas’s case), Levinas equates consciousness with intentionality and argues that such a predisposed posture prohibits authentic disinterestedness. Nevertheless, like Lonergan, Levinas argues that sleeping is a complete denial of desire and responsibility. For Levinas, the category of “insomnia” becomes a privileged state of attentiveness without interest or object, and desire rooted in insomnia is “a disinterested wakefulness” (Purcell 1998, 201). Lonergan’s theory of the ﬂow of consciousness might be strengthened, if in the spirit

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of Levinas, an extra step was added between sleeping and waking, namely the activity of the insomniac—vigilance without an object. One could argue that it is this state of insomnia that Lonergan has counterfactually in mind when he claims that the subject’s normative stance is one of being attentive. In addition to emphasizing the ﬂow of consciousness of the human person, Lonergan’s subject has the potential for engaging reality by what he calls the differentiation of consciousness. In his explanation of this differentiation, Lonergan refers to the ability of human beings to advert to and distinguish among various sectors of consciousness. On one level, the human person shifts from the world of immediacy to the world mediated by meaning. In the world of immediacy, what is seen is believed to be reality. Lonergan links this world with the life of an infant. As we become adults, however, we learn to distinguish what is sensed from what is real. We begin to understand ourselves as situated within history, culture, and context. In the following passage, Lonergan distinguishes between undifferentiated and differentiated consciousness, between the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning: If one is to understand this enormous diversity, one must, I believe, advert to the sundry differentiations of human consciousness. A ﬁrst differentiation arises in the process of growing up. The infant lives in a world of immediacy. The child moves towards a world mediated by meaning. For the adult the real world is the world mediated by meaning, and his philosophic doubts about the reality of that world arise from the fact that he has failed to advert to the difference between the world of immediacy and, on the other hand, the criteria for the world mediated by meaning (1971a, 13).

On another level, within the world mediated by meaning, the human subject further develops into the spheres of commonsense, scientiﬁc, religious, scholarly, and philosophical consciousness. Moreover, these spheres represent distinctive ways of knowing and intending meaning in the world mediated by meaning. For example, when the subject adverts to commonsense, s/he is acting spontaneously in intersubjective relationships. Here, the subject learns by practice and mimesis. When the subject develops theory and method for his/her actions,

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s/he begins to embody a scientiﬁcally differentiated consciousness. This allows the subject to attempt to gain explanatory knowledge by effectively articulating the theoretical underpinnings of the situation, by transcending the world of self. Similarly, a person can develop a religious, scholarly, and philosophical differentiation of consciousness in his/her journey toward authentic subjectivity. As the subject reﬁnes his/her capacity for differentiating among and adverting to the various differentiations of consciousness, s/he participates in and performs the developmental and protean dimension of being human. So far, our analysis of Lonergan’s transition from categories of faculty psychology to the discourse of intentionality has entailed two shifts in thought. First, we noted that Lonergan promotes an understanding of the human person that is not merely based in the static concept of substance, but is framed in terms of a developing subject. Second, we also grappled with his notions of ﬂow and differentiation of consciousness in order to stress the dynamic structure of human consciousness. These ideas lead to a third shift: from self to God and others. The aforementioned shifts to intentionality analysis point to the developing, rational, and willing nature of being human. Nonetheless, there is a dimension of Lonergan’s thought on self-transcendence that captures the affective dimension of being human. Transcendence in its fullest sense refers to the subject’s ability to develop a relationship with God and others that is based in his/her openness to conversion on intellectual, moral, and religious grounds. Conversion on any level positions the subject in a stance of outwardness and relationship with others. I have discussed already intellectual conversion as it relates to the subject’s self-appropriation as a knower, and emerges when knowing is not merely taking a look. In an essay entitled “Cognitional Structure,” Lonergan explains that “an act of ocular vision may be perfect as ocular vision; yet if it occurs without any accompanying glimmer of understanding, it is mere gaping; and mere gaping, so far from being the beautiful ideal of human knowing, is just stupidity” (1988, 206). Human beings can overcome this stupidity by intellectual conversion, by authentically experiencing, understanding, judging and deciding their experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Beyond intellectual conversion there is moral conversion or the shift that occurs in his/her values because

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s/he is opened intellectually or religiously. One’s openness to moral conversion implies that values are more important than satisfaction, that the good supersedes personal, egoist need. The subject’s religious conversion, ﬁnally, relates to falling in love with God, and is characterized by a complete reorientation of mind and heart toward God. In being-in-love-with-God, the subject is repositioned into a posture of openness, characterized by grace and charity. Notice how affective being, that is being in relationship, is the ground of authentic subjectivity. It becomes clear that the process of conversion, at any level, invites the human person to transcend his/herself and to be open for God and others. Less clear is the fact that conversion is not a simple turning or change, but a transformation that not only affects the subject, but also his/her relationships with God and others. In “Theology in Its New Context,” Lonergan writes: It [conversion] is not merely a change or even a development; rather, it is a radical transformation on which follows, on all levels of living, an interlocked series of changes and developments. What hitherto was unnoticed becomes vivid and present. What had been of no concern becomes a matter of high import. So great a change in one’s apprehension and one’s values accompanies no less a change in oneself, in one’s relations to other persons, and in one’s relations to God (1988, 65-66).

As one would imagine, conversion is challenging. It is so difﬁcult that it can even sometimes be blocked, thwarted, or skewed by what Lonergan calls bias or scotoma, a blind spot, which causes the subject to be alienated from adequate knowing, appropriate doing, and lifegiving loving. Lonergan refers to this alienation as bias and in Insight discusses four avenues by which bias occurs (1997, 214-220). First, there is the dramatic bias that usually occurs by way of psychological factors, leading to the repression of vital information. Mirroring a Freudian censor, this bias prohibits us from having insights about ourselves that would reveal negative feelings of fear, prejudice, and anger. Adverse or negative feelings can break down relations with others, rather than help build them. In addition to dramatic bias, there is the individual bias that occurs because we are not able to overcome our egoism and we refuse to be accountable to value, community,

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and God. The egoist embodies this bias, and by “imagining others to be inferior and unworthy of his or her concern,” thwarts progress and further questioning (Flanagan 1997, 82). Here, intersubjective relations are broken by individualistic needs. When individual bias reaches the macro-level, an insidious group bias develops. Such an attitude often arises when one group or class is socially advantaged over another. This pervades so much of our world, and prevents the ﬂourishing of peace and justice. Finally, Lonergan speaks of general bias to which most of humanity is prone. It results from the inability to get beyond the particulars of the human landscape or the realm of commonsense meaning. To counter the problems of general bias, Lonergan argues for an explanatory and higher viewpoint, which can correct the egocentric, descriptive, and limited viewpoint that fosters general bias. There needs to be a complementarity between interested or commonsense knowledge and disinterested or theoretical knowledge in a community in order to limit general bias. All types of bias are integral to our conversation because they can result in decline. For Lonergan, decline refers to the deterioration of the social situation, and results from the subject’s refusal of insight leading to an inattentive, unintelligent, irrational, irresponsible, and unfeeling posture toward the world. But conversion, on any or all levels, struggles against bias that leads to decline because it draws the subject out of a self-centered posture to a stance for the human good, for others, for God, and opens him/her to insight. In conversion, good becomes realized not only as a possibility, but also as a responsibility. That which is good, according to Lonergan, is concrete. Necessary to the realization of the human good are the components of skills, feelings, values, beliefs, and cooperation. These components build on one another, and goodness results from the individual and cooperative engagement of these activities in light of the desire to understand. In Method in Theology (1971c), Lonergan charts the structure of the human good (48). From his graphic depiction of the human good, it is clear that the structure does not articulate a static, abstract, or ideal notion of the good. Alternatively, the structure maps the possibilities for human authenticity, development, and progress. Lonergan’s dynamic structure of the human good emphasizes the way in which the individual’s capacity, potential, and freedom for a

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particular good is inextricably connected to the good of order, which represents a balance between personal and communal goals. Although what the individual deems necessary and good is important for the human good, for Lonergan, the needs and values of the community temper any individual egoism or bias. Related to the way in which Lonergan stresses the importance of community is his nuanced understanding of feelings and values. Lonergan explains in “Natural Right and Historical Mindedness” that feelings are important because they “reveal values to us;” yet, feelings alone are not enough to attain the human good (1985, 173). As feelings open humanity to what is good, “they do not bring commitment about” (173). Commitment arises beyond feelings, in understanding, judging, and in the free act of decision. In addition to affectivity, therefore, volition and cognition bring about the good. Moreover, only in cooperation and collaboration with others can the good of the order be achieved. Indeed, progress for the community depends on the values that foster the good of the order. Starting with values at the vital level, that is, values that promote basic living, like food and shelter, enacting the human good entails questioning values at the social (i.e. political, economic, and technological), cultural (both everyday culture [commonsense] and reﬂexive culture [theoretical]), personal, and the religious level. Developing toward the human good transpires through our dynamic experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding what is valuable, beginning with humanity’s most basic (vital) needs and culminating in our transcendent (religious) aspirations.

2.2 Lonergan’s Authentic Subject From the above study of Lonergan’s shift from faculty psychology to intentionality analysis, it should be clear that Lonergan understands the authentic subject as intellectually, morally, and religiously postured or oriented toward the good. I use the term posture because it emphasizes the corporeal dimension of being human. Posture connotes the total person—not merely the head or heart—in the process of becoming a subject. The subject’s stance embodies his/her ethics of thinking and reveals initiative toward responsible action. The human person cannot

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masquerade as Lonergan’s good existential subject; s/he strains in order to maintain an authentic stance in relation to the world. All the while this stance is sustained by feelings of love and affection. Below, we will explore the distinctive posture of Lonergan’s authentic and converted subject in three phases. Whereas in the previous section I mapped broadly Lonergan’s theoretical shift from essence to intentionality in Christian anthropology, I now deﬁne speciﬁcally the three marks of Lonergan’s authentic subject. First, I examine how pure unrestricted desire or wonder invites the subject toward transcendence. Second, I explore the way in which the subject strives toward transcendence through understanding. Lastly, I emphasize how the spontaneity of intersubjective relations further positions the subject’s transcendence in relation to others. My discussion of wonder and desire loosely mirrors Jerome Miller’s essay, “All Love is Self-Surrender” (1995). In that text, Miller shows that contemporary continental thinkers are not the only philosophers for whom desire is a category of love and justice. According to Miller, Lonergan’s interpretation of desire is not about self-possession, as some postmodern thinkers including Lyotard and Levinas would have us believe. Rather, Lonergan’s interpretation of desire is about surrendering one’s heart (i.e. whole self ) for others. Though I disagree with Miller’s reading of Levinas, I wholeheartedly support his claim that surrender is not a self-activated process, but a gift of desire that is “incommensurable with any economy that intelligence might have instituted on its initiative” (74). As we begin to explore Lonergan’s notion of authentic subjectivity, we would be right to notice that his emphasis on the subject’s unrestricted desire to know is quite stark. This unrestricted desire or wonder is inextricably connected to authenticity, for if the person lacks the desire to understand, bias cannot be transcended. At the heart of Lonergan’s anthropology is a great conﬁdence in the human person to know, act, and love the Other. Through knowing, acting, and loving, we become human beings. It is imperative to realize that being is not a simple term for Lonergan. As he claims that the subject’s unrestricted desire to know intends and leads to being, Lonergan argues that being is not an object that is already-out-there-now-real,

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but that which is intended in questioning. In our asking of questions, we become authentic because of our intention to know. In our innate desire to know, this wonder, “a wanting, a desire to understand” is a constitutive factor in authentic subjectivity (Flanagan 1997, 17). The effect of wonder and questioning opens humanity to the possibility of being human, of transcendence. Being open to wonder is never easy. In our ordinary lives, a line of questioning is often based on having a certain answer in mind. This situation is best illustrated in the classroom. Sometimes students are frustrated by a question because they do not know what the teacher expects of them. They do not realize that the only expectation is for them to think critically. The same logic can be found in Lonergan’s thought on wonder. For Lonergan, the wonder of the authentic subject is not intent on proving an already assumed idea, but rather being open to the unknown. The authentic subject demonstrates humility through his/her disinterestedness. Notice that there is a charitable, open disposition to wonder. Even as Lonergan’s authentic subject is open to wonder and the unknown without bias and preconceived notions, s/he is still called to judge and act in the face of the Other. In other words, although Lonergan’s anthropology respects the ambiguity of situations, it requires humanity to make decisions. It does not allow for a relativist stance. As a result, we must accept the responsibility of our judgments. In “Method in Catholic Theology,” Lonergan writes: “Minds reach knowledge only through judgment” (1996a, 39). Arguably, Lonergan does not valorize wonder for wonder’s sake, but interprets wonder as the impetus of our experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding in relation to others. Too often, however, we fall into the trap of relativism and become complacent with and tolerant of every opinion. For instance, in a media driven society, it is not too strong to suggest that as images of violence and suffering constantly bombard us, we become confused, disoriented, and deadened. Such a numb state is congenial to relativism. Even as our judgments are slowed down by the constant “cinematic ﬂow of representations,” Lonergan argues that an inactive posture toward such events is problematic, if not impossible (1997, 355). We cannot pretend as if representations and

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situations do not matter, for these situations posture us in obligation and responsibility: We are committed, not by knowing what it is and that it is worth while, but by an inability to avoid experience, by the subtle conquest in us of the Eros that would understand, by the inevitable aftermath of that sweet adventure when a rationality identical with us demands the absolute, refuses unreserved assent to less that the unconditioned and, when that is attained, imposes upon us a commitment in which we bow to an immanent Anankê (Lonergan 1997, 355-356).

It is in this statement of the spontaneity and unpredictability of desire that the ethical force of Lonergan’s thought surfaces. As long as the world surrounds us and community exists we are implicated in the engagement with the real and are committed to action and justice. It is interesting to note that, although he has a deep respect for the skeptic, Lonergan insists that skepticism can only be a temporary position. In his explanation of self-knowledge, Lonergan argues that a person cannot claim that s/he is not a knower without being contradictory. Moreover, a person cannot assert that s/he does not know because such a response demonstrates knowing. The only response to the question of whether or not one is a knower is a “yes” or silence (Lonergan 1997, 353). Western European philosophy’s fascination with the power of wonder obviously is not limited to the thought of Lonergan: “Ever since its foundation, wonder has been philosophy’s virtue” (Nancy 1997, 66). In the beginning of his “Metaphysics,” Aristotle boldly claims, “All men by nature desire to know” (1941, 689). Lonergan follows in this tradition in his assertion that authentic subjectivity emerges in this being opened up by wonder and challenged to transcend oneself in the dynamic process of knowing and loving. It becomes apparent that Lonergan’s understanding of wonder is not a solitary activity. It is actually inspired by someone or something outside the subject. Wonder emerges in a moment of intersubjectivity or spontaneous dynamism when we are posed with a question by the Other: “Ques-

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tioning, then, is a spontaneous, a priori way of knowing your own not knowing, and of leading you toward an insight” (Flanagan 1997, 95). Authentic subjectivity is born in the eros to know, that is, in the birth of the question, which leads the person to a posture of wanting to transcend his/her previous horizon. This potential for transcendence is the second deﬁning characteristic of Lonergan’s authentic subject that we need to examine. Wonder opens the subject to transcendence. For Lonergan, transcendence does not refer to the shedding of one’s skin, but to the development of a person cognitively, ethically, and religiously. Transcendence mirrors the intellectual, moral, and religious conversion, which I previously explained, and is based in the transcultural foundation of the subject. Here, transcultural does not mean that all humans are the same regardless of their experiences or context, but that the structure of human knowing is present in all humans throughout various times, periods, and cultures. Thus, that which is known is not transcultural, but the structure for knowing is. The potential for human creativity, for experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding is the transcultural. Signiﬁcantly, similar to the way Lonergan nuances the term ‘transcultural,’ he ﬁnesses the notions of ‘foundations’ and ‘foundational.’ Contemporary continental thinkers resist and debunk foundationalism because it connotes something that is limiting, controlling, dominating, and totalitarian. For instance, Jean-François Lyotard argues that foundations totalize and erase all otherness by way of reductionist concepts and crushing master narratives (1993a; 1993b). Indeed, it appears that to be a foundationalist is to claim that there is some overarching story, metanarrative, arche, end, or intention for all of humanity, regardless of one’s predicament and life experience. Theologian John E. Thiel further denotes foundations as “beliefs or experiences that are certain in themselves, and that in turn support the beliefs derived from them in an extended system of knowledge” (1994, 118). Lonergan’s project, however, does not interpret foundations as a set of beliefs and does not ﬁll those foundations with some arbitrary content or concept. His work clariﬁes foundations to mean the personal embodiment of our commitments. In a real sense, we are our foundations.

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Lonergan illustrates the subject’s transcultural, foundational potential for transcendence in terms of a rock. He writes: “The rock, then, is the subject in his consciousness, unobjectiﬁed attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility” (1971c, 20). The way in which the subject demonstrates authentic or inauthentic subjectivity is what constitutes his/her foundations. Authenticity here does not denote a Heideggerian authenticity, because such authenticity according to Lonergan is self-centered; rather authenticity refers to the subject’s openness to conversion—it is what fortiﬁes the rock. As personal identities are always shifting according to a person’s position, context, network of relations, and history, the rock, core, or the foundation of the subject remains in his/her action of knowing, doing, and loving. The one human nature of humanity resides in each person’s desire to know and love God and others. For Lonergan, “the fundamental question is: Who am I? It can be answered in many different ways, since we have a number of different, emergent identities. However, our foundational identity is that of a concrete, contingent knower, chooser, lover” (Flanagan 1997, 12). Foundations, more than any concrete content, are about commitments. Realizing our commitments and being opened in transcendence are not dependent on just any theory of cognition, but on the correct appropriation of the activity of knowing. While correct appropriation of the structure of knowing leads to self-transcendence, impediments remain. Recall from Chapter One that Lonergan isolates three forms of the inauthentic subject of modernity: the truncated subject, the immanentist subject, and the alienated subject. In the ﬁrst case, transcendence is thwarted by the truncated subject or the Cartesian positivist subject who equates what s/he sees with reality. In the second case, transcendence is frustrated by the immanentist subject, whose knowledge is limited to representations and ideals. Lonergan postulates that Kantian idealist thought fails on the level of judgment because the immanentist subject refuses to judge his/her experience and insists that all knowledge is based on representations of the real. The idealist, therefore, is inclined to believe that all images of reality are equal. Furthermore, this same idealist/immanentist subject internalizes or retains information as pictures, ideals, and representations and refuses to make a public commitment to reality. Although Lonergan upholds

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the importance of the withdrawal to interiority, he claims that the retreat into interiority cannot be an end in itself. Rather, this is a reﬂective step in the dynamic process of knowing, which culminates in a posture of responsibility and personal commitment. Interiority is the level at which the subject engages the cognitional process, that is, objectiﬁes it in order to understand the implications of knowing for oneself as well as for others. This reference to interiority is critical because it pinpoints where Lonergan both continues and breaks from modern interpretations of subjectivity. In his work, Sources of the Self (1989), Charles Taylor explains how the notion of inwardness or interiority becomes complicated after the Enlightenment. Previous to the advent of modernity, interiority referred to a sacred space. As in the case of Augustine’s theology, inwardness was understood as “the ‘space’ in which we come to encounter God” (140). Nevertheless, Taylor argues that Descartes’s interpretation of inwardness moves to objectify this space by assuming that one can extract oneself (cogito) from the space and survey it. Eventually reﬂection upon oneself began to connote seeing, objectifying, reifying this space as somehow disconnected from the mind, rather than the mind and space being inextricably connected. Taylor deﬁnes this subject of modernity as a ‘disengaged subject’ in which the person objectiﬁes the world through a posture of inward turning: [T]he modern ideal of disengagement requires a reﬂexive stance. We have to turn inward and become aware of our own activity and of the processes that form us. We have to take charge of constructing our own representation of the world, which otherwise goes on without order and consequently without science; we have to take charge of the processes by which associations form and shape our character and outlook. Disengagement demands that we stop living in the body or within our traditions or habits, and, by making them objects for us, subject them to radical scrutiny and remaking (174-175).1

Although the stance of the disengaged subject is inward, egoistic, and limited, it masquerades as objective and unencumbered. The disen1

For a sustained discussion of Taylor’s ‘disengaged subject’ from a Lonerganian perspective, see Jim Kanaris, “Engaged Agency and the Notion of the Subject” (1996).

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gaged subject is utilitarian and employs the world around him/her for self-alone. The hunched, closed, cloistered stance of this modern subject is postured inward, rather than outward. The disposition of this subject is aggressive toward and controlling of not only oneself, but of others. In the modern tradition, this polemical posture has been deemed as normative, which has led to regress, decline, and catastrophe in history. Most deﬁnitely, the posture of the disengaged modern subject is an unacceptable disposition to Lonergan’s theory because it thwarts selftranscendence. As he nuances inwardness and reﬂection to mean, not a simple objectifying of the self, as in the case of the disengaged subject, but rather as only one step in the activity of understanding, Lonergan breaks with modern thought on interiority. The unrestricted desire to know prohibits the subject from adopting an inward posture. Instead of dismissing the validity of self-reﬂection altogether, Lonergan shows that reﬂection is only one step in the arduous task of knowing. Reﬂection on oneself comes after attending to the empirical, the experience that ﬂows through the body. Consequently, Lonergan understands the body as a fact of humanity that enables the reception of sense data, instead of something to be reiﬁed, ignored, or dismissed. The eyes are necessary for vision, the ears for hearing, and the mouth for tasting—all of which are connected to the act of knowing. It is impossible for the subject to disengage from his/her body or the world because s/he is already incarnate in the world. Still, in order to avoid becoming a disengaged subject, Lonergan’s subject is invited by wonder into questioning beyond mere reﬂections. Lonergan’s subject is obliged to understand, judge, and decide in order to achieve self-transcendence and avoid being alienated from God and others. Transcendence can be blocked by a third instance, by alienated subjectivity, which we interpreted in light of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The trap of alienation is the ﬁnal impediment to self-appropriation and self-transcendence. If the person does not take action toward the good, then s/he remains in an egoist posture as an inauthentic subject. This review of the inauthentic subjectivity of modernity illustrates how Lonergan’s transcultural, normative subject experiences transcendence through attending to the levels of consciousness, breaking free from

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picture-thinking, and making judgments and decisions in line with the good. Transcendence does not take place in isolation, but within a community and in the presence of God. Lonergan takes communal relationships seriously. This intersubjective demand is the third normative feature of the human person. Authentic subjectivity is only genuine when it admits to the tension between the spontaneous desire for intersubjectivity and the good of the larger order. Interpreting Lonergan’s use of authenticity is extremely important because it tends to be employed by various scholars in disparate fashions. For example, what distinguishes Lonergan’s notion of authenticity from that of Heidegger’s is that Lonergan’s authentic subjectivity is always in relation to another person and to the community.2 As a result, Lonergan understands Heidegger’s Dasein to be a human being who experiences, inquires, and reﬂects without afﬁrming him/herself. The activities of Dasein are understood by Lonergan as self-serving, for his/her personal beneﬁt. Heidegger’s conversion to authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) is driven by the existence of a good, but goodness for Dasein is achieved at the expense of the Other’s needs. One could argue that Dasein is in fact relational, even though anxiety, aggression, and egoism characterize this posture. Lonergan’s subject is similar to Heidegger’s in that the person is relational. However, Lonergan’s subject differs from Heidegger’s because Lonergan’s interpretation of intersubjectivity is based on knowledge and self-surrender, rather than power and egoism. Lonergan also contests Heidegger’s emphasis on being-in-the-world because it tends to collapse one’s personal horizon into that of the entire world—the universe of being. In “A Deﬁnition of Metaphysics,” Lonergan explains the shortsightedness of Dasein: “Now this universe of being is not identical with ‘my world’—Heidegger’s Welt. My world is centered on me…. This results normally in a tension between one’s own world and what is beyond one’s horizon” (1990, 182-183). Heidegger’s Dasein seems to ignore the reality of being beyond this world—a theme that we previously explored in Levinas’s critique of Heidegger. As Levinas intuits beyond being, Lonergan expresses the 2

For a comparison of Lonergan’s and Heidegger’s treatment of the authentic subject, see Joseph Flanagan, S.J., “Where the Late Lonergan Meets the Early Heidegger” (1994).

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reality of a universe beyond the subject’s personal world. Lonergan deals with the problem of the self-centered posture of Heidegger’s subject by emphasizing the importance of intersubjective relationships as a way out of one’s personal world. Above we have investigated three marks of Lonergan’s authentic subject. First, we noted how wonder functions as an impetus for transcendence. Then, we discovered how the subject, spurred on by desire, transcends his/her own ignorance through appropriating the transcultural cognitional process. Finally, the intersubjective relationship was located as the site at which wonder, questioning, and transcendence occurs for the subject. This discussion of Lonergan’s converted, authentic, and transcultural subject sets the stage for the following exploration of the subject’s posture of openness in terms of gift.

2.3 Openness of the Subject as Gift Up until this point, we have focused on wonder, transcendence, and intersubjectivity mainly in terms of knowing and doing, cognition and volition. While these facets are signiﬁcant to Lonergan’s project, there is a dimension of his work which needs to be explored more acutely. In humanity’s disinterested desire to know, to transcend self, and to be for others, there is an intending beyond mere cognition or volition. This other intending is an affective inclination, an outwardness of feeling for the Other. Lonergan addresses this outward posture for others in terms of openness. Openness is not merely a result of mind or will, but the grounding of our feeling for others. For Lonergan the human subject is graced and gifted in his/her openness. In an essay entitled “Openness and Religious Experience,” Lonergan explains the openness of humanity in three ways: openness as fact; openness as achievement; and openness as gift (1988). Although our study focuses primarily on the third level, that of openness as gift, I will summarize all three of these. One should not confuse openness with the commonsense meaning of tolerance, which is a casual stance patient of relativism. The notion of openness also should not be treated as a metaphor for

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a merely spiritual transcendence. Openness is the event by which the whole person, mind, will, and body, is challenged to transcend previous horizons by being called into question by God and others. The ﬁrst way in which the subject is open is in terms of fact. Lonergan proposes that the subject’s pure desire to know, which we previously discussed, is a fact. Openness of the subject as fact refers to the material and spiritual fabric of the human that gives impetus to wonder and leads to the process of understanding. Openness as fact entails the event in which the subject is thrown into a situation and opened by curiosity and wonder. Simply put, openness as fact is our desire to turn toward a higher viewpoint. The second phase in Lonergan’s discussion of the openness of the subject relates to his emphasis on the importance of achievement. Openness as achievement refers to the self-appropriation of the subject, that is, the person’s conscious intentions in regard to his/her desire to turn to a higher position. Achievement not only refers to the subject’s awareness of the process of understanding, but also encompasses his/her methodical veriﬁcation of objectivity, reality, and being. Paying attention to our cognitional process and being open to the self-corrective dynamism of understanding is largely what Lonergan means by openness as achievement. We are opened by our diligence to the activity of understanding. The emphasis on the attentiveness of the subject should sound familiar and call to mind the explication of the authentic and transcultural subject that we explored in the previous section. There we learned that it is not enough to experience one’s experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, but the actual process must also be duplicated. Through our achievement or as we afﬁrm ourselves as knowers, we distinguish ourselves as conscious subjects, instead of as mere drifters without knowledge of ourselves or of goodness. Still, in “Existenz and Aggiornamento,” Lonergan warns us against becoming too smug and complacent with our achievement: I have spoken of an opposite of drifting, of autonomy disposing of itself, of open-eyed, deliberate self-control. But I must not misrepresent. We do not know ourselves very well; we cannot chart the future; we cannot control our environment completely or the

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Michele Saracino On Being Human inﬂuences that work on us; we cannot explore our unconscious and preconscious mechanisms. Our course is in the night; our control is only rough and approximate; we have to believe and trust, to risk and dare (1988, 224).

Openness as achievement, then, is a lifelong journey of diligence and responsibility that requires humility, trust, and risk. Achievement opens the subject to a vulnerable position: “[T]ruly authentic knowers are continually struggling knowers, always on alert for further questions that will advance their accumulated knowing or reverse their mistaken assumptions and judgment” (Flanagan 1997, 232). Yet, the authentic subject refuses to cower in the face of struggle and risk. As s/he transcends his/her limits by posturing forward, s/he overcomes complacency, ignorance, or bias. Lonergan explains that the subject engages transcendence by “stretching forth towards the intelligible, the unconditioned, the good of value. The reach, not of his attainment, but of his intending is unrestricted” (1971c, 103). Openness as achievement is the process by which the subject is opened and invited into a posture of ascending to the good. Goodness, nonetheless, cannot be achieved by our reach alone: God moves us toward self-surrender and sparks our transcendence toward and for the good. The self-surrender that is called forth by God is part of our falling in love with God—an event that opens humanity to religious conversion and authentic subjectivity. Such an epiphany represents the third dimension of openness, as gift: As is the question of God is implicit in all our questioning, so being in love with God is the basic fulﬁllment of our conscious intentionality. The fulﬁllment brings a deep-set joy that can remain despite humiliation, failure, privation, pain, betrayal, desertion. The fulﬁllment brings a radical peace that the world cannot give. The fulﬁllment bears fruit in a love of one’s neighbor that strives mightily to bring about the kingdom of God on this earth. On the other hand, the absence of that fulﬁllment opens the way to trivialization of human life in the pursuit of fun, to the harshness of human life arising from the ruthless exercise of power, to despair about human

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welfare springing from the conviction that the universe is absurd (Lonergan 1971c, 105).

The drama of our falling in love with God invites our openness toward the good, for our neighbor, and for God. In “The Future of Christianity,” Lonergan writes that being-in-love-with-God is an “existential stance” through which transcendence occurs in the subject’s reach toward the good (1996b, 162). The stance or posture that structures the subject’s reach toward transcendence is not one of aggression and egoism, but of surrender and peace. As previously mentioned, it is too easy to imagine transcendence in commonsense terms as an episode in which we move from one place or time to another or from one skin to another. Lonergan’s technical understanding of transcendence, however, neither refers to a temporal or spatial movement or to a total biological transformation. Transcendence signiﬁes the subject’s simultaneous pushing toward and being drawn to the limits of understanding. Jean-Luc Nancy’s reading of transcendence, as a movement of pushing the limit, is a helpful heuristic for interpreting Lonergan’s notion of transcendence (1997). Accordingly, we can explicate transcendence as the invitation and achievement of the self, who is enclosed in bias and ignorance, to push beyond his/her limits toward a relationship with God, toward being opened to gifted, authentic subjectivity. This push, however, is not merely intellectual or moral, but includes a dimension of feeling, such as love, passion, or charity, that breaks the subject open. This affective feeling for the Other is where Lonergan’s concern for ethics emerges most fully. The goodness of being demands a posture of authentic subjectivity—a stance that is not dependent on the outcome for only ourselves, but for the whole of the community. This is what Lonergan calls the human good. Authentic subjectivity opens the subject to God and neighbor at all costs. Rejecting both the egoist subject who is opened over and against the world and the disembodied subject who is completely otherworldly and ethereal, Lonergan emphasizes the open, gifted subject who works within the world and in relationship with God. Signiﬁcantly, the subject, who is opened when in love with God, ﬁnds him/herself in a different bond than that of a romantic or ﬁlial

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love. In his essay entitled, “The Response of the Jesuit,” Lonergan claims that being-in-love-with-God is a relationship of “self-surrender,” “without limits or qualiﬁcations;” it is a gifted relationship with God that brings a “radical peace” (1996b, 171). In “Openness and Religious Experience,” he further emphasizes the mystical aspect of this relationship, arguing that the gift of openness is “an effect of divine grace” (1988, 187). In and through this gifted relationship, the body-subject is displaced, oriented, or postured when falling in love with God, into being responsible to his/her neighbor. Lonergan scholar, Frederick Lawrence refers to the reorientation that occurs in religious conversion as ‘displacement’ (1993, 93). The relationship with God is the ﬁnal point at which the subject is opened and converted by gift for God, others, and goodness. In the section above, we explored the openness of the subject on three levels: fact, achievement, and gift. These three levels of openness are analogous to the three normative features of the subject, including wonder, transcendence, and intersubjectivity. Openness as fact refers to the disinterested desire of the subject to know; openness as achievement stresses the subject’s self-appropriation and self-transcendence; and openness as gift emphasizes the subject’s intersubjective relations with God and others. The gift of our relationship with God concerns our mysterious love of and for God. This love transcends our gratitude and reciprocation. In being-in-love-with-God and thus opened by God, we are postured in a stance of humility, trust, and responsibility for God and for others. Clearly, as Lonergan states in “The Future of Christianity,” there is a connection between our relationship with God and our relations with others and strangers: “God’s gift of his love overﬂows into the love of one’s neighbor” (1996b, 154).

2.4 The Embodiment of Lonergan’s Subject Related to the openness of the subject for God and others in terms desire and feeling is Lonergan’s understanding of being human in corporeal terms. Recall from my introductory remarks that I alluded to the fact that affective intentionality cannot be located merely in

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terms of body. Interestingly, Lonergan’s integration of body and mind is quite progressive in that works to rid Christian anthropology of that precise danger. In this section, therefore, I focus speciﬁcally on how Lonergan connects the activities of the mind and body in his account of being human. I ﬁrst investigate how he understands the body as a receptor for cognitive activity. Then, I explore how the subject senses through various patterns of experience. A discussion of how Lonergan uniﬁes the bodily and spiritual realms into a holistic human subject completes my examination of human corporeality. Lonergan assumes that the body functions as a vehicle and receptor of memories and acts. The person as receptor, however, is not a static device or a passive mass, but an engaged subject that receives and processes information through the body. As previously mentioned, Lonergan’s explanation of the subject as an active, embodied subject resonates with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Referencing Merleau-Ponty in an essay entitled “Art,” Lonergan designates the human person as an active “feeling space” that receives data of sense (1993, 225). Insisting that the subject actively attends to his/her reception of sensations, memories, and events, Lonergan states: To be alive, then, is to be a more or less autonomous centre of activity. It is to deal with a succession of changing situations; it is to do so promptly, efﬁcaciously, economically; it is to attend continuously to the present, to learn perpetually from the past, to anticipate constantly the future (1997, 96).

The embodied subject performs as a “centre of activity;” and, the way in which the body perceives the world affects how that person understands the context and makes decisions. In addition to denoting the body as a receptor of experience, Lonergan distinguishes among the various ways or patterns by which the body receives experience. Before I embark on an investigation into the distinctive patterns of experience, it is necessary to remember how experience itself is rooted in a bodily reality. Lonergan explains: “The notion of the pattern of experience may be best approached by remarking how abstract it is to speak of sensation. No doubt, we are

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all familiar with acts of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. Still, such acts … have a bodily basis” (1997, 204-205). The body is the foundation of Lonergan’s normative subject—for without eyes there would be no seeing, without ears there would be no hearing and so on. Since it would be inadequate to lump all experience together, Lonergan divides our experience into ideal or constructed patterns of experience which are interconnected and overlapping. These patterns of experience include, but are not limited to the biological, aesthetic, intellectual, dramatic, social, psychological, and religious. The notion of a pattern of experience is amenable to our discussion of subjectivity because it allows us to magnify the complexity of human experience in terms of cognition, will, and affection. When a person smells a ﬂower, his/her biological pattern of experience is brought to the fore in the actual physical bending toward the plant and in smelling the scent with his/her olfactory apparatus. The psychological pattern of the subject may be involved if the scent of the ﬂower causes the person to remember something or someone. Lonergan’s systematizing of the patterns of experience is not meant to limit the knowing of the human subject, but to better understand it. These patterns of experience, moreover, are not directives for how humans should live life, but possibilities for humanity. The patterns do not thematize or construct the subjectivity of the human being; rather, they open the person for authentic living. Lonergan explains: “I’m not attempting an exhaustive account of possible patterns of experience. I’m trying to break down the notion that man is some ﬁxed entity…. Human lives are not all the same” (1990, 320). Lonergan introduces these patterns in order to explain the many inﬂuences on the development of the person. The ideal and authentic subject, whom we previously discussed, develops in and through attending to these patterns of experience. In this study, I focus mainly on three patterns of experience: the biological, dramatic, and social patterns of experience. The biological pattern of experience relates to the instinctive and the physiological experience of being human. By accenting the biological pattern of experience of humanity, we can underscore the reality that authentic subjects are embodied, not merely metaphorically, but literally. Furthermore, by realizing the importance of embodiment, we can start to understand how our bodies both respond to and are affected

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by external stimuli, including other people and objects. Implicit in Lonergan’s discussion of the human person is the idea that biology both conditions and is shaped by the external world. As previously stated, humanity is not static; rather, it develops. Even though our biological composition is open to development, we must also realize that our body marks our individuality. Our biology, which encompasses our sex, skin tone, physical ability, and mental capacity, particularizes us and highlights our various talents and strengths. These differences need not appear limiting; rather, they should be understood as distinctive gifts and potentialities for development. As particular embodied subjects, we engage the world. The way in which the subject deals with others in the world brings to the fore the dramatic pattern of experience: the personal narrative of the subject’s lived life in the world. Lonergan’s discussion of the dramatic pattern of experience resonates with the spontaneous intersubjectivity that we already discussed and illuminates how each person is already involved with and responsible for others. As members of communities, human beings have an obligation to move toward the goal of the human good by way of becoming authentic subjects. Lonergan’s interest in the dramatic pattern of experience of the subject should remind us of the way in which he privileges the good existentialist subject, a person who ﬁnds him/herself in a situation that demands understanding, action, and love. The social pattern of experience expresses the human person’s concrete relationships as s/he moves into the larger community. As the subject dramatically engages the world, s/he is encouraged to participate in interpersonal relations in the political, economic, and technological spheres of society. We can infer from Lonergan’s writings that as the dramatic subject transcends him/herself, s/he becomes a social subject. As social subject, the human person relies on and acts in certain institutions, plays a role in the economic well being or disintegration of the community, and either beneﬁts from or is alienated by certain technological discoveries. Indeed, the way in which we engage the world effects either progress or decline. Lonergan writes: “The dramatic subject, as practical [i.e. the social subject], originates and develops capital and technology, the economy and the state. By his intelligence he progresses, and by his bias he declines” (1997, 61). The social pat-

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tern of experience, therefore, traces the practical and concrete living of the subject among others. Even as Lonergan complexiﬁes our theological and philosophical understanding of the human person through his discussion of the patterns of experience, he warns us against interpreting the subject as stratiﬁed by experience. Lonergan argues that the subject is uniﬁed and whole through the interconnectedness of his/her spiritual and material dimensions. The body is the material base of the person and the mind provides for the spiritual foundation of the human. Indeed, these material and spiritual realities together foster the possibility of self-transcendence. Again, transcendence does not mean that the spiritual realm leaves the material realm behind, but rather means that the whole person postures forward in order to participate in the anticipation of something greater. One problem surfaces in Lonergan’s exposition of the connection between the mind and body or between the spiritual and material dimensions. At certain points in his writings Lonergan implies that the spiritual component of the human is comprehensive and thus superior to the material component. In the citation below he argues that the central form of the person is the spiritual base, seemingly undermining the importance of bodily experience: A solution seems to result from a simple principle, namely, that material reality cannot perform the role or function of spiritual reality but spiritual reality can perform the role or function of material reality … . for the spiritual is comprehensive; what can embrace the whole universe through knowledge, can provide the centre and ground of unity in the material conjugates of a single man (1997, 543).

Even as one wants to at ﬁrst argue that Lonergan’s thought contains a subtle dualism, it is necessary to realize that he is attempting to emphasize the importance of being human in terms of our feeling for others, rather than only in terms of our knowing or acting in relation to others. Moreover, as we recall Lonergan’s esteem for the corporeal phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, it becomes clear that Lonergan is fervently in favor of a Christian anthropology that integrates embodiment into the intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the subject.

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2.5 Conclusion In this chapter we have traced Lonergan’s understanding of subjectivity from his rejection of the static notions of faculty psychology to the more dynamic and protean leanings of intentionality analysis. Implicit in this discussion is Lonergan’s assumption that the subject has the potential to develop him/herself by rejecting bias and being open to intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. Through conversion, the subject journeys toward becoming an authentic subject. In the second section of the chapter, therefore, I outlined three dimensions of authentic subjectivity: the desire to know, a capacity for transcendence, and a potential for relationship with God and others in community. I then argued that by developing oneself as authentic, the subject is opened for God and others. As a result, openness became an important theme in the third section, where I explored what Lonergan meant when he explained openness of the subject by way of fact, achievement, and gift. Lastly, I demonstrated that Lonergan’s subject, unlike the disembodied subject of modernity and the overdetermined body of postmodernity, is a speciﬁc corporeal subject who is continuously challenged to know, act, and love in the face of others.

3 Levinas’s Subject as Postured for-the-Other

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evinas, like Lonergan, has a profound faith in the ability of the subject to reach authentic subjectivity. In fact, in an essay entitled, “Violence of the Face,” Levinas underscores the value in all of us to “to aspire to saintliness” (1999, 171). Also, as in the case of Lonergan, the notion of posture is crucial to Levinas’s discussion of subjectivity. Indeed for Levinas, human beings are called into a posture of saintliness through a dramatic encounter with the Other. Even as Levinas speaks of facing as that on which subjectivity is based and responds to, I am interested more in the notion of posture than of facing. Posture refers to the stance in which the subject ﬁnds his/her being in becoming open for-the-Other, rather than in terms of self.1 In order to get at the root of what Levinas means by saintliness or being for-the-Other, this chapter will unfold in four parts. In the ﬁrst section, Levinas’s notion of facing, an encounter that invites the subject into a stance of openness for-the-Other, is detailed. The implications of this openness are then explored in the second section of this chapter. From there, I show how the face calls forth the responsible subject to be opened through discourse, through the demands of time, and through physical posturing. Finally, Levinas’s gendered description of the relationship between the subject and Other concludes my investigation. In using Levinas’s thought on subjectivity to complicate and deepen our understanding of the human person in the contemporary landscape, I hope to allow the play between Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thought to guide us toward a more apt articulation of subjectivity for our postmodern context. 1

Levinas employs the phrase for-the-Other a few of his works, including the essay “God and Philosophy,” in Of God Who Comes to Mind (1998d). In his most comprehensive work, Otherwise Than Being (1998e), Levinas refers to this same approach as the “one-for-the-other.”

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3.1 Levinas’s Notion of the Face The phenomenon of facing can be detected in both his confessional and philosophical works to different degrees. As Jill Robbins has observed, “[t]he confessional writings are the place in Levinas’s work where he makes explicit the reference to Judaism that is largely implicit in the philosophical works” (1999, 43). And nowhere is his Jewish religiosity written more largely than in his description of ethics as a relation of facing. His writings on the Jewish tradition and the Talmud in Difﬁcult Freedom (1990) make apparent that the heuristic of covenantal obligation informs Levinas’s ethical notion of the face, which is rooted most speciﬁcally in the theophany in Exodus 33. In this text, God, as Other, initiates the face-to-face encounter with Moses, but never shows his actual face to Moses’s naked eye. Levinas comments on this encounter in “Revelation in the Jewish Tradition”: “The Old Testament honours Moses as the greatest of the prophets. Moses had the most direct relationship with God, described (in Exodus 33:11) as ‘face to face.’ And yet, the vision of the divine face is refused, and according to Exodus 33:23, only God’s ‘back’ is shown to Moses” (1989, 204). We can infer from Levinas’s comments that the face-to-face conversation signiﬁes a personal encounter with God, whereby God’s nearness and proximity summons humanity in obligation. Signiﬁcantly, since Moses never sees his interlocutor’s face, there remains an element of mystery, which evokes awe in the subject. The prohibition against gazing, which occurs in the theophany, accentuates the separation and alterity that exists between divinity and humanity. The tension between God’s proximity and distance leads to a paradoxical predicament in which God’s revelation is interpreted simultaneously as intimate and good, while also distant and mysterious. As the intimacy of this relationship underscores the intersubjectivity of humanity, the distance highlights the distinctiveness of both parties. In other words, even though there is a deﬁnite feeling of intimacy present in the non-visual encounter of the face, the alterity that imbues the relationship is cause for respect and responsibility. More generally, the vacillation between the proximity and distance determines the relation

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of the subject to the Other and leads to the responsible posturing of humanity for-the-Other. As Levinas discusses the ethical relation between subject and Other, we can begin to grasp that he interprets the face in two ways: as a ﬂeeting trace of the Inﬁnite (non-thematizable God), as well as a stance that people embody in their interpersonal relationships. To be sure, while Levinas intuits God as a trace in facing, devising a notion of divinity is not Levinas’s primary goal. He resists theologizing most probably because of the way in which positivist theology has reduced God to an object, a theme. His main concern, rather, is the responsibility of the subject that is called forth by the trace or passing of the Inﬁnite. Therefore, the trace cannot be deﬁned as a presence; instead, like an ethereal visitation, the trace enters and withdraws at the command of the Other, as a non-presence of the Inﬁnite. Whether facing the trace of God or of a human being, the person only becomes subject in response to the ethical relation of the face. The social relation of facing orients the person to a position of saintly subjectivity. For Levinas, evidently, being human only emerges in the face of alterity. Difference is the impetus for ethical being, for saintly subjectivity. Difference as the non-presence of the Inﬁnite or as the trace of another should make the person in question shudder and pause, that is, convert him/her to being a subject for-the-Other. Nevertheless, some traces of alterity, as stark as they may be, do not faze us. To emphasize this point, Levinas acknowledges the biblical triad of the widow, the orphan, and the poor as a trace of our irresponsibility to and ignorance of others. Far beyond these biblical references, however, we can ﬁnd instances in everyday life that call us to be moved. Testimonies of Holocaust survivors, media images of international terrorism, and statistics on global poverty are all markers of suffering that should cause us to ﬂinch and disrupt our apparently seamless lives. These images signify the needs of the Other as emergencies that call for us to respond. Yet, one wonders whether these traces incriminate us, hold us hostage, or even make us pause. Levinas’s understanding of subjectivity is predicated on a notion of being held hostage because of such emergencies.

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As hostage for-the-Other, the subject is called to care for the Other in non-totalizing ways, that is, by way of the gestures of justice, generosity, and sacriﬁce—all of which go beyond the expectation of a payback or return. The term hostage is a powerful image for Jews and Christians alike, for one cannot help but think of the moments in which Abraham’s son, Isaac, and God’s son, Jesus, are held hostage for others. Importantly, these situations are not ones of simple exchange. It is not surprising then, for Levinas, the notion of sacriﬁce must be read beyond a symmetrical substitution or equal trade. In the same discourse of Derrida, he argues that sacriﬁce should not be understood in terms equal exchange. Sacriﬁce, instead, is the gift that leaves a remainder; and in giving for-the-Other, we are fueled by the desire to offer more than is possible to give. Moreover, sacriﬁce involves a material and/or spiritual openness of the subject for the Other, which surpasses reciprocity. In the contemporary American context, openness might involve the relinquishment of power and prestige for others. Afﬁrmative action policies, for instance, involve such sacriﬁce. Levinas while not explicitly referring to these issues, forces us to think about them as he insists that in our existence we are already taking the place of another. In an essay entitled, “Philosophy and Transcendence,” he demands that we consider the problematic ways in which our well being is secured only at the cost of another’s well being (1999, 28). In sacriﬁce, nonetheless, our well being comes second to the Other’s need for justice. For Levinas, sacriﬁce is a responsibility of all for all. Being for-the-Other, whether male or female, Jew or Christian, or black or white, demands such selﬂess openness. In his introductory remarks to Time and the Other, Richard Cohen, a foremost Levinasian scholar, explains the random dimension of being chosen for-the-Other: “In the face of the Other, goodness emerges as the responsibility of the subject which has always already been responsible, prior to any explicit agreements, prior even to the subject’s ability to welcome the Other. Obligation inserts into the ego!” (Levinas 1987,18). Clearly, Levinas’s theory transcends identity politics or communities bound by race, creed, or culture. Only the need of the Other matters, for alterity’s call for community cuts across categories of accidental difference and signals persons in need of justice and solace.

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Levinas explains the need of the Other and the demand for sacriﬁce through the language of nudity and nakedness. By employing the rich rhetoric of dress, mask, and adornment, he illustrates how the trace of the face denudes, undresses, and disarms the subject: an event in which the self ’s unity is broken before the face of the Other. The subject in its approach of the Other might attempt to relate to him/her through stereotypical themes, through a mask of difference. Nevertheless, the demand and vulnerability of the Other cuts across this mask. Consequently, the subject is opened up for-the-Other as s/he is called into question by the unthematizable Other. Levinas writes in “Transcendence and Height”: The putting into question of the self is precisely a welcome to the absolutely other. The Other does not show itself to the I as a theme. Rather, the epiphany of the absolutely Other is a face by which the Other challenges and commands me through his nakedness, through his destitution. He challenges me from his humility and his height (1996, 17).

As the subject opens for the Other, the Other is naked in that s/he resists any act of thematization or objectiﬁcation. Levinas’s Other reveals him/herself only by appealing to the subject. By revealing oneself through a call, the Other maintains his/her independence from the preconceived ideas of the subject and commands the subject to notice his/her particularity and singularity. Levinas writes: “The nudity of the face is a destitution without any cultural ornament” (1986, 352). By using the phrase ‘cultural ornament’, Levinas attempts to underscore how we sometimes impute characteristics onto people without attending to their distinctiveness and particularity, hence stereotyping them. We unjustly relate to people by commonsense typing and/or a mask. For saintly subjectivity to emerge, the subject must be repositioned in a relationship with the Other, not based on masks, types, or themes, but on feeling for-the-Other. It is worth noting that the typing to which Levinas refers resonates with the ways in which Lonergan argues against the practice of conceptualism: the aggressive action where human beings ﬁx others by static and inappropriate concepts, without attending to the speciﬁc situation. As Levinas speaks of the nudity of the face, he both cautions the subject against conceptualism and alerts

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the reader to the alterity of the Other. He afﬁrms an idea of justice in which we are responsible for others beyond our masks. In addition to pinpointing the dangers of relating to others based on a type or mask, Levinas uses the term “height” to connote the radical alterity of the Other, as well as to underscore the intangible depth and excellence of the trace of the Other. In “Meaning and Sense,” Levinas explains that “height introduces a sense into being” (1996, 57). This sense accentuates the physical and spatial dimensions of the particularity of the Other and the transcendent reach of the subject for-the-Other. Through the nakedness and height of alterity, the subject is called to gifted subjectivity for-the-Other. Through the raw need and stark face of the Other, the subject is undressed, that is, made vulnerable. The subject is turned inside out as s/he is opened for-the-Other by the Other’s demand. Levinas’s commitment to the Other is not based on stereotyping or thematic reﬂection. Rather, according to Levinas’s thoughts in “Transcendence and Height,” responsible subjectivity or saintly being emerges from without, in that “the putting into question of the I by the Other is an ipso facto election, the promotion to a privileged place on which all that is not-I depends” (1996, 18). Saintly subjectivity is not about being good or nice, but about one’s entire existence being reoriented for others. Playing with the Catholic notion of sainthood is not accidental here. Levinas knows the holistic reality of being a saint, which is based on a undeniable call from beyond—a call that turns one’s sense of self inside out for others. For Levinas, moreover, this responsible, saintly subjectivity pre-dates Catholicism and is born in a Jewish notion of chosenness. Being chosen by God and for God assumes covenantal responsibility that is prior to all deliberation and reﬂection, in accordance with a predisposition of the heart. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, a Jewish interpretation of heart encompasses the human capacities for knowing, feeling, and willing, while also referring to the “seat of the emotional and intellectual life” of a person (1964, 295). Both of these references are noteworthy because they illuminate the fact that Levinas’s subject is a holistic embodied subject for whom intelligibility is located in sensibility, rather than merely in the spatial conﬁguration of the mind.

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By further unpacking Levinas’s reading of subjectivity as sensibility, one can easily detect an affective dimension to his anthropology. Indeed, saintliness is rooted in a corporeal desire to be for-the-Other—a departure from an ethics that rests in cognition and will. It is passion for-the-Other to the point of death that converts the subject into being. The affective dimension in Levinas’s theory echoes, even if slightly, the emphasis on feeling we can locate in Lonergan’s later work. For Levinas, however, the interpretation of feeling is more obvious than for Lonergan. To be sure, it is feeling that brings us into right-relationship, that is, shalom with others. Even before questioning and consciousness, there exists obligation for-the-Other. Put another way, before cognitive reﬂection or volitional action, there is an affective, almost intuitive feeling for-the-Other. According to Levinas, the trace of the Inﬁnite reverses the order of human action, from a voluntary situation in which the subject acts toward the Other in naïve freedom, to a hostage situation in which the Other’s demand for justice precedes the subject’s reﬂection on or engagement of freedom. Up until this point, the notion of Inﬁnity has been alluded to, yet not explained thoroughly. We can infer from previous discussions that Levinas works toward an understanding of subjectivity that transcends modern, free, and liberal interpretations of the subject. Furthermore, we have learned that Levinas’s subject performs a normative role by being subjected to or even held hostage for-the-Other through the desire for Inﬁnity. His understanding of Inﬁnity certainly is embedded in Jewish religious experience, speciﬁcally to that paradoxical intimacy with that which is distant, the revelation of Inﬁnity in Exodus 33. Nevertheless, as much of Levinas’s theory stands between two worlds—Jewish thought and Western philosophy—it is also necessary to trace how Western philosophical thought, speciﬁcally in the work of Descartes, inﬂuences Levinas’s reading of the Inﬁnite.2

2

As Levinas upholds Cartesian metaphysics, he locates himself in the French Continental school of thought. His understanding and appropriation of Descartes makes sense in light of his emphasis on Platonic thinking. In “Transcendence and Height,” he states, “In agreement with Plato and Plotinus, who dare to pose, against all good sense, something beyond being, is not the idea of being younger than the idea of the inﬁnite? Should we not concede that philosophy cannot conﬁne itself to the

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In “Enigma and Phenomenon,” Levinas laments the absence of a responsible person, “someone who is no longer agglutinated in being, who at his own risk, responds to the enigma and grasps the allusion. Such is the subjectivity, alone, unique, secret, which Kierkegaard caught sight of ” (1996, 76). This mystery that Levinas refers to is the incomprehensible, non-correlative Inﬁnite: an idea that he retrieves from the thought of Descartes. Inﬁnity, for Descartes, refers to the desire transposed into the subject that can lead the subject to new heights, to transcendence. Reﬂecting on Descartes, again in his evocative essay, “Transcendence and Height,” Levinas claims that, contrary to positivist readings of it, the Inﬁnite is not an object that can be thematized or conceptualized, but a trace that reorients the subject outward: The idea of the inﬁnite is not an intentionality for which the inﬁnite would be the object. Intentionality is a movement of the mind adjusted to being. It takes aim and moves toward a theme. In the theme, being comfortably accommodates itself…. Being is the unconcealed, the thematized—that on which thought stumbles and stops, but which it straightaway recovers. The idea of the inﬁnite consists in the impossibility of escaping from recovery; it consists in the impossibility of coming to rest and in the absence of any hiding place, of any interiority where the I could repose harmoniously upon itself (1996, 19, 20).

Through a close reading of Levinas’s comments, we can conclude that the Inﬁnite counters the totalizing acts of intentionality and thematization—acts that render the Other an object or projection of the subject’s need and imagination. Accordingly, intentionality and thematization primacy of ontology, as has been taught up to now and against which, in France, Jean Wahl and Ferdinand Alquié have vigorously protested? And that intentionality is not the ultimate spiritual relation?” (1996, 21-22). Levinas is not alone in this generous or less caricatured reading of Descartes. Charles Taylor interprets the Cartesian cogito in light of God (1989, 324). Also Tina Chanter argues that Descartes was not as certain or positivist as he is caricatured to be (1998, 4). Yet the Descartes we encounter in Lonergan’s work, The Subject (1968), is a traditional reading of Descartes, which upholds the autonomous nature of the cogito and the certitude associated with positivist epistemology.

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disregard the Other’s distinctiveness, and relegate the Other to his/her mask. Nonetheless, the alterity of the Inﬁnite calls the subject out of him/herself, and postures the subject for the responsibility of being for the particular needs of the Other. The problems associated with the philosophical stance of immanence, according to Levinas, are checked by the transcendent demand of Cartesian Inﬁnity: “Descartes shatters immanence thanks to the idea of the inﬁnite” (“Transcendence and Height,” 1996, 21). Recall from the ﬁrst chapter that both Levinas and Lonergan attempt to explain being human beyond the scope of immanence, which means beyond the scope of the self. The immanent self acts as if it is closed off and self-sufﬁcient in relation to others. According to Levinas and Lonergan, however, a person who is closed up within him/herself exhibits neither an authentic nor responsible posture of subjectivity. Quite apropos, Levinas’s reading of the Cartesian Inﬁnite calls the subject from a position of closedness to a posture of openness. This change of position is reminiscent of the subject’s immemorial past with the Other, that is, to an always, already relationship with the Other. As Descartes claims “that there is manifestly more reality in inﬁnite substance than in ﬁnite —to wit, the notion of God before that of myself,” Levinas asserts a human being’s attachment to the Inﬁnite precedes any reﬂection upon him/herself (Tweyman 1993, 67).3 Even though to some, the Cartesian idea that the Inﬁnite is located inside the subject is an axiom that may appear immanentist, for Levinas, it is the dazzling presence of the Inﬁnite placed within the subject that actually opens the subject for-the-Other—an opening that marks transcendence. The Inﬁnite is not a static object or essence; rather, it is the mystery that incites humanity’s desire for goodness. Implicitly, the notion of goodness is not an ambiguous or catchall term, rather it is the seed of humanity’s transcendence. In “The Rights of Man and Good Will,” Levinas elaborates: “Goodness, a childish virtue; but already charity and mercy and responsibility for the other, and already the possibility of sacriﬁce in which the humanity of man bursts forth” (1998c, 157). Inﬁnity calls forth goodness by demanding that 3

For more on Levinas’s thought on Descartes’s reading of Inﬁnity, see Levinas’s essay, “The Idea of the Inﬁnite in Us” (1998c, 219-222).

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the subject open to being for-the-Other. Interestingly, Levinas does not refer to transcendence in terms of a ﬁssure in the subject or a panoramic gaze of the subject, as in the case of Lacanian and Heideggerian analysis. Instead, transcendence points to the openness that is born in the face of the Other and that orients the subject for-the-Other. Levinas’s interpretation of the face, when understood both in terms of the Mosaic covenant and as a Cartesian trace of the Inﬁnite marks the subject’s transcendence. Challenging a traditional immanentist understanding of subjectivity as closed, Levinas’s interpretation of the face deﬁantly marks the subject as open for-the-Other: “[T]his look [facing]appeals to my responsibility and consecrates my freedom as responsibility and gift of self ” (Levinas 1969, 208).

3.2 Implications of Openness Through facing, the subject is converted physically and mentally into a position of openness. This seems to be a self-evident statement. Nonetheless, as one strives to understand the full meaning of Levinas’s analysis of openness, what seemed at ﬁrst self-evident, quickly becomes complex. On the one hand, the notion of openness can be understood as a metaphor that illustrates how the Other positions the subject with a demand or a question. On the other hand, the idea of positioning the subject as open goes well beyond the realm of the metaphorical. In the ﬁrst chapter, I pointed out that Levinas’s use of openness is not synonymous with the openness of the Heideggerian Dasein, because Levinas wants to avoid the imperialistic and totalizing implications of Heidegger’s understanding of openness. In order to counter the unbridled freedom and egoistic utilitarianism connected with the Heideggerian reading of subjectivity, Levinas explains openness as a relationship of proximity with the Other in which the subject is exposed to unlimited responsibility and vulnerability. Again, openness is about being called to others in obligation, without any recourse to one’s own rights or needs. Still there is more to be said about Levinas’s discussion of openness, for as he delineates the subject’s posture as open for-the-Other, he dis-

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tinguishes between a commonsense openness and complete openness. According to a commonsense notion of openness, the self can hide within his/her interiority in order to control interaction with the world. This type of openness resonates with the traditional understanding of interiority in which the subject is concerned for self in an egocentric fashion and possesses the power to limit the exposure of self to the Other. In opposition to this commonsense logic, Levinas argues that transcendence is only possible through a complete openness to the Other, to the point of substitution at which the subject takes on the Other’s suffering and pain. Complete openness refers to one’s interiority being opened, converted, and turned inside out to an exteriority of being for another.4 It is the call of the Other by way of the face that leads to the complete openness of the subject. As the face of the Other calls the subject into question, it opens the subject to glorify the Inﬁnite. In facing, the human being is oriented toward generosity and passivity in complete openness. Levinas elucidates this point in “Meaning and Sense”: The movement toward the Other (Autrui), instead of completing me or contenting me, implicates me in a conjuncture which in a way did not concern me and should leave me indifferent—why did I get involved in the business? Whence came this shock when I passed, indifferent—under the Other’s (Autrui) gaze? The relationship with the Other (Autrui) puts me into question, empties me of myself and empties me without end, showing me ever-new resources. I did not know I was so rich, but I no longer have the right to keep anything for myself. Is the Desire for the Other (Autrui) an appetite or a generosity? The Desirable does not gratify my Desire but hollows it out, and somehow nourishes me with new hungers. Desire is revealed to be goodness (1996, 51-52).

4

One can hear overtones of Jean François Lyotard’s thought on the great totalizing zero or the libidinal band in which there is no clear inside or outside and the boundaries between internal and the external are blurred (1993a). For Levinas, in the posture of for-the-Other the subject is turned inside out, creating a posture that prevents any stance of pure immanence.

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The relationship with the Other, therefore, is kenotic, an emptying or opening event. The face, the caress, and the trace of the Other convert the subject to a stance of submission and passivity as opposed to a posture of power and domination. The term ‘passivity’ is not merely the opposite of activity as one would conclude from its commonsense meaning; rather, passivity is being, not as production or representation, but as obligation and hospitality. Jean-Luc Nancy explains: “The passivity that is at issue here cannot be determined in opposition to activity. It does not consist in being ‘passive,’ but in being, if we can put it this way, passible to meaning, that is capable of receiving or welcoming it” (1997, 69). Being passive is not being inactive, therefore, but being capable of witnessing to the Other. Passivity is the act of openness through which the subject acknowledges his/her obligation to the Other, lays him/herself bare for the Other, speaks to the Other, and bears witness to the Inﬁnite. Passivity is a non-aggressive, yet active gesture of hospitality. Levinas’s interpretation of passive openness comes out of a nuanced reading of freedom. As previously mentioned, Levinas, in response to Heidegger, rejects a commonsense correlation between openness and naïve freedom, whereby the subject aggressively surveys others at his/her own choice, whim, or fancy, before reluctantly opening him/herself in hospitality and charity. Instead, Levinas deﬁnes openness in terms of exposure to the Other; this exposure is prior to any egoistic freedom in that it passively awaits the Other. This complete and vulnerable openness, according to Lingis, is prior to the openness to sensible, given beings—and even to the nothingness or clearing in which they are articulated. Subjectivity is opened from the outside, by the contact with alterity…. Before ﬁnding itself a freedom in the free space opened by the play of being and nothingness, where an exercise of options is possible, subjectivity is a subjection to the force of alterity, which calls for and demands goodness of it (Levinas 1998e, xxi).

Openness to the Other arises neither after reﬂection upon repressed memories, as in the case of both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, nor within the existential freedom of Heidegger’s being-present-in-the-

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world. Instead, openness to the Other ensues in Levinas’s understanding of passivity. For Levinas: “The responsibility for the other can not have begun in my commitment, in my decision. The unlimited responsibility in which I ﬁnd myself comes from the hither side of my freedom, from a ‘prior to every memory,’ an ‘ulterior to every accomplishment,’ from the non-present par excellence, the non-original, the anarchical, prior to or beyond essence” (1998e, 10). It follows that the open, passive stance of Levinas’s subject undercuts the aggressive posture of the knowing subject. For Levinas equates knowledge with a stance of power and deﬁnes it as the product of ocularcentric thematization. Even in his early work, such as “Time and the Other,” sentiments such as these can be found: “[I]f one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other. Possessing, knowing, and grasping are synonyms for power” (1987, 90). Since Levinas assumes that knowledge is aggressive and totalizing, he debunks any valorization of it. Moreover, by privileging the structure of responsibility, he resists the ocularcentric grounding of knowledge. Responsibility in the form of humility and submission, rather than thematizing in the form of pride and aggression, is the answer to the face. The signiﬁcance of Levinas’s reformulation of responsibility for our current cultural situation cannot be overestimated. Many ﬁnd it difﬁcult to deal with responsibility. More often then not, responsibility is framed negatively in terms of guilt and repression. To the contrary, in a work entitled, “The Old and the New,” Levinas approaches responsibility in terms of selﬂess giving for-the-Other, to the point of excess. He writes: Devotion, in its dis-interestedness, does not lack any end, but is turned around—by a God who in his inﬁnity “loves the stranger”—toward the other person to and for whom I have to respond. Responsibility is without concern for reciprocity: I have to respond to and for the Other without occupying myself with the Other’s responsibility in my regard. A love relationship without correlation, love of the neighbor is love without eros. It is for-the-other-person and, through this, to-God! (1987, 137).

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Clearly, Levinas privileges the structure of responsibility as the essence of being human. It is not too strong to suggest that being responsible is the most ﬁtting way of labeling Levinas’s normative anthropological subject. This predisposition of being responsible for-the-Other is rooted in the primordial, gifted relation with the Other. This gifted, ethical relation opens the subject to a posture of complete passivity—beyond comprehension and compensation. The open, passive, responsible posture of subjectivity can be interpreted in terms of gift in that ﬁnding oneself in a position of obligation is without parallel, is asymmetrical. Gift, recall, is a sense of openness without expectation or compensation. The gift of being for-the-Other is not a relationship of reciprocity in which the subject tallies all that s/he does for strangers and expects something in return. Instead, the gift of subjectivity demands that the subject exist beyond volitional giving, to the point of obsession for-the-Other. This passive, open, obsessed, gifted subjectivity involves a wearing away of the self. To further explicate the openness of the subject as gift, we can distinguish giving from gift. Giving is largely volitional. While for Levinas such largesse is important, it is not of primary importance to the posture of Levinas’s subject. Subjectivity as gift, for Levinas, rather refers to being already in a position of responsibility, and already offering more than one can afford to give. This gifted posture becomes a recurring disposition and obsession in which the subject takes leave of him/herself and is turned inside out in order to care for-the-Other. The notion of obsession underscores the fact that the subject does not master the Other or control the encounter with the Other. To be obsessed by the Other implies inﬁnite obligation to the Other. Levinas explains this obsession: The recurrence of the self in responsibility for the others, a persecuting obsession, goes against intentionality, such that responsibility for others could never mean altruistic will, instinct of ‘natural benevolence,’ or love. It is in the passivity of obsession, or incarnated passivity, that an identity individuates itself as unique, without recourse to any system of references, in the impossibility of evading the assignation of the other without blame (1998e, 111-112).

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In his discussion of the gifted or obsessive posture of the subject, Levinas plays with our commonsense understanding of interiority. To some, interiority might mean an exercise in introspection, immanentism, or a foray into self. Levinas argues otherwise that in one’s interiority or return to oneself, one is worn away by the demand of the Other. This wearing away of the self is the locus of the good and the site of justice and transcendence. Transcendence is not a linear, intentional, or teleological pursuit of satisfaction; instead, it is complete openness that emerges in one’s passive and gifted inclination for others. This inclination orients the subject to a saintly or responsible subjectivity for-the-Other. Below, we will explore how this responsible subjectivity emerges, rather dramatically, in terms of speech, time, and posture. It is there that we will capture a glimpse of Levinas’s somewhat illusive anthropology, which is based in relations of asymmetrical intersubjectivity.

3.3 Subjectivity as a Posture of Openness for-the-Other We have already learned that by way of the subject’s encounter with alterity, s/he is converted to the position of responsible subjectivity, being open for-the-Other. In this section, I trace more deliberately the turning of the subject toward responsibility by examining three distinct phenomena: language, time, and posture. I explore how language or discourse marks the relationship between subject and Other, speciﬁcally, Levinas’s claim that the face or call of the Other commands the subject toward obligation through speaking. Then, I investigate how the dimension of time inﬂuences the person as subject. In conclusion, I highlight how the subject’s sensual encounter with the Other, through touch, caress, and gesture, commands the subject to shoulder and posture for-the-Other. According to Levinas, language mediates human regard and interaction; it marks both subjectivity and otherness. Concretely, this means that the subject responds to alterity through speech and sig-

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niﬁes his/her own presence by way of speech. Levinas describes the linguistic structure of signiﬁcation in terms of an ethical relationship between the subject and the Other. The subject is called to respond to the Other in this ethical relation; and, at the same time, the subject answers this call by exposing him/herself for-the-Other through speech. This call and response is not achieved through the subject’s interior comprehension or thematization of the Other; rather, the face of the Other effects a response from the subject. The subject senses the Other’s need and responds accordingly. Importantly for Levinas, the relation between subject and Other is based on the subject’s affective response to the Other. Within this bond, the subject takes a passive stance as s/he waits and listens for the demand of the Other, instead of aggressively talking at the Other as if the Other were an object. After the call, the subject is obliged to respond to the Other. Importantly, the discourse of the subject does not bring the Other any closer. Instead, language accentuates the distance and difference between the two parties. The dialogue that ensues between subject and Other transcends the privacy of their worlds and becomes a public declaration of their differences, even in the midst of their relation. This public declaration constructs a relationship that is not based on sameness, but rooted in difference. Language, Levinas suggests, highlights or bears witness to that difference. And, it is the obligation of the subject to bear witness to the Other through language. As the subject attests to the alterity of the Other through speech, s/he actually subverts the totality of being, which Levinas links to the gaze or an ocularcentric mentality. It is precisely the command of the Other that has the power to enter from beyond the panoramic gaze of the subject and also to cut across his/her vision and horizon. The subject’s listening for and responding to the call of the Other subverts any totalizing gaze. As a result, an asymmetrical dialogue with the Other unfolds quite dramatically. The face, which can be interpreted as a trace of the Other and the Inﬁnite in the subject, causes the subject to speak to the Other and bear witness. Moreover, bearing witness, the person signiﬁes him/herself as subject, and thus, responsible forthe-Other. Notice the corporeal dimension of the phrase ‘bearing witness.’ In bearing witness to the Other, we bear the responsibility

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for the ensuing dialogue. Through speech or ‘the Saying’ (Le Dire), the subject is exiled from a closed interiority, awakened from slumber, and obliged to the point of obsession. Saying is the event by which the Other commands the self from beyond to rise as subject. Subjectivity is constituted by the ethical structure of the subject’s response to the Other by way of speech, that is, by the Saying. This Saying is motivated not by a desire to fulﬁll the subject’s lack as in the case of Lacanian theory, but rather is inspired within the subject by the need of the Other. Levinas writes: “Saying is a denuding, of the unqualiﬁable one, the pure someone … it absolves me of all identity … an otherwise than being which turns into a for the other” (1998e, 50). What is most important about speaking is not the phrase, the content, or the Said (Le Dit), but the posture and disposition behind Saying. According to Levinas, the signiﬁcance is in the “commitment of an approach, the one for the other” (5). Moreover, transcendence is located in the Saying, as dialogue marks the event of “passing over to being’s other, otherwise than being” (3). The subject’s utterance simultaneously signiﬁes the subject’s transcendence and addresses the Other in all his/her alterity. In sum, transcendence occurs in two ways. On the one hand, Saying is revelatory and leads to transcendence in that it cuts across the totalizing gaze, demands a response, and fosters dialogue. And on the other hand, through Saying, there is a denuding or a signifying of subject and Other without content. In his discussion of the Saying and the Said, Levinas calls attention to the dangers of imposing sameness on others, and of distancing oneself from others. When we distance ourselves from others, it becomes easy to ignore their needs. In order to combat this danger, Levinas accentuates the nearness or approach of subject for others. The notion of approach connotes an active movement, a posturing of the subject toward the Other, in which language emerges. The approach for-theOther is not governed by distance and obscurity, but by conversation and engagement. Here, the term ‘proximity’ has a technical meaning: “Proximity is quite distinct from every other relationship, and has to be conceived as a responsibility for the other: it might be called humanity, or subjectivity, or self ” (Levinas 1998e, 46). Proximity does not privilege the stance of intentionality, gaze, or consciousness of being—all of which reduce the Other to the same and correlate that

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which is in front of them with a theme. Here, Levinas understands consciousness to be related to self-interest and egoism: a movement that threatens the subject’s disinterestedness for and wakefulness to otherness. Signiﬁcantly, proximity through language breaks the egoism of such consciousness and defers to the Other. Furthermore, for Levinas, the relationship of proximity, that is, the one-for-the-other relation, resists any attempt to employ communication for the sake of the self-alone. All communication is for-theOther. Levinas explains: “To communicate is indeed to open oneself, but the openness is not complete if it is on the watch for recognition. It is complete not in opening to the spectacle of or the recognition of the other, but in becoming a responsibility for him” (1998e, 119). The selﬂess impetus of communication accentuates the need of humanity to engage otherness not merely because it helps our career or image, but because we are commanded and responsible to do so. In other words, Levinas’s interpretation of communication precludes any self-serving posture because the subject is always in relation for-the-Other. A selfserving posture is an immanentist, egoist stance, which is opposed to a self-giving posture or an open, exposed subjectivity. Levinas’s notion of subjectivity upholds a self-giving posture that exists prior to freedom, and in freedom is further opened for-the-Other. The intricacy of the Saying, of the communication between the subject and Other, cuts across the subject’s gaze, leaving the subject near and exposed to the Other. Importantly, we must also understand how communication, the act of signiﬁcation, is governed by time. By signiﬁcation, Levinas does not refer to a representational or intellectual moment, but an affective response to the Other’s call. Language is the response for-the-Other that signiﬁes being for the-Other. Similarly, so is time. Above all else, Levinas argues that time is not a possession or exploit of the subject alone. Time, rather, emerges in the relationship between subject and Other. It is through the lapsing of time, or what Levinas also calls diachrony, that we are presented with a second way in which the human being becomes a subject for-the-Other. If diachrony most basically refers to the interval that impinges upon the subject as s/he attempts to make meaning of the past and the future, it also underscores the asymmetry between the subject and Other in facing,

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listening, and responding across time. By imagining moments of time as events of otherness, Levinas refutes any assumption of a pure presence. Consequently, just as he resists the thematization of the Other by consciousness, Levinas contests the notion of synchronic time—that static moment in which the subject would present him/herself fully. Alternatively, Levinas asserts that the subject is not the marker of time, or even, an effect of time. On the contrary, subjectivity, which is oriented by the Other, disrupts synchronic time. Richard Cohen observes: The irreducible alterity of the Other, the time of the Other, impinges on the subject’s temporal syntheses from the outside, disrupting its unity with another time, the time of the Other or ethics, the command which comes from on high. And in the same extraordinary moment, the Other’s command calls forth a subjectivity for-theother (Levinas 1987, 17).

As the subject responds to the command of the Other, an interval already displaces the subject’s account of the event. The past’s grip on the subject is so strong that it positions him/her toward the Other. The subject is opened, decentered, and reposed by the lapsing of time, by diachrony. Levinas’s distinction between the Saying and the Said may further our discussion of diachrony. Whereas the Saying is the attempt of the subject to respond to the demand of the Other, the Said is the content of meaning, which is displaced already from the happening. Happenings only have meaning and signiﬁcation in diachronic time, that is, out of the present time because the distance between the subject and Other prohibits synchrony. The subject and Other, thus, are not simultaneous or symmetrical, but are profoundly distinct positions. Signiﬁcantly, it is the diachrony or the interval that distances the subject from the Other, which causes and also allows the subject to speak. In other words, it is because of the separation between the subject and the Other, that the subject attempts to convey meaning.

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Although one could assume that speech bridges the diachronic distance between the subject and Other, it is actually the case, as previously explained, that language overdetermines the alterity between the two. Lingis explains the matrix of connections among language, distance, and time: “The distance of otherness opens up the interval of discourse. Across this distance, we speak…. The interval is a clearing for exposure. Things found elsewhere, things remote, absent, past, future, are going to be represented in that clearing” (1996, 67). It is in the diachronic interval that the subject is commanded to respond to the stranger. Language does not close the interval, but underscores the alterity: “Communication does not abolish the distance. In the word of greeting with which another addresses me and draws me near, s/he sets before me his/her otherness” (67). As speech cuts across the lapsing interval of diachrony, the alterity between the subject and Other is vigilantly maintained, rather than erased. In this discussion of diachrony, Levinas’s critique of the totalization and thematization of otherness again surfaces. In comparison to the aggressive disposition of the knowing subject in synchronic time, Levinas asserts that the subject who exposes him/herself in diachronic time is, indeed, an ethical subject. Cohen comments on what it means to be subject in relation to time: Knowing conceals re-presentation and reduces the other to presence and co-presence. Time, on the contrary, in its dia-chrony, would signify a relationship that does not compromise the other’s alterity, while still assuring its non-indifference to ‘thought.’… Time signiﬁes this always of noncoincidence, but also the always of the relationship, an aspiration and an awaiting (Levinas 1987, 31, 32).

The ethical subject is posed in a posture of passivity, awaiting the arrival of the Other. All speech, moreover, awaits and welcomes alterity. The notion of waiting brings such issues as teleology and eschatology to the fore. It is important to realize that Levinas’s responsible subjectivity is not based on a content driven ‘end’ or ‘telos,’ but on an openness or hospitality to the stranger: the one in need or the one who will come. Although there is a messianic grounding to Levinas’s work, he offers no ultimate, eschatological vision. Levinas privileges the ethical

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activity of waiting over the thematizating of the end, thereby jettisoning revealed religion’s temptation to pretend to know the future of the Other. Levinas gives preference to an ethical disposition which tentatively and humbly awaits the Other. This ethical stance of waiting can be understood in terms of a blind passivity or as a searching and yearning without content. In “Time and the Other,” Levinas explains that “this ‘not knowing,’ this fundamental disorder, is the essential. It is like a game with something slipping away, a game absolutely without project or plan, not with what can become ours or us, but with something other, always other, always inaccessible, and always still to come [à venir]” (1987, 89). Levinas’s emphasis on waiting without knowing or expecting undermines our modern tendency to expect certain rewards in our being for others. Often we expect a thank you, some sort of gesture of gratitude that marks our acting saintly or responsibly toward others. By reversing our idea of subjectivity from a posture of anticipation, which includes making assumptions about who people are and what they ought to do, to a posture of waiting, which involves a passivity and openness to vulnerability, Levinas nuances what it means to be human. Being human is about being for others without any concept of what that being will bring us. Ironically, this Jewish thinker’s ideas about subjectivity, are both messianic and non-messianic. For Levinas, being human involves a sense of waiting, but a waiting without content. It is through speech, in time, and by way of posture, that a person waits for-the-Other. Again, time here does not function as a possession of the subject; rather, time unravels diachronically, so that subjectivity for-the-Other becomes an effect of the lapsing interval. Moreover, the subject waits for the call attentively and vigilantly, without any conscious interest in or knowledge of the content of the call. Notice the receptive approach of the subject as s/he passively waits and listens for the time of the Other. So far we have explored how the linguistic structure of signiﬁcation develops diachronically, that is, how time lapses between the Saying and the Said creating an interval that inspires the subject’s responsibility for-the-Other. I now want to emphasize the passive approach for-theOther, not only in the Saying, but also in the actual posture of the

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subject. Levinas writes that it is in “the very de-posing or desituating of the subject” that diachrony is exposed and justice is revealed (1998e, 48).5 Although Levinas does not develop the notion of ‘posturing’ in detail in his work, it is not only a logical heuristic for thinking about subjectivity in corporeal and concrete terms, but one I ﬁnd implicit in many of his writings. It is not surprising then that Alphonso Lingis elaborates on Levinas’s notion of approach and posture in Sensation: Intelligibility in Sensibility (1996) and Foreign Bodies (1994b). Levinas’s understanding of proximity, as a posture or approach, shifts the emphasis in philosophy from thematizing the Other as an object to being open for-the-Other in relationship. Extending Levinas’s assertions about approach and proximity, Lingis explains posture as a “dynamic gestalt, a structure such that any displacement of one part induces an ordered displacement throughout”(1996, 54). His notion of posture is furthered by his claim that one’s stance is affected and directed by others: Through just seeing someone seated on a stool, bench, or couch, my body ﬁnds spontaneously the posture corresponding to his as I go to join him….One’s ‘body image’ [posture] is not an image formed in the privacy of one’s own imagination; its visible, tangible, audible shape is held in the gaze and touch of others (58).

Thus, like time and speech, one’s posture is not a private possession of the subject; instead, it is a form of the subject engendered by the position of the Other. In such a relation, the subject’s stance is reoriented continuously by the needs of others. Speciﬁcally, the nakedness and height of the Other call the subject into question and position the subject for-the-Other. Implicitly, the notion of ‘posturing’ connotes corporeal responsibility, which is absent from any ocular metaphor. Only by moving away from the cognition of the Other, which Levinas equates with the metaphor of seeing, can men and women respond to the demand and command of their neighbors. In “Enigma and Phenomenon,” Levinas explains: “The relationship with the Inﬁnite 5

For an interesting link between Levinas and Derrida on diachronic time, see Derrida’s work, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning, and The New International (1994).

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is not a cognition, but an approach”—a posture (1996, 76-77). The notion of posture imbues the ethical relation between subject and Other with physical, material, kenotic, spatial, and sensual texture. Even if he does not specify the point at which posture becomes ethical action, Levinas employs the rhetoric of approach, proximity, and height to shift from an intellectualist to sensible account of being human. Subjectivity, for Levinas, is understood not as a cognitive activity, but as an embodied stance toward one’s neighbor. Practically speaking, he insists that one does not need to know his/her neighbor—that is, to thematize or conceptualize one’s neighbor—in order to “take the bread out of one’s mouth, to nourish the hunger of another with one’s own fasting” (Levinas 1998e, 56). Kantian metaphysics may lead to the devaluation of material need, bodily obligation, and spiritual feelings, but by emphasizing sensibility, Levinas privileges precisely what Kant has neglected or even disparaged. Moreover, in opposition to Husserl, Levinas argues that noesis, intentionality, and knowing lead to totality, thematization, and objectiﬁcation. It is only by way of sensibility that humans can enter into transcendence. By sensibility, Levinas means the “susceptibility to being appealed to and ordered” (Lingis 1989, 143). In an effort to privilege sensibility over cognition, Levinas writes: In knowing, which is of itself symbolic, is realized the passing from the image, a limitation and a particularity, to the totality. Consequently, being’s essence is moved into the whole content of abstraction…. The immediacy on the surface of the skin characteristic of sensibility, its vulnerability, is found as it were anesthetized in the process of knowing (1998e, 64).

It is important to note that although Levinas highlights the perils of cognition in his account of sensibility, he still admits that in facing, judgment and decision become necessary. In his work, “Philosophy and Justice,” Levinas claims that “at a certain moment, there is a necessity for ‘weighing,’ a comparison, a pondering” (1998c, 104). Levinas obviously privileges sensibility over cognition because of the aggressive and totalizing way in which cognition has been construed

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in Western intellectual traditions. Nevertheless, he understands judgment as a necessary moment in humanity’s relationship with the Other. One could argue, consequently, that the way in which Levinas ﬁrst dismisses cognition and then deems it necessary signals a weakness and contradiction in his thought. Even amid this ambiguity, however, Levinas’s desire for justice, even if murky, is present. Let me explain further. Recall that Levinas claims that responsibility is prior to any question. In fact, the question (and thus consciousness) only arises with the entrance of the third party. As a result, it is the entrance of the third party that opens the ethical relation between the subject and Other. The importance of the third party is often underestimated in much of the secondary writings on Levinas, quite possibly because who or what he designates as the third party is at best slippery, opaque, and inconsistent. Levinas refers to the third party in various ways, including understanding the third party as the state, as another person, and sometimes even as God. Whatever the case, the asymmetrical self-Other relation is always interrupted, shadowed, and complicated by the trace of a third party that affects the relationship. In some works, such as “Essence and Disinterestedness,” he designates the third party to be justice that “compares, assembles, and conceives” (1996, 123). The third party in such a scenario would be the question of how institutions, including the state, should run in light of a primordial relationship with alterity. In other texts, Levinas deems God as a third party in the midst of the relationship between subject and Other. He offers the notion of God as the third party, in part, to challenge the Christian contention that God is in a direct encounter with humanity through Christ. He is uneasy with this Christian axiom because it runs the risk of creating a symmetry between humanity and divinity. Ultimately, whether the third party is God, justice, knowledge, the world, or the state, it tends to encroach on the space between the subject and Other. As a result, in the face of the third party, the subject’s responsibility becomes even more obvious. One can glean how Levinas’s work does not leave society prey to nihilistic powers, tyranny, or chaos, but defers always, already to the Other. As Thomas Keenan makes clear, we are thrown already into this relationship with an Other; consequently, we have no choice but to judge and call forth justice (1994, 265). Yet,

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in order to avoid the aggressive connotations associated with cognition and justice, Levinas ﬁrst emphasizes relationships with others in terms of sensibility. As Levinas alludes to the sensual and embodied posture of the subject, he gives texture to humanity beyond the features of language and time. By interpreting the subject in terms of a corporeal stance and beyond the parameters of language and time, Levinas creates a holistic notion of being human. The embodied subject of which I speak is by no means a commonplace interpretation of Levinas. French feminist thinker Luce Irigaray accuses Levinas’s work of being logocentric. She argues that humanity’s obligation to the Other cannot lie solely in speech; and, obligation as response to the Other must also take into account touching and bodily contact. Furthermore, Irigaray asserts that the most elementary gesture of love is not speech, but touching (1986, 231-256). Presupposing that the essence of maleness is language, she insists that the only way in which women can be truly other is to move out of the existing logocentric systems of exchange. Hence, Irigaray encourages women to engage in an immediate relationship with nature or with God and to revel in extreme forms of carnality or sensibility. It is only through the body, that is, through touch that women can transcend being thematized into the same, which, in this case, is the masculine gender (Irigaray 1993). Although I agree with the spirit of Irigaray’s critique, it is important to note that Levinas has partly met Irigaray’s challenge by proposing a highly affective and aesthetic account of ethics. He describes the ethical relation between the subject and Other in a voluptuous terminology that includes such notions as fecundity, creation, desire, caress, and shouldering. This language of voluptuous excess concretizes Levinas’s concern for the body of the subject. As a qualiﬁcation to this potential in Levinas, if the sentiments of ‘caressing’ and ‘shouldering’ connote material need as well as physical accountability, this materiality may tend to dissipate in the visual metaphor of facing. Although facing for Levinas is a key trope that demonstrates the need of the Other, the rhetoric of caress, shouldering, and posturing better illustrates the physical engagement between subject and Other. The subject responds to the caress of the Other in a posture of shouldering the Other. It is

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my contention that this shouldering aspect of the Levinasian subject has been grossly understated. Through the trope of shouldering, Levinas illustrates the paradox of being human. In order to elucidate the notion of shouldering, it might be helpful to recall that Levinas, like Lonergan, resists a commonsense interpretation of interiority in which the subject assumes an immanentist and egoist stance. What’s more, for Levinas, the Other calls the subject out of his/herself and demands a response. Only the subject who is called can shoulder this burden, can be for-the-Other. For Levinas, with a person’s singularity comes the gift of being distinct from and thus accountable to others. Lingis explains: That the whole weight of the universe is on my shoulders, and that I cannot shift this burden upon anyone else—this is my ﬁnding myself without a double. And this predicament is founded on the relationship with alterity: it is being answerable without limit. The approach of the other holding me responsible for everything, even for what I did not do—this unlimited accusation—is what singularizes me utterly (Levinas 1998e, xxx).

The singularity of the individual is a characteristic that actually marks and opens the subject for-the-Other. Yet, distance also affects the opening of the subject: the closer the subject becomes to the Other, the more s/he is responsible for-the-Other. Recall from my analysis of Moses’s encounter with God that intimacy between subject and Other is a key tenet in Levinas’s thought. Remember how Levinas responds to Heidegger’s distance with the idea of nearness in that the proximity of the Other overwhelms the personal space of the subject and explodes his/her interiority. Levinas navigates between these two human inclinations in his analysis of shouldering. The notion of shouldering works to emphasize the relationship of proximity between subject and Other, as well as the subject’s particular obligation to the Other. Quite poignantly, in Humanisme de l’autre homme, Levinas explains how one cannot shift responsibility from one’s shoulders (1972, 50). Christian theologians have also realized the signiﬁcance of the metaphor of shouldering. Copeland (1998) explains how the practice of shouldering the oppressed and marginalized is a concrete task demanded of all Christians, regardless of social location. Responsibility as stand-

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ing for and with the oppressed, “shoulder-to-shoulder” explodes our commonsense knowledge of what it means to be in solidarity (44). Such a notion of shouldering considers the particular differences of each person, yet binds individuals even in their differences to one another in a posture of responsibility. The metaphor of shouldering conjures personal responsibility in relation to communal responsibility: shouldering demonstrates a corporeal relationship for others. We need such affective, bodily rhetoric, like shouldering, as we imagine subjectivity in theology in order to capture the concrete reality of being human in postmodernity. Similar to the way in which Lonergan’s use of the terminology of reﬂection, interiority, and horizon runs against the thrust of his argument, the language of facing works against Levinas’s project. All of these words support the ocularcentric culture of the West: a culture that has become anesthetized to images of the needy and suffering. Consequently, a challenge to develop more bodily, ﬂeshly, and graphic signiﬁers of subjectivity and otherness has emerged. Shouldering answers that challenge by way of connoting an embodied posture of the subject that is for-the-Other. We will realize shortly that unlike metaphors of mothering and fathering, which connote a similar sacriﬁcial and hostage subjectivity of being forthe-Other, the term ‘shouldering’ is not limited to gender or age and designates a more inclusive way of thinking about Levinas’s subject as responsible to others. Similar to the connection between speech and diachronic time is the link between the posture of sensibility and awaiting time. In “Time and the Other,” Levinas explains how the human being awaits the embodied demand of the Other: “The seeking of the caress constitutes its essence by the fact that the caress does not know what it seeks…. The caress is the anticipation of this pure future [avenir], without content” (1987, 89). The activity of waiting overdetermines the passive stance of the subject. Levinas locates sensibility as the very event of the future. Even though our shouldering, embracing, healing, and feeding of others are indispensable acts in our obligation for others, Levinas locates the primary signiﬁcance of subjectivity in awaiting the Other. Similar to the way in which Levinas privileges the Saying over the Said, as well as diachrony over synchrony, he privileges the physical posture of receptivity toward the Other over

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any aggressive handling of the Other. It becomes evident that neither public acknowledgment of, nor a deﬁnitive end to our actions is the importance of our posture for-the-Other. Instead, the posture itself is of the utmost signiﬁcance. As the subject is postured open and exposed for-the-Other, s/he is placed in a risk-ﬁlled and frightening predicament. Levinas comments upon the subject’s vulnerable position: “The openness of space as an openness of self without a world, without a place, utopia, the not being walled in, inspiration to the end, even to expiration, is the proximity of the other which is possible only as responsibility for the other, as substitution for him” (1998e, 182). This situation of complete openness is particularly dangerous because the subject has no knowledge of how the situation will end. The subject can only be certain of his/her obligation for-the-Other, to the point of substitution. In complete passivity, the subject is at the mercy of the Other, at risk of mistake, miscomprehension, and uncertainty. No longer is the subject a cartographer mapping uncharted land in an effort to dominate the world. Rather, the subject is opened by and exposed to the incomprehensible in order to shoulder the Other. This is a radical change from the posture of Heidegger’s Dasein in which the sensible was the emptiness, nothingness, and void in his horizon. For Levinas, the sensible, which is precisely a susceptibility to the Other, contacts the subject and postures him/her for goodness. To review, I began this section by noting that speaking to the Other opens up the subject, resulting in transcendence. Communication is complicated by the idea of the subject being reoriented by the passing of time. I argued that alterity awakens the self both in the bearing witness to the Other through language and in the disjointed nature of time. Ultimately, I found that Levinas’s theory of subjectivity extends beyond questions of language and time, by taking account of sensibility. Like language and time, the touch of another person orients the subject into a posture for-the-Other. The notions of caress and shouldering work to avoid the ocularcentric leanings of the notion of facing and underscore the dramatic and material origins of transcendence. In the next section I will argue that the transcending subject is not merely postured for-the-Other metaphorically, but also literally.

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3.4 The Corporeality of Levinas’s Subject In developing the notion of posture, it becomes clear that Levinas is aware of the signiﬁcance of corporeality for any ethical analysis. His thoughts on the importance of embodiment might be said to develop in four phases. Initially, Levinas’s understanding of the body is rooted in his study of Edmund Husserl. Second, Levinas’s assertion that the subject is embodied is inextricably connected to questions about the mortality of human beings. It is this weight that characterizes the subject’s responsibility for others to the point of sacriﬁce and sets the stage for the third area of inquiry into the Levinasian subject as gendered. Finally, the matrix of connections among body, gender, and justice becomes concretized. From his early writings on Husserlian phenomenology, Levinas was intrigued by both Husserl’s emphasis on the body and Husserl’s critique of the way in which classical metaphysics disembodied the subject and reiﬁed the Other. Following Husserl’s lead, Levinas argues that “[t]o be embodied is to be a subject in a way that differs from the subjectivity of the idealist analyses” (1998b, 104). Here idealism is interpreted as a theory that understands consciousness as moving away from the body. In order to counter the idealist understanding of the subject, Husserlian phenomenology explains consciousness as moving toward and through the body. For both Husserl and Levinas, then, consciousness cannot be separated from embodiment. Nevertheless, despite Levinas’s respect for Husserl’s phenomenology, Levinas was convinced that Husserl’s work is too intellectualist and “in conformity with a venerable Western tradition—privilege of the theoretical, a privilege of representation, of knowing; and, hence, of the ontological meaning of being” (“Nonintentional Consciousness,” 1998c, 124). Moreover, Levinas’s critique of Husserl dates back to his dissertation, in which he accuses Husserl of intellectualism, yet at the same time, commends him for paying attention to relationships in intentionality analysis (1973). Levinas’s work ultimately extends beyond Husserlian phenomenology and enacts a phenomenology similar to that of Merleau-Ponty.6 It is Merleau-Ponty’s work on corporeality and ambiguity that allows Levinas to frame being for others in terms of vulnerability and risk.

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Like Merleau-Ponty’s subject, Levinas’s subject is embodied and lives in a world that demands a response in spite of ambiguity. This means that face to face, intersubjective relationships are always uneasy. The asymmetrical relation with another postures us in a precarious situation in which we desire to do for others, even if there is a danger of being harmed. The vulnerability connected to our obligation for others only works to underscore even more sharply the mortal risk of being for-the-Other. And for Levinas, it is mortality that marks the subject’s relationship to the Other. He explains in “Time and the Other”: This approach of death indicates that we are in relation with something that is absolutely other, something bearing alterity not as a provisional determination we can assimilate through enjoyment, but as something whose very existence is made of alterity. My solitude is thus not conﬁrmed by death but broken by it (1987, 74).

In quite eloquent terms, a person who is dying confronts such otherness. But more importantly, for my analysis of Levinas, the impending death of another person enlivens the subject to substitute his/her own body for-the-Other. We become saints, that is, responsible subjects, who sacriﬁce our bodies for the good of others. Levinas explains this almost sacramental, and deﬁnitively saintly dimension of being human: The body is neither an obstacle opposed to the soul, nor a tomb that imprisons it, but that by which the self is susceptibility itself. Incarnation is an extreme passivity; to be exposed to sickness, suffering, death, is to be exposed to compassion, and, as a self, to the gift that costs. The oneself on this side of the zero of inertia and nothingness, in deﬁcit of being, in itself and not in being, without

6

For an exacting analysis of Levinas’s development of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, see Theodore De Boer’s The Rationality of Transcendence (1997, 139-144). De Boer argues that Levinas rejects the idea of consciousness without incarnation; thus, in many ways, the phrase incarnate consciousness is problematic.

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a place to lay its head, in the no-grounds, and thus without conditions. As such it will be shown to be bearer of the world, bearing it, suffering it, blocking rest and lacking a fatherland. It is the correlate of a persecution, a substitution for the other (1998e, p. 195, n.12).

Indeed the body is indispensable for subjectivity as it is the site of passivity, pain, aging, sacriﬁce, and gift: “The corporeality of the subject is the pain of effort, the original adversity of fatigue” (54). This same fatigued body, moreover, is the site of joy, pleasure (jouissance), creation, and responsibility. The connection between pain and pleasure is wedded by the posture of openness, of giving at all costs. Pain and death, therefore, do not isolate the subject, but orient him/her forthe-Other. Levinas would concede that concern for the Other’s death and the subject’s substitution of him/herself for another’s death is an exemplary performance of being subject. Substitution for others is an important theme in Levinas’s writings on embodied subjectivity. He ﬁgures substitution through a variety of discourses, the most provocative and stunning being his interpretation of substitution in terms of maternity. In both his confessional and philosophical writings, the procreative role of the mother is a key trope for understanding the approach or posture of being for-the-Other. In such a relationship, the mother is a hostage of the child, substituting herself for the welfare of the child. By analogy, the subject is exposed and opened for-the-Other, as a mother is for her child. Like a mother, the subject cannot avoid the Other, for s/he is exposed as responsible for-the-Other to the point of death. It is interesting to note that Levinas ﬁnds not only the metaphor of maternity a protean symbol for our being human, but he also is intrigued by the notion of paternity. As Levinas employs the term “maternity” to capture the excessive giving of the subject, he utilizes the term “paternity” to concretize the separation between subject and Other. Recall how Levinas is concerned with maintaining a separation between subject and Other in order to

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respect the Other’s alterity. Accordingly, Levinas imagines the father as different from his child. At the same time, the bond of paternity solidiﬁes the obligation between them. Aside from employing the analogies of maternity and paternity, Levinas explains humanity’s attraction to the Inﬁnite, as well as transcendence for-the-Other in gendered language. Since he consistently describes the Other in feminine language, including the terms of fecundity and voluptuosity, one begins to wonder if his subject is presumed to be masculine. One of the earliest protests against Levinas’s chauvinism originated in the work of feminist existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir. In her most famous work, The Second Sex (1980), she questions the way in which Levinas links subjectivity with gender. She muses: I suppose that Levinas does not forget that woman, too, is aware of her own consciousness, or ego. But it is striking that he takes a man’s point of view, disregarding the reciprocity of subject and object. When he writes that woman is mystery, he implies that she is mystery for man. Thus his description, which is intended to be objective, is in fact an assertion of male privilege (xl).

Contrary to de Beauvoir’s claims, many assert that Levinas’s work attempts to transcend binary conﬁgurations of male and female. For instance, Levinasian scholar, Simon Critchley argues that Levinas does not employ the rhetoric of fecundity and maternity literally or in an attempt to essentialize gender (1992, p. 144 n.12). The Other is described in sensual language only to overdetermine the excessive quality of his/her need. On a very basic level, this means that not all women are other, and that not all men are subjects; rather, the position of the one in need is expressed by excessive and erotic language. Arguably, there is no concrete evidence for deeming Levinas a sexist or for regarding his work as essentialist with respect to gender. The manner in which Levinas textures the Other through such gender speciﬁc rhetoric tells us something about his understanding of materiality, speciﬁcally that a human being is only a subject by way of his/her embodied responsibility. We will return to Levinas’s confrontation with the politics of gender in the following chapter. For now it is important to realize that,

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for Levinas, the body is the site of ethics—the incarnation of ethical obligation. Put another way, it is through the body that the event of being subject, that is, being for-the Other takes place. Levinas explains: “To take it as an event is to say that it is not an instrument, symbol or symptom of position, but is position itself, that in it is effected the very transformation of an event into a being” (1978, 72). The way in which humanity is bodily posed and oriented, for or against the Other, is indicative of his/her subjectivity. For Levinas, a person is called to be subject and thus positioned by the Other. This call, which emerges in the face, is heard out of time by the subject and witnessed to in his/her verbal and physical responses for-the-Other. The body becomes the site of the ethical relation between subject and Other. In addition, Levinas reminds us that the body is the boundary between interiority and exteriority. Remember that interiority implies an afﬁnity for egoism, while exteriority refers to the obligation of forthe-Other. As embodied, a human being stands tensely between the limits of interiority and the exposure of exteriority. One can begin to grasp that the tension within one’s stance is ambiguous. For on one level, to stand (se tenir) means to be in control of oneself, to master oneself, to take hold of oneself, and to hide within one’s interior dwelling. Still, on another level, to stand (se tenir) means to be grounded by something other than oneself, to be bound and responsible to the point of exteriority, and to be for-the-Other. It is precisely in this liminal space, between self and Other, that the body-subject incarnates the tension between an egoist and a hospitable posture, in the event of being opened for-the-Other. The open subject, who postures forthe-Other to the point of death, is the site of justice.

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3.5 Conclusion In this chapter I explained Levinas’s interpretation of subjectivity in terms of an embodied posture that is opened by the face of Other. The face, as a trace of the Inﬁnite, commands the subject to expose him/herself in a posture of passivity and generosity. This kind of giving transcends simple handouts and demands that the subject open to the point of substitution. The way in which the face opens the subject to a disposition of passive and gifted responsibility then was broken down into three categories, including speech, time, and posture. As language is the medium by which the subject gloriﬁes and bears witness to alterity, speech simultaneously recognizes difference and marks relationship. Such bearing witness takes place over diachronic time, in which the interrupted moment marks alterity. Besides being attentive to language and time, I attempted to rework Levinas’s interpretation of shouldering through the idea of posturing. Posturing embodies the subject’s responsibility for-the-Other. In my analysis of posture, it became clear that Levinas’s work illustrates the importance of an incarnational ethics. And in the last section, we learned that both Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology provided the foundation for Levinas’s incarnational ethics. The connection between corporeality and mortality was explored, and an emphasis was placed on the subject’s bodily responsibility of substitution for-the-Other. Even as I problematized how substitution and sacriﬁce is often framed in feminine rhetoric, Levinas’s work seems to counter any charge of gender essentialism. As the idea of the body as the site of ethics and justice was brought to the fore, the notion of subject as postured for-the-Other became even more poignant.

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4 The Issue of Alterity

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n the previous chapters, we examined Lonergan’s and Levinas’s interpretations of subjectivity, both of which assume that being human emerges only in relation to other people. In this chapter, we continue to explore the implications of intersubjective relationships by focusing on the question of difference. Theoretically, the term difference can be deﬁned as a contestation of sameness. In ordinary social practices, however, difference is not always understood as such. For example, when difference is interpreted from a commonsense perspective, it often is explained by way of binaries and dichotomies. From such a standpoint, it is arguable that otherness is the opposite of everything with which the subject identiﬁes. As feminists and critical race theorists have long pointed out, this thinking is problematic in that it fails to take into account the complexity of the subject in relation to the Other. Difference may have nothing at all to do with gender, race, culture, or religion, but may be related to one’s abilities or gifts. In what follows, I invite Christians to free themselves from the dualistic framework that too often conceptualizes difference in either/or terms. By developing an understanding of difference, which has roots in religious alterity, as well as in contemporary theory, I illustrate that subjectivity and difference are inextricably connected. Both Lonergan’s theology and Levinas’s theory are pertinent to this discussion. The ensuing discussion of alterity is an arduous and taxing one. Even in some of the best contemporary treatments, inadequate interpretations of otherness exist. Consider the political theory of Iris Marion Young (1990). Although I respect Young’s work in the area of theorizing justice, I am critical of her polemicization of difference and otherness. She describes difference in positive terms, referring to the heterogeneity, plurality, and ambiguity of situations, groups, and individuals. Alternatively, she reads otherness in a negative light, em-

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phasizing it as an essentialist concept or prejudicial type that is imputed onto social groups or individuals as a stigma. Her argument is suspect. By contrasting the ideas of difference and otherness, Young upholds the binary opposition between normative and deviant subjectivity. Like Lacan, she asserts that otherness stems from the subject and as a creation of the subject, is projected onto others. If, in a Levinasian mode, Young would claim that otherness is not a result of lack, as we encountered in the work of Lacan, but as a position incommensurable with the politics of the same, her theory of justice would become more valuable. Reading alterity as an incommensurable position facilitates a bond between subject and Other, a relationship that leads to obligation and justice. My aim here is not to debunk Young’s theory, but to underscore the complexity of understanding alterity. Below, my investigation of alterity begins by commenting on the ways in which Westerners have difﬁculty dealing with diversity in the human community. It ends in a demonstration of the importance of otherness in relation to both Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thought.

4.1 Problems in Interpreting Otherness Grave problems arise when we understand alterity in terms of binary oppositions. Most prevalent is the situation in which arguments regarding difference end up in liberal debate and equal rights language. As exempliﬁed later, in such cases, liberal initiatives spiral into totalitarian movements of sameness. In addition to ignoring the politics of difference through liberal rights language, modern Western culture insufﬁciently deals with difference by suffusing it in the rhetoric of popular culture and postmodern jargon. Few would argue about the dangers of both these tendencies. It is not too strong to suggest, nevertheless, that the most insidious hazard associated with binary logic is the inclination to distort otherness into an image of an exotic and antagonistic evil. The current situation in the “War Against Terrorism” works to emphasize this problem. In the ﬁrst case, the need to express diversity in society is obscured by the proliferation of equality and rights language. The rhetoric of equality is based on the idea that all people are created equal—an idea

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that leads to the legal afﬁrmation that all people are the same, regardless of gender, race, or class. From a theological perspective, this logic seems reasonable, since human creation has just one human nature. There are not distinctive human natures for women, men, blacks, or whites. Indeed, all of creation is grounded in one human nature, even as social and biological features, such as race and sex, particularize human beings. This paradigm is simple enough, but the logic of equality often collapses under the rubric of the same. Equal rights movements tend to ignore the accidents of individuality in order to foster the development of a democratic society. When the goal of liberal progress is taken to an extreme, the contingent factors of gender, race, and class are read as obstacles to our freedom and ability to secure the fruits of democracy. Complicating the situation further, the current desire for equality is intertwined with the aims of the political correctness movement. Political correctness is the practice in which one attempts to address difference in non-pejorative, neutral terms. Copeland explores the history and implications of the term political correctness in her essay, “Political Correctness and the Life of the Mind” (1999b). According to Copeland, both conservatives and liberals manipulate the tenets of political correctness for their own gain. Liberals employ political correctness naively, without understanding the social implications of difference, while conservatives mock the political correctness movement by disregarding the social implications of history, context, and development. Although I am vexed by the conservative attitude towards political correctness, I am bothered more by the liberal presupposition that difference can be effectively engaged through simplistic egalitarian rhetoric. The liberal position refuses to understand difference as the ground of community. Insisting on politically correct language and practice, liberals reduce difference to that which impedes community. According to liberal rhetoric, alterity does not structure a relationship of justice between subject and Other, but rather alterity thwarts justice. When difference is interpreted in such a negative light—as an obstacle to justice, then it must be framed in terms of the accidental. Implicitly, political correctness attempts to simplify the ambiguity of difference by contextualizing alterity as simply accidental, and thus incidental.

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Yet, ambiguity regarding difference is difﬁcult to suppress. As tensions build within the community, ambiguity regarding difference emerges over and over again. One would think that a dialogue would emerge in such a heated milieu. On the contrary, with the constant threat of appearing politically incorrect, culturally insensitive, or even worse, biased, individuals refuse to reﬂect on the philosophical and ontological assumptions that ground discussions of diversity. At this moment in history, political correctness as an approach to the question of difference is bankrupt. Political correctness efforts in their seminal stage had potential to bring the question of difference to the public, at least on the rhetorical level. It was not long, however, before political correctness movements became faddish and nonsensical. While a politically correct approach intends to engage difference in a respectful and hospitable manner, non-controversial language and innuendo obscure the actual difference that is in question. In other words, in its ﬁxation upon egalitarianism and its fear of confrontation, politically correct conversation fails to problematize what exactly is meant by or at stake in the question of difference. It would be wrong to dismiss the merits of equality rights language altogether. After all, democracy and freedom for all is a powerful goal. Yet, too often this egalitarian ideal is conﬂated with the assumption that difference must be conceptualized and thematized into a single ideal of what is normative. Difference, in such circumstances, is not esteemed, but erased. The erasure of difference is illustrated in an analysis of feminist equality rights movements. Arguments that support women’s rights result in the afﬁrmation that women are just as strong, smart, and powerful as men. Women and men are the same. This afﬁrmation has subsequently required that women assimilate into a male ideal by attempting to shed any social mores that are considered feminine. In practice, it becomes obvious that not all women are accorded equal rights, rather only those women who attempt to mimic the masculine ideal acquire rights and social power. Here, equality is based on uniformity, sameness, and totality. In reaction to the hegemony of sameness, difference is conceptualized in terms of stigma. The notion of stigma leads us to the next obstacle in our ineffectiveness in

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engaging difference: the problematic conﬁguration of difference in popular culture. “Endgame,” an analysis of the 1998 World Cup competition demonstrates how the current discussion of difference is undermined by popular culture. The author, Adam Gopnik, shows that the rhetoric of otherness is restricted neither to the political sphere nor the academic arena, but has come to imbue the cultural realm. In recounting the opening ceremonies of the international soccer games, Gopnik narrates a conversation among members of the French Press who were covering the festivities. Reporting on the opening spectacle, the members of the press began to play with the language of self and Other. In order to emphasize the global character of the World Cup, four giant sized mechanical men, each physically representing a different ethnic/racial human type, marched to the center of Paris. As the mammoth Indigenous, African, Asian, and European men proceeded to the middle of Paris, French commentators frivolously pondered: “The giants confront each other, but do they see a stranger or themselves?” (Gopnik 1998, 28). In this conversation, ethical discourse about diversity was subverted by a carnivalesque context. Although Gopnik’s intent was to comment on the spirit of the event and not to problematize the commentators’ use of postmodern jargon, his essay inadvertently demonstrates how we de-politicize the rhetoric of diversity through popular culture. Put another way, the popular use of the vocabulary of difference undermines concrete efforts to engage diversity and reconstruct community based on otherness. Some may wonder if discussions about otherness are signs of our progress or regress. As Lonergan makes plain, intelligent and responsible conversation about the value and need of the Other is necessary for a community to progress. When values are ignored and the good is obfuscated, society spirals into regress. By locating the question of otherness in frivolous terms of mechanical men at a pageant, rather than in the harsh light of racism, sexism, or classism, society courts regress. In such a situation, alterity becomes a game for the alienated subject who is devoid of moral integrity and who has nothing more than ﬁller and ﬂuff to say. Both Lonergan and Levinas would argue that there is plenty left to say in regard to difference. They would assert that evading and undermining alterity in commonsense or comedic

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language is indicative of inauthentic, irresponsible subjectivity—a problem that only will be rectiﬁed when diversity becomes a genuine priority for humanity. In addition to the way in which popular culture absorbs the Other into frivolous language, there is also the way that consumer culture erases the ambiguity and demand of difference through media. In an examination of popular advertising, cultural critic, bell hooks comments on the way in which capitalist society assimilates otherness into popular culture. She pinpoints the problem of the “commodiﬁcation of difference” in which the Other is absorbed into culture by reconﬁguring such difference as marketable, and thereby erasing the historical and material signiﬁcance of alterity (hooks 1992, 31). When the marketer commodiﬁes categories of difference, the consumer, instead of being reoriented or converted by the difference, avoids the ambiguity of that difference. In other words, advertisers exploit differences rooted in nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class in order to suppress the ambiguity that surfaces in the dialogue about difference. hooks explains that the “racialized subtext” in advertisements for such companies as J. Crew and Tweeds distorts otherness in two ways. It creates nostalgia for a ﬁctive stranger; and, it dramatizes difference, such as whiteness at the expense of fetishizing other difference, such as blackness (72). In both strategies, marketers rely on stereotypes about individuals and groups in order to entice the reader into purchasing the product. In order to comprehend hooks’s ideas, we might imagine a ﬁctional instance in which the media plays with controversial and contested images to sell products. Below, I will narrate such a hypothetical scenario. A cosmetics company wants to market its new and improved suntan oil. The advertisement agency that publicizes the product decides to develop a campaign based on the idea that using the company’s suntan oil leads to an exotic, savage tan. A mainstream African American woman from Nebraska is selected to model this campaign and is adorned as an Egyptian Queen. As the reader gazes at such an image, s/he is led to confuse the model’s race with a speciﬁc geographical region (Africa) as well as with a sense of primitivism. Upholding the racist ideology that conﬂates the notion of blackness with the themes of the tropical, exotic, and the primitive, this ad diverts the reader’s attention from the particularity of the person in the image, in order to conjure a

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fantasy of otherness. A critical reading of this representation would require us to question the racist implications of the image, particularly the way in which the visual text attempts to avoid the historical and social complexity of racial difference. Cultural criticism, nevertheless, is not fostered in a consumerist society. Ads such as this one feign the celebration of difference, while paradoxically encouraging the reader’s fear of alterity. For Lonergan and Levinas, the presence of the Other should obligate the reader to reject his/her fear of difference. Only in working through our conﬂicted feelings, can we understand how conceptualizations and thematizations of difference thwart ethical relations with others. Another way in which alterity is subverted in the media is in the exploitation of blackness through the hegemony of whiteness. Imagine a commercial that shows diversity within the community. This advertisement illustrates diversity by portraying white teachers lecturing to black students, or white students feeding homeless people of color. Even though this ﬁctional tableau is intended to highlight the mutuality between different individuals, it draws the reader’s attention to the dominance and freedom of the white person over and against the subservience and bondage of the black person. Such marketing campaigns are not responsible attempts toward understanding the complexity of human diversity. On the contrary, these popular images demonstrate bias against and thematization of otherness in order to stabilize the white person as the normative subject. Advertisements like these ignore the ambiguity of difference, rather than invite us to pause and question our own presuppositions and intentions. A third way in which intelligent discussion about difference is thwarted is through the active otherizing of those who are deemed different. By the term otherizing, I refer to the way in which dominant groups sometimes distance themselves from any community, any individual, or anything that they regard as threatening to their own identity. Otherizing can only be successful if the dominant group is convinced that it is without any lack or imperfection. Only then can the dominant group project difference and suffering onto another people or place in the world. Projection fosters distance and antagonism between groups, which usually leads to an us versus them attitude. As concrete difference and suffering are in effect erased through this

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distancing, the dominant group is released from any obligation to the other group. One thinker who problematizes the cultural ramiﬁcations of otherizing, or the refusal to deal with difference is Edward W. Said. During the 1970’s, Said became known for his research into the European invention of the idea of the Orient. In Orientalism (1978), Said maps the way that the West, through war, politics, academics, and popular culture, has constructed and fetishized a ﬁctional and hegemonic otherness. Said explains that the notion of the ‘Orient’ is a ﬁctional projection of the intellectual power of the West. The opposite of everything that the West wants to be is projected onto a faraway locale or a distant time, and deemed the Orient. Said deﬁnes Orientalism similarly to the way in which Lonergan and Levinas consider the problematic approaches of conceptualism and thematization. As Lonergan explains that a conceptualist posture imputes barbarism onto another culture merely because it is different, Said states that the Orientalist types people as inferior and then frames their depravity in terms of the Oriental. Consequently, the “Oriental is irrational depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, normal” (Said 1978, 40). As Levinas offers a critique of the aggressive act of thematizing strangers with window dressing or in ﬁctional cultural adornment, Said asserts that the Orientalist creates the ﬁction of inferiority by upholding a stereotype of the Other, rather than allowing the Other to present his/her distinctive self to the subject. Said argues: In a sense, the limits of Orientalism are … the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographic region. But Orientalism has taken a step further than that: it views the Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained ﬁxed in time and place for the West (108).

Thus, the Western (an oxymoron) Orientalist ﬁxes the Other with a static and constructed concept of negative difference, which overdetermines a ﬁctive identity of otherness.

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By locating difference in a distant location and then demonizing it, the subject is freed from any relationship with and responsibility toward others. Said further illustrates how an Orientalist attitude can “damn” whole civilizations and legitimize the inhuman treatment of such peoples, even fuel genocide (101). If we apply Said’s theory of Orientalism to such catastrophic events as the West’s brutal enslavement and murder of millions of Africans or the genocide of Jews in European death camps, we can begin to grasp how the dichotomization of otherness in terms of an us against them campaign can, when taken to its logical conclusion, only end in violence and death. This us against them attitude has surfaced again today in the clash of the Eastern and Western cultures in “America’s New War.” Aside from demonizing others in faraway locales, there are more ways for the West to otherize speciﬁc peoples. Some theorists claim that in our consumer driven, fragmented world, many people are actually comforted by the idea that in the world of chaos, there exists a reality somewhere, even if it is a reality of pain and suffering. For instance, Jean Baudrillard makes exactly this point. He claims that the West’s identity and power are stabilized by conjuring suffering in a foreign land: [W]e know better than they do what reality is, because we have chosen them to embody it. Or simply because it is what we—and the whole of the West—most lack. We have to go and retrieve a reality for ourselves where the bleeding is … we go to convince them of the ‘reality’ of their suffering—by culturalizing it, of course, by theatricalizing it so that it can serve as a point of reference in the theatre of Western values (1996, 134).

According to Baudrillard, suffering elsewhere secures the fantasy of our well being at home. One example of the way Westerners fetishize suffering in order to avoid responsibility to their own communities can be found in Western feminist discourse. Baudrillard’s critique calls to mind the liberal feminist inquiry into female circumcision in other societies. By calling into question the meaning of rituals in other cultures, liberal and cultural feminists obscure the reality of oppression and suffering in their own North American or European

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context. These interests are undoubtedly important, but pose no immediate threat to the feminists in question or their own positions. It is too easy to grapple with issues which have no direct connection to us, rather than to deal with how we might be implicated in the complexity of the issue. Another instance in which we tend to dramatize suffering elsewhere in order to avoid suffering and difference in our midst relates to debates surrounding the Shoah. Often, when people discuss the mass murders conducted in the concentration camps, those events become conﬂated with other violent situations. It seems as if we cannot have a sustained attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible conversation about the suffering of a particular people without obscuring that particularity with a larger, more abstract theme. This abstraction is caused by our refusal to listen to the testimony of the Other, unless it relates to us or unless we see the Other in ourselves. The events of September 11th, in many ways, also underscore our modern tendency to conﬂate another’s suffering with our own experience. During the rescue and recovery operations in New York City, many Americans started to identify with the victims of terrorism. No longer was terrorism Israel’s or Ireland’s problem, but America’s problem. In order to deal with the confusing commentary surrounding the attacks on the United States, some Americans not only felt connected to those wronged and violated in the attacks, but also otherized and demonized the alleged perpetrators as evil. Led by George W. Bush, American citizens rallied that these others, these “evil doers” needed to be eradicated and/or convinced of our worldview. The West, led by America, would then attempt to show the world the right way of being human. Others would need to be changed into our notion of the same at all costs. This is only one avenue by which people in the West have attempted to change the Other into themselves. There are more subtle, yet no less precarious ways of otherizing people. Baudrillard argues that the West, through its project of assimilating the Other into the same through surgery, cloning, as well as through its preoccupation with twins and the incest taboo, simultaneously ignores the presence of and mourns the absence of the radically Other. Baudrillard writes: “[A]ll forms of sexist, racist, ethnic or cultural discrimination arise

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out of … a collective mourning, a mourning for a dead otherness” (1996, 132). Dead otherness signiﬁes everything that is the opposite of what the Western person thinks s/he embodies—an otherness that is a construction of the subject, rather than connected to any sense of the stranger’s reality. Otherness is that which is deviant from the stable identity of the subject. According to Baudrillard, by objectifying otherness and then changing it into the same, the subject secures his/her identity as the norm or ideal. In order to explicate this critique of the Western ideal of otherness in more detail, let us turn our attention again to the work of Iris Marion Young. Young explains the Western ideal of normativity in terms of the universal citizen, who is typiﬁed by the white, bourgeois, respectable, male. Accordingly, she asserts that “the ‘respectable’ man was rational, restrained, and chaste … [and] should be straight, dispassionate, rule-bound” (1990, 110). Any characteristics that disrupt the pristine identity of the universal male are imputed onto others. As a result, Young contends: “The bodily, sexual, uncertain, disorderly aspects of existence in these cultural images were and are identiﬁed with women, homosexuals, Blacks, Indians, Jews, and Orientals” (110-111). The Western subject’s self-understanding hinges on the assumption that the Other is the embodiment of all that is deviant. The dominant subject weighs others against the mask of his/her own normativity. Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon is critical of the construction of a speciﬁc type of otherness, racialized otherness, in colonialist and post-colonialist contexts. In Black Skin, White Masks (1967), he grapples with the ways in which blacks have been stigmatized due to the construction of otherness around skin color and bodily appearance. Whereas other marginalized groups, including Jews have been ostracized due to their ethnicity, Fanon argues that blacks are different in that they are automatically unmasked by their appearance. Speaking both autobiographically and collectively, Fanon explains: “I am given no chance. I am overdetermined from without. I am the slave not of the “idea” of others have of me but my own appearance” (116). He describes how even as he hoped to hide from being seen and typed by others, he, still, was ﬁxed by the white colonialist gaze. This violent and oppressive gaze strips him (and other blacks) of his particularity and dresses him in grotesque stereotypes.

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Through an analysis of how blacks are masked by white supremacist culture, Fanon demonstrates how that culture fears and hates black bodies. Fanon’s work clariﬁes just how important bodies are to our understanding of the human person as complete or damaged, necessary or superﬂuous, and normal or deviant. The way in which we interpret appearance as normative, deviant or somewhere in between inﬂuences the level of intensity of body management and control. The constant monitoring of the bodies of ourselves and others is quite appropriately named by Young as “scaling” (1990, 122-155). The process of scaling refers to the way that those who are deemed deviant are forced by societal pressure to internalize the ﬁction of their deviance and otherness, as well as endure impossible and torturous practices in order to escape being typed as the ugly Other. Scaling takes place in many forms. Plastic surgery controls ethnic noses, chemical straighteners manage unruly hair, excessive diet and weight training sculpt bodies to perfection, bleach creams neutralize deviant skin color, and hair dyes impede the aging process. I list these not in the attempt to scandalize any one group, but to emphasize the cultural pressure to conform to this illusive embodied norm and to escape otherness. Scaling does not end with either grooming or body sculpting. Cloning is an extreme form of scaling that attempts to make the perfect individual without any visual lack, imperfection, or deformity. As these social practices that control, manage, sculpt, neutralize, impede, and erase any obstacle to the ideal human person, they still fail to take into account the concrete material and spiritual needs of the human person. Neither plastic surgery nor cloning can erase difference based on a real material need or on serious spiritual crisis. Certainly, scaling only obscures need by masking it in the dress of sameness. The impetus behind the extreme abuses of cosmetic surgery, diet, and cloning is the “I’m okay you’re okay” logic which allows the subject to distance him/herself from the Other in question, or rather the Other who questions. hooks, Said, Baudrillard, Young, and Fanon help us to understand that human beings often interpret their identity as stable and secure at the cost of fetishizing racial and ethnic difference. In this section, we have explored three ways in which Western people deal unsuccessfully with difference: by unintentionally diffusing it into

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equality rights language, by obscuring it in popular, commodity culture, and by otherizing it through ﬁction and fantasy. In each of these ways, the subject dominates and erases the Other through rationalization, or even worse, through violence. In light of our present inattentiveness to the reality beyond rationalized and ﬁctional otherness, it may prove helpful to recall that Lonergan’s critique of conceptualism presses us to take seriously the embodied cultures of other people and not to dismiss them as barbaric or primitive. Furthermore, by returning to Levinas’s notion of facing the Other, we can further comprehend our inability to ignore the predicament of the Other, to thematize or totalize it. We should discover in both Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work the non-negotiable demand for a critical engagement with difference.

4.2 Lonergan on Being Human in the Midst of the Other As alluded to in the Introduction, unlike Levinas, Lonergan does not offer an explicit theory of the Other. What Lonergan does extend to theologians, nonetheless, is a method for an ethics of thinking and an invitation for self-appropriation—both of which encourage the subject to engage responsibly other people and cultures. Below, we will uncover how Lonergan’s responsible subject is opened to alterity. According to Lonergan, the human being is opened and shaped by a dialectical encounter with the Other, speciﬁcally through various patterns of experience. As we know, the subject’s experience is complicated by his/her attitude toward history and culture. Signiﬁcantly, Lonergan’s theology attempts to underscore the nuance of culture, especially in his notion of the transcultural, which anticipates many of our contemporary concerns about historical context, difference, and cultural diversity. In researching Lonergan’s attentiveness to culture, it becomes clear that Lonergan’s account of subjectivity, especially his emphasis on understanding and conversion, resonates with the postmodern desire for a deconstructed subject, someone open and attentive to otherness.

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From the start it is important to realize that Lonergan’s understanding of the subject’s relationship with the Other is rooted in the dynamic process of interpersonal encounter. In Method in Theology, Lonergan deﬁnes encounter as dialectical, in which the subject’s “meeting persons, appreciating the values they represent, criticizing their defects, and allowing one’s living to be challenged at its very roots by their words and their deeds” opens the subject for others (1971c, 247). We can locate dialectical encounter similar to this in our own lives. Most have us have had the rich experience of meeting someone new, and being challenged and shaken to our core by the feelings evoked in us through that encounter. In such a situation, Lonergan would urge us to reﬂect on those speciﬁc feelings of challenge and conﬂict. By struggling with those feelings evoked by the Other, we can actuate our potential to move to a higher viewpoint, to authentic subjectivity. According to Lonergan, being attentive to our experience during the dynamic process of encounter opens us to the possibility of conversion for God and others. Being attentive to experience is a difﬁcult task, especially since experience, in general, is an illusive phenomenon. Lonergan helps us gain insight into the complexity of experience by categorizing general experience into speciﬁc patterns. As previously mentioned, these patterns include, but are not limited to, the biological, aesthetic, intellectual, dramatic, social, psychological, and religious expressions of experience. When encountering another, it is particularly through our dramatic pattern of experience that we feel various sensations, such as love, fear, jealousy, anger, and/or attraction. More often than not, we deal with these feelings in inappropriate ways. For instance, when we feel fear toward someone, we often avoid that person instead of attempting to realize the underlying reason for our trepidation. A better approach, according to Lonergan, would be to ﬁgure out whether or not this stranger actually poses any danger by questioning if there exists another plausible reason for our fear, such as bias. If bias is the reason for our fear, we ought to acknowledge how that bias prevents us from engaging the stranger in life-afﬁrming ways. Only when we are attentive to how we engage others through the dramatic pattern of experience can we come to terms with some of the challenges and conﬂicts that surface during dialectical encounter.

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The outcome of our dialectical encounter with the Other is a result of our attentiveness or inattentiveness to our dramatic pattern of experience. Put another way, the quality of our engagement with the Other hinges not merely on our experience of the Other, but more importantly, on how we process our experience of the Other. Like so many contemporary and poststructural theorists, Lonergan acknowledges the ambiguity regarding the process of experiencing the Other. Even so, he would insist that through questioning and answering, one could understand their experience at a higher level of consciousness and then act on it. The convergence between affectivity (sensual experience), cognition (intellectual questioning), and volition (deliberate action) is one of the hallmarks of Lonergan’s work. He seriously considers the role of feelings in our being human in relation to others. Lonergan refuses to conclude his analysis of the subject’s experience of the Other at the level of dialectic. On the contrary, as the subject is engaged and challenged by the Other during encounter, s/he (the subject) has the potential to move from dialectic to dialogue. Whereas dialectical encounter encompasses the process by which the subject is challenged by another’s position, dialogue is an event in which the subject and Other can move from conﬂict to friendship. In “Natural Right and Historical Mindedness,” Lonergan elaborates on this shift in approach “from a conﬂict of statements to an encounter of persons” (1985, 182). Without question, the conﬂict of dialectic cannot result in interpersonal estrangement or violence, because behind every statement and proposition, there is a concrete, embodied person who has dignity and demands respect. Dialectic creates an opportunity to move toward friendship and love. Interestingly, conﬂict opens us to the Other. We must bear in mind that Lonergan’s reading of dialectic, unlike Levinas’s, does not involve negating alterity. According to Lonergan, a subject grapples head on with otherness during dialectic. Put another way, as Levinas reads dialectic as destroying transcendence and otherness, Lonergan comprehends dialectic as a tool that reveals otherness. Indeed, otherness has the power to call the subject into question. An encounter with alterity can challenge and reposition the subject to an alternative posture, to a higher viewpoint. The questioning and answering involved in the activity of dialectic should lead to intellec-

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tual, moral, and religious conversion for right-relationship with others. Again, in “Natural Right,” Lonergan explains: “For every person is an embodiment of natural right. Every person can reveal to any other his natural propensity to seek understanding, to judge reasonably, to evaluate fairly, to be open to friendship. While the dialectic of history coldly relates our conﬂicts, dialogue adds the principle that prompts us to cure them, the natural right that is the inmost core of our being” (1985, 182). Up until this point we have been discussing the complexity of personal experience when encountering another in a dialectical and hopefully dialogical manner. Still, the intricacy of experience and the challenge of being attentive to difference cannot remain at the level of the individual, for people belong to social structures, such as families, schools, businesses, political groups, and the media, and are inﬂuenced by diverse people, including parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and journalists. Human beings are not isolated, but social subjects who belong to communities. According to Lonergan, the social pattern of experience traces the human person’s concrete relationships as s/he moves into the larger community. As a member of society, the social subject is encouraged to make serious decisions, particularly s/he is called to participate in political institutions, develop the economic well-being of the community, and think ethically about the employment of various technological discoveries. The way in which the social subject engages these three spheres of society (politics, economics, and technology) effects either progress or decline. Navigating within society, effecting either progress or decline, the social subject is not only faced with issues of politics, economics, and technology, but also with the question of cultural diversity. Lonergan explains how historical and cultural context inﬂuences the subject’s relationship with others through his notion of the transcultural (1971c, 282). Recall that the term transcultural refers to how the structure of human knowing is present in every human being, throughout all periods and cultures. By appropriating this structure through the cognitional process, humans not only have the capability, but also have the obligation to be attentive and open to the insights, feelings, and values of different people. This human potential for understanding transcends the closed dialectical and dialogical encounter between

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subject and Other previously discussed, and embraces the plurality of cultures throughout the world. By emphasizing the fact that human beings can understand other cultures, Lonergan calls our attention not only to the Other in our midst, but also to the complexity of cultural diversity on the global scale. It is clear from Lonergan’s thought in the essay “Time and Meaning” that he avoids any attitude of “provincialism” when dealing with difference across cultures (1996a, 95). Even more important is the fact that Lonergan rebukes those people and cultures who read themselves as normative, while they assume that “the rest of the world is made up of strangers and the strangers are totally strange, totally odd … ‘inscrutably Oriental’” (95). Such orientalism foregrounds the thought of Edward Said. Strengthening Lonergan’s argument, Matthew Lamb worries that when we deem some human cultures so impossible to understand, we end up neglecting, ignoring, ﬁctionalizing, or “treating [these] cultures as if they were specimens in a modern zoo” (Lamb 1990, 69). One contemporary instance of such cultural neglect can be related to the way in which Americans and many other Westerners act toward the Islamic community. We often treat Muslims as less than human, harbor bias against them, or even worse, forget their existence altogether. In order to be authentically human, nonetheless, Lonergan and Lamb would urge us to actuate our potential to understand those who seem different than us by engaging them in dialectic and dialogue. For only when we enact the transcultural and relate to those different than us as fully human, do we become authentic subjects. It is not too strong to suggest that the transcultural potential to know other beings and cultures is that which marks us as authentically human. The transcultural is that which enables us to move from a position of dialectical conﬂict to dialogical love. But when we ignore the transcultural potential and refuse to strive toward understanding, the end result is our alienation from God and others. Alienation reﬂects the subject’s inability to convert from a position of bias to a position of authentic subjectivity, to being for others. At this point, it might help to review Lonergan’s reading of conversion. According to Lonergan, intellectual conversion can occur when we realize how our bias regarding a certain person or group prohibits us from understanding them. For instance, in American culture we

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often make assumptions about people without taking the time to understand who they really are. To return to the previous example, many Christians, Jews, and others in America have a negative perception of Muslims, most probably because they have a limited understanding of the Islamic tradition. Any information that is relayed by the media regarding Muslims usually relates to their supposed connection to terrorist activity and/or their seemingly hostile treatment of women. Instead of focusing on the negative, biased portrayal of Muslims, it would be beneﬁcial if people were more attentive to the Islamic tradition by ﬁnding out, both through personal contact and research, the actual beliefs and practices of Muslim communities. Only then, with a more sophisticated intellectual grasp of the Islamic worldview, will we be free to relate to Muslims in more humane ways. A change in one’s understanding, therefore, can lead to a change in one’s moral horizon, to moral conversion. Moral conversion occurs when a person’s shift in understanding leads him/her to have a shift in value. Once a person realizes that all Muslims are not a threat, then s/he can value them as complete persons, and eventually act in friendship toward them. In conjunction with intellectual change, moral conversion further opens the subject to the possibility of falling in love with God and others. Arguably being-in-love-with-God is the highest form of selfappropriation, for when in love with God, the subject is drawn out of a closed world and reoriented to a stance of right-relationship with others. Lonergan scholar, Frederick Lawrence, explains that “within Lonergan’s framework, then the decentering, detotalizing, and becoming heterogeneous of the self can be reinterpreted as the basic and radical displacement of the subject that occurs most paradigmatically in religious conversion” (1993, 91). Inasmuch as we become repositioned for others through intellectual and moral conversion, it could be argued that only when we fall in love with God do we become complete, authentic beings for others. One could make a case that Lonergan’s normative subject is open to diversity and oriented toward God and others, in fact, is already “deconstructed” (Lawrence 1998, 163-165). In employing the phrase already deconstructed, Lawrence does not imply that the subject is self-sufﬁcient or perfect as is, but rather that the subject is positioned by the presence of God and others. The idea of being positioned by

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alterity is most obvious in contemporary continental theory, such as in the work of Derrida, Lyotard, and most importantly Levinas. By typing Lonergan’s anthropological subject as already deconstructed, Lawrence compels us to focus on the way in which Lonergan understands being human as being accountable to others. A postmodern subject in the best sense of the word, Lonergan’s subject is graced in openness to alterity. And, again this openness is most complete in affective, gifted encounter. Even as Lawrence attempts to demonstrate that Lonergan’s work wields a reverence for otherness, Lawrence argues that unlike some postmodern theories, Lonergan’s cognitional theory demands that we not only describe otherness, but also judge and decide in the face of alterity. In this way, Lonergan’s cognitional theory repudiates an insidious relativism that is present in so much of contemporary continental thought. Lawrence writes: “[I]n the posture of sensitivity to otherness and difference that goes together with agnostic pluralism, radical pluralists fail to come to terms with the way in which it takes correct judgments adequately (if never exhaustively) to come to terms with the other as other” (1993, 81). Contrary to the thought of the radical pluralists (and relativist contemporary theorists), Lawrence shows us that alterity and intersubjectivity are only maintained when the subject attends to the sense data of the Other, grapples with their own preconceptions of the Other, and acts reasonably and responsibly toward the Other. Notice that these activities perform the operations in Lonergan’s transcultural structure of being human. Investigating Lonergan’s reading of subjectivity and otherness, we discovered several points. We learned that even though Lonergan values experience per se, he is more concerned with our being attentive to that which complicates our experience, such as bias. Our attentiveness to the complexity of experience, nevertheless, is only the initial step in the rigorous process of understanding our relationship with others. Openness to alterity extends beyond the subject’s individual world to his/her social pattern of experience. Chronicling the social dimension of being human required us to reﬂect on the transcultural potential in all of humanity not only to know self or another, but also to engage and understand other cultures. As we reﬂected on Lamb’s exposition of the transcultural, contemporary questions about diversity and plural-

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ism surfaced. Finally, Lawrence’s analysis helped us to understand that Lonergan’s authentic subject is already deconstructed, already open to otherness. Below, we will realize how Levinas’s subject, similar to Lonergan’s anthropological subject, defers to the Other. Indeed for Levinas, being human is an effect of the Other.

4.3 Revisiting Levinas’s Other As his writings about alterity are numerous, below I detail only a few of the threads in Levinas’s thought on otherness. I begin by tracing his roots in both Talmudic and Cartesian thought, demonstrating how the Other is neither someone who can be thematized, nor the object of positivist ontology. For Levinas, the Other is precisely the unthematizable, the non-correlative, and the unutterable trace that calls the subject into being through the ethical relation of facing. Then, I delineate the way in which this unthematizable alterity is illustrated through the heuristic of heterosexual love. This gendered and spousal imagery is not meant to reduce the Other to a speciﬁc persona, but to emphasize the open and mysterious qualities of the Other, as well as the obligatory stance of the subject in the face of the Other. Finally, the ways that Levinas’s interpretation of difference inﬂuences the contemporary conversation about gender issues and racial diversity are detailed. It should be clear from the previous chapter that Levinas’s interpretation of the Other is rooted primarily in Scripture, speciﬁcally in the prophetic call of God throughout history as well as in humanity’s solemn witness to that call. By treating otherness in terms of a call, Levinas avoids thematizing God in ontological terms. According to Levinas, the Other is not an incarnation of God, rather God is revealed in facing. God is present in the subject’s engagement with the Other. Even though humanity cannot say all that it would like about the being of God, human beings can mediate God in their relations with others. Therefore, God is not the Other par excellence, rather God emerges in the subject’s desire for-the-Other. Humanity’s giving to others attests to God’s presence, witnesses to the Other.

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In addition to appreciating the religious impulse of Levinas’s work, contextualizing Levinas within the Cartesian tradition elucidates his understanding of the Other. Recall how Levinas draws on Descartes’s metaphysics in order to argue that the Inﬁnite is placed within the human person—ﬁxing and orienting the subject for-the-Other. Through Levinas’s reading of Descartes, one can glean how the Inﬁnite Other approaches and withdraws from the world of the subject, but is never purely present, never synchronic. Alterity is not accounted for positively as an object, but only attested to in the subject’s response. Subjectivity emerges in the event of witnessing. Being human, consequently, is not isolated from, stable without, or symmetrical to the Other; rather, being human depends on the Other. Avoiding any sort of Heideggerian utilitarianism or Lacanian lack, Levinas’s sense of the Other is one in which the Other is not an object for the subject to use. Quite profoundly, the Other causes the subject to be human. Aside from his confessional and philosophical reﬂections, Levinas’s rhetorical style also is indicative of his interpretation of otherness. A vital dimension of Levinas’s explanation of alterity, then, is not only what he states, but also how he states it. Thus, one would be remiss to ignore Levinas’s erotically charged description of otherness. By way of what I call a discourse of desire, Levinas further illustrates the complicated relationship between subject and Other. There are two trajectories or levels to his discourse of desire. On one level, otherness is analogized in feminine imagery; and, on another level, the subject’s attraction for the Other is imagined within a drama of heterosexual love. Primarily, Levinas illustrates alterity by exploiting the rhetoric of femininity. According to Levinas, “[T]he Other whose presence is discreetly an absence, with which is accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the ﬁeld of intimacy, is the Woman” (1969, 155). Here, Levinas attempts to emphasize the hospitable, receptive dimension of the Other—an Other that calls and welcomes the subject into the ethical relation of facing. In addition to accenting the hospitable aspect of alterity, Levinas highlights the mysterious quality of the Other by employing such terms as overﬂowing and voluptuosity. Voluptuosity refers to the subject’s enjoyment of and desire for the hiddenness of the Other. This voluptuosity “transﬁgures the subject himself, who henceforth owes his identity not to his initiative of

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power, but to the passivity of the love received” (270). Similar to that of the Mosaic trope of facing, the erotic term voluptuosity marks the ethical relation between subject and Other, in which intimacy and distance are maintained. As receptive and mysterious, the Other calls the subject into relationship, but refuses to be totalized, thematized, or controlled. The Other is the site of our unending obligation. As one would expect, explaining alterity through the rhetoric of femininity is not without problems. As previously stated, some feminist scholars have accused Levinas of an underlying sexism, by associating otherness with the feminine sentiments of receptivity and mystery. Luce Irigaray, for example, worries that Levinas’s thought leads to an insidious gender essentialism, in which women become reduced to their biological and cultural afﬁnities for mothering, caring, domesticity, and hospitality. Like Irigaray, we would be wise to question Levinas’s gendered discourse, and ponder why in this age of postmodernity, when we are cognizant of the implications of sexist language, does Levinas use this tired trope of femininity to highlight the intricacy of alterity? In response to feminist criticism, Levinas refutes the accusation that he is sexist, as well as rejects the facile conﬂation of the feminine with otherness and the masculine with subjectivity. Through a critical reading of Levinas’s work, one can verify that he does not uphold an essentialist bias in which he regards all women as passive and all men as active. Levinas’s theory assumes that being human involves not only the active, traditionally masculine dimension of relating to others, but also encompasses a passive, traditionally feminine dimension of being for others. In fact, when facing others, we are enmeshed in a delicate balance of listening (feminine) and responding (masculine). Being human for others demands both our receptive and active capabilities. As Levinas underscores in “Love and Filiation,” in being for-the-Other we become “cogendered” (1985, 63-72). In other words, in becoming human we are both in need of and open to the Other. In addition to writing the Other in feminine imagery, Levinas romanticizes the relationship between subject and Other. This is the second level through which his discourse of desire unfolds. Unequivocally, Levinas describes the ethical relation between subject and Other in

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terms of heterosexual love. In an effort to provide an alternative to the biblical notion of facing, Levinas imagines the intimate and distant relationship between subject and Other in terms of a romance—a relationship so powerful that it has the potential to create new life. He speaks about the ethical relation between subject and Other as fecund in that it leads to more relationships, in the same way that the desire between two lovers results in a child. This notion of fecundity, which epitomizes the potential of the ethical relation of facing, has two important aspects: a maternal dimension and a paternal dimension. Maternity accentuates the nearness of the Other, while paternity emphasizes the distinctiveness between subject and Other. Let me explain further. Levinas privileges maternity as the “ultimate sense of this [closeness and] vulnerability,” of being for-the-Other (Levinas 1998e, 108). By metaphorically mimicking the substitution between mother and child, the human subject is hostage to and postured for-the-Other. The notion of maternity, however, like the gendering of the Other, is not without problems. While not to be taken literally, maternity does denote a particular role: mothering. The metaphor of motherhood for interpreting the subject as for-the-Other is limiting, primarily because only women can physically bear children, and secondarily, because women can bear children only during their fertile years. The ﬁgure of maternity excludes other people, including men, children, and the elderly, from imagining themselves as open, receptive, and responsible. It comes as no surprise that feminist thinker, Catherine Chalier, argues that the generosity of being for-the-Other must transcend the metaphor of maternity, because while maternity is a signiﬁcant way in which women are open to otherness, openness goes beyond one act, function, or set identity, such as motherhood (1991). The metaphor of motherhood, moreover, is problematic because it is rooted in spousal imagery, which is inextricably connected to sexist assumptions about marriage and sacriﬁce. For some, maternity as a metaphor for subjectivity for-the-Other is at the very least myopic, and the very worst, offensive.

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Especially in light of these claims, it is important to understand the other aspect of the ethical relation of facing, paternity. While Levinas utilizes the trope of maternity to highlight the subject’s nearness to the Other, he employs the notion of paternity to emphasize the independence between subject and Other. Recall from our discussion of the theophany that Levinas is concerned with maintaining a distance between subject and Other in order to respect the Other’s particularity. Levinas’s play with the notion of paternity secures the ethical space of separation, in which the subject’s independence actually obligates and connects him/her to the Other. Signiﬁcantly, from both aspects of the ethical relation of facing, maternity and paternity, the fruit of the encounter between subject and Other is fecundity. This fecundity materializes not merely in the metaphorical production of a child, but more importantly in the concrete proliferation of additional relations and responsibility. This is where Levinas’s use of the discourse of desire is most helpful. The notion of fecundity captures the excessiveness of our obligation to the Other. To be sure, the multiplicity of relations that develops through fecundity does not diminish the subject’s responsibility. On the contrary, fecundity magniﬁes his/her obligation. Alphonso Lingis explains: “To ﬁnd that the one before whom and for whom I am responsible is responsible in his turn before and for another is not to ﬁnd his order put on me relativized or canceled. It is to discover the exigency for justice, for an order among responsibilities” (Levinas 1998e, xxxv). Clearly, the language of fecundity points to the complexity of interpersonal relations—to the way in which human bonds are never singular, but continually produce more connections and responsibilities. Above we have uncovered two avenues that give us insight into Levinas’s understanding of alterity: his reconstruction of both the Judaic and Cartesian worldviews and his discourse of desire. To a large extent, Levinas’s discourse of desire has implications that transcend the scope of his work to that of gender and critical race theory. Below, I will investigate some of these implications. It is not unusual that when some imagine what it means to be human in the postmodern context using bodily metaphors, then others become nervous. The ontological typing that results from too easily addressing subjectivity and difference should be obvious from the previous reﬂections on Baudrillard,

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Said, hooks, and Fanon. Still there is an even more slippery form of typing that results from the conﬂation of description with ontology. Speciﬁcally, scholars worry about the trap of essentialism, which is a reduction of one’s identity to his/her biology. Interestingly, Luce Irigaray has been accused of essentialism. Like Levinas, Irigaray relies on effusive and baroque metaphors of relationship as well as rich carnal images of women’s bodies in order to illustrate the presence of women as subjects. Ultimately, one must question whether Irigaray, like Levinas, runs the risk of determining women’s identity on the basis of biology. Superﬁcially at the very least, one could read both Levinas’s and Irigaray’s theories as essentialist because of the way they seem to connect bodily function with destiny and ontology. Nonetheless, I hope to show that their work, properly speaking, is more deconstructive and performative than reductionist. My argument assumes that the language used to describe the subject, Other, and the relationship between the two parties does not lead to thematization or essentialism; instead, it re-envisions the person or relationship in question. In other words, as Levinas and Irigaray speak about subjectivity and womanhood, they further develop the meanings of those terms. According to cultural critic Jane Gallop (1988), Irigaray’s work reimagines what it means to be embodied. Irigaray’s ﬂeshy narration of femininity reproduces and presents yet anew the body-subject of the woman. Not surprisingly then, when Irigaray was asked whether she was part of any women’s liberation movement, she answered: “I am trying … to go back through the masculine imagery, to interpret the way it has reduced us [women] to silence, to muteness or mimicry, and I am attempting, from that starting-point and that same time, to (re)discover a possible space for the possible imagery” (1985, 164). Irigaray’s aim is not to reduce women to one speciﬁc role or type, but to open women to more possibilities of being human. Speaking about human beings as embodied and gendered does not limit the way we think about women or others, unless we allow one image to totalize the subject. This reduction of the subject can lead to idolatry and the confusion of ontology with description. However, Levinas’s and Irigaray’s intentions are not to make any reductionist assertions about being, but to illustrate the various dimensions of being and ways of performing subjectivity. The way in which they both play

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with erotic iconography does not result in essentialism, but expresses their respect for the complexity of being human. Feminist thinker Arleen Dallery (1994) highlights a key point about Irigaray’s writing regarding the body that we can extend to Levinas’s work. Concurring with the supposition that Irigaray’s writing is performative, Dallery explains how écriture féminine resists essentialism. We can deﬁne écriture féminine literally as ‘feminine writing’: writing that encourages women’s experience, desire, and bodies to come into being. Often écriture féminine is performed by the language of excess, sacriﬁce, and gift. Importantly, feminine language is not limited to female writers, but encompasses any writing that focuses on the excess and fecundity that is characteristic of subjectivity. Arguably, Levinas’s work is evidence of écriture féminine. In fact, any theory that rejects the binaries of male versus female and subject versus Other and engages an ethic of openness, excess, gift, and sacramentality can be interpreted as écriture féminine. Not everyone is comfortable with the performative écriture féminine. Dallery claims that those who resist performative writing and claim it to be literalist and essentialist are fearful of and uncomfortable with otherness. To accuse someone of essentialism shows antipathy toward difference. The problem with “the antiessentialist,” according to Dallery, is that s/he “forgets that the body is a sign, a function of discourse” (1994, 297).1 Stating that the body is a sign does not undermine the reality of it. Instead, proposing that the body is a sign underscores the fact that human corporeality is imbued with meaning. When we overlook the fact that the subject’s body functions as a sign, we risk conﬂating the body or particular body part with one speciﬁc cultural meaning. It is imperative, therefore, that we do not confuse a person’s being, that is, ontology, with cultural meaning. This can be accomplished by interpreting the construction of meaning, rather than ﬁxating on the sign. By being critical of cultural meaning, we can become more comfortable with otherness and less fearful about the gendered imagery used in philosophical discourse. Still, for reasons previously mentioned, some may want to imagine other metaphors 1

Many of the antiessentialist claims, Dallery argues, come from American and British feminists who are enmeshed in rights language and equality feminism.

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for understanding difference beyond the language of gender. One such metaphor is shouldering. Shouldering allows for the subject to signify him/herself as both the same as and different from others without relying on potentially dangerous gendered imagery. Before considering further implications of shouldering, it is crucial to realize that the risk of essentializing difference also surfaces in questions about race. Theologian and cultural critic, Victor Anderson explores issues that arise when theorists essentialize or reify racial categories. He explains how culture has compartmentalized and distilled experiences of some black persons under the static concept of blackness, regardless of whether these experiences are fact or ﬁction. Anderson deﬁnes the cultural reiﬁcation of black experience as ontological blackness: “a covering term that connotes categorical, essentialist, and representational languages depicting black life and experience” (1995, 11). By way of institutional power, the images and feelings conjured by the monolithic concept of blackness have been created by whites. This process of the totalization of black experience echoes the way in which the West constructs ‘Orientalist’ images of the East. Anderson challenges the Orientalist attitude and laments that the construction of blackness in relation to a normative whiteness “constitutes a fundamental natural inequality” (78). He wonders if humanity can transcend the static concept of blackness or if such a conceptualist reading will type blacks permanently. The reiﬁcation of racial categories presents theologians with a dilemma. If one rejects a connection between cultural identity and experience, blackness could become relegated to a myth or metaphor. Yet, if one focuses too much on ethnic identity, the particular person becomes reduced to his/her race. Copeland, in an essay entitled, “Collegiality as a Moral and Ethical Practice,” grapples with the paradox of racial formation in the United States (1999a). Analyzing a hypothetical case scenario involving an African American female academic, Copeland questions whether people of color can transcend the reductionist conceptions that surround race. According to Copeland’s analysis, the black academic is reduced to a placeholder for any and all of Western preconceived notions about blackness. She is a placeholder in two ways. On the one hand, the black scholar is seen merely a symbol of her race,

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and “never [as] a particular person ” (320). On the other hand, the scholar is not only limited by her race, but all of her race is judged by her actions. For Copeland, the scholar in question “bears the burden of her race and the race bears the burden of her performance” (320). Even as the scholar in Western civilization is supposed to be the icon and authority ﬁgure entrusted with the task of relaying knowledge, our bias blinds us to the scholarly role of this particular teacher. As this black female scholar is to educate a culture, biased notions about her race and gender prevent her from doing so. The ﬂip side of this dilemma involves erasing racial difference altogether. Studying Fanon’s theory, cultural critic, David Theo Goldberg discusses how the black body is constructed as “racially marked,” while the white body poses as “racially invisible” (1997, 83). The bodies of whites perform as if they are naked, undressed, pure, racially unmarked, and normative, while blacks are marked, costumed, and dressed in a hegemonic, stereotypical covering. In this scenario, the person is at once a symbol and anonymous. As we have learned from Copeland, individual persons of color serve as symbols, and at the same time, according to Goldberg, persons of color as individuals are rendered anonymous. Without a doubt, it is dangerous to correlate either experience or biological phenotype with ontology. To meet this problem in understanding anthropology, theologians need to engage difference beyond the superﬁcial connotations attached to gender or race. Only then can authentic subjectivity, that is, being for-the-Other, become a reality. Arguably, Levinas’s thought implies a critique of essentialism. For Levinas, difference is not a monolithic category, such as female, black, or poor, rather the position of alterity constantly shifts. This movement complicates the dichotomous ways in which the West often conﬁgures diversity, proposing the idea that society emerges in the shifting positions of subjectivity and otherness. In “Time and the Other,” Levinas comments: [I]n the very heart of the relationship with the other that characterizes our social life, alterity appears as a nonreciprocal relationship —that is, as contrasting strongly with contemporaneousness. The Other as Other is not only an alter ego: the Other is what I myself am not. The Other is this, not because of the Other’s character, physiognomy,

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or psychology, but because of the Other’s very alterity. The Other is, for example, the weak, the poor, “the widow and the orphan,” whereas I am the rich or the powerful (1987, 83-84).

Levinas’s interpretation of difference captures the subject’s contingency and dependence on the Other. Precisely because the position of the Other is never stable, the subject’s obligation is always changing. Even though it is preposterous to accuse every theorist or argument of being essentialist out of fear of otherness, we should realize that essentialism, either in terms of fecundity (gender) or blackness (race), is problematic. Since the position of the Other constantly shifts, we need to develop a way of speaking about the Other that is faithful to and illustrates the subject’s relation to the Other as ﬂuid and changing. The subject relates to the Other by his/her body, through a bodily sign. Crucial to understanding the body as sign is realizing that interpretations of the body are not static, unchanging, and essential, rather body image and subjectivity are performed in posture. Lingis explains this corporeal signiﬁcation: “The body that makes signs makes itself a sign—makes itself a referent for itself as well as for others” (1994b, 110). The notion of the body performing as a sign is valuable, especially when contextualized within the posture of shouldering. In shouldering, the body-subject signs for the Other. In shouldering, we answer the Other’s call and are shifted from an immanentist stance for self to an open posture for others. In corporeal relationship, we are called to shoulder others. In the section above, we have investigated Levinas’s thought about otherness. After reviewing the way that his theory develops out of religious and Cartesian worldviews, we discussed how he contextualizes alterity within the trope of heterosexual love and desire. Then, we questioned whether Levinas’s thought on alterity and embodiment leads to a problematic essentialism. Following a discussion of difference in relation to gender and race, we began to understand how Levinas’s theory implicitly rejects essentialist attitudes toward others. The subject’s reception of the Other is not dependent on the Other’s gender or race, rather is linked to the Other’s needs. The way in which Levinas plays with the language of otherness, that is, the manner in which he shifts from the male to female gender overdetermines the fact that all of us at one point or another are others. Interestingly, the

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only normative dimension of the Other is the responsibility that s/he places on the subject’s shoulders.

4.4 Conclusion In this chapter, I began a discussion of difference in order to demonstrate that subjectivity in the contemporary postmodern, global milieu is tied to alterity. After reviewing the deﬁnition of alterity, I emphasized three ways in which humanity is confounded by otherness. Humanity is confused by difference because of the misuse of liberal rights language, the commodiﬁcation of difference, and the ﬁctionalization of a normative subject and a deviant Other. The way in which Lonergan’s ethics of thinking encourages the subject to take experience seriously and engage difference was then broached to counter these cultural problems. Immediately following, I assessed Levinas’s treatment of otherness and questioned the implications of essentialism for present dialogue about gender and race. From this study, we can identify three main ways in which Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thought on alterity intersects with contemporary theological anthropology. First, the subject’s attraction for the Other is grounded in a love and desire for the Other. Second, connected to the subject’s attraction to the Other are the notions of relationship and intersubjectivity, both of which can be detected in these two thinker’s sentiments on difference. Third, there is the ambiguity, risk, and challenge associated with the subject’s encounter with otherness. Even as the subject is affectively called to a graced and gifted posture of openness in the midst of the Other, this stance is fraught with vulnerability and initial ignorance. It is important to keep in mind that neither of these thinkers explicitly equates God with the absolute Other; nonetheless, their concern for a graced and ethical relationship between subject and Other implores us to think about the complex matrix of God, humanity, and justice.

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5 Figuring Subjectivity in Postmodern Context: The Protean Subject

U

p until this point, I have been comparing Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thought on subjectivity and otherness. After explaining how alterity complicates Christian notions of human identity and responsibility, I introduced shouldering as a way of thinking about being responsible for others—an idea that can be found in both Lonerganian and Levinasian schools of thought. In this chapter, I delve further into the overlapping themes of Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thought and devise a trope for imagining the subject’s responsibility for others. As we have learned, the subject’s obligatory posture spans a spectrum of feelings, encompassing desire, pleasure, and pain. Interestingly, a trope that captures the complexity of these feelings is proteanism. Proteanism is derived from Greek mythology, and highlights the changeable and positional character of intersubjectivity. In The Odyssey (1996), Proteus is Homer’s wise sea god who changes form in order to adapt to situations. The complicated, changing, and culturally diverse state of our world demands that human beings be similarly adaptable and open. Protean subjectivity has the potential to embrace the developmental and resilient character of being human in the postmodern, global milieu. From the onset, some may oppose my proposal of protean subjectivity. They may wonder if it is necessary to have a ﬁgure of proteanism when we already have the notion of openness and the posture of shouldering. Others may insist that proteanism connotes a static concept. Still, others may argue that protean subjectivity is too postmodern, that is, too narrative based to fully engage a teleological anthropology. In response to these objections, I hope to show that proteanism is a model of subjectivity that seriously considers agency and responsibility, and at the same time accounts for the ﬂuid and changing dimensions of

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being human. Moreover, I plan to demonstrate how the narrative ﬂow of proteanism can appeal to a postmodern sensibility without losing hope for a supernatural end. Indeed, proteanism can be understood, in Lonergan’s words, as a “directed dynamism” (1997, 472). The most pressing reason for choosing proteanism as a trope, however, is to avoid a problematic correlation between authenticity and suffering. This correlation suggests falsely that being authentically human involves some sort of suffering. Such logic can be found in Levinas’s thought on the suffering servant (1969, 267-277; 1998e, 74), as well as in Lonergan’s notion of being-in-love (1960; 1971c, 27-55; n.d.). Levinas often cites themes connected to the call of Isaiah—the prophet who implicitly speaks of suffering as redemptive, and resolves to shoulder the burdens and ills of the world. Levinas’s references to Isaiah highlight the passivity of the subject, that is, the subject’s openness to the Other at all costs, even death. With the threat of danger and the reality of mortality in the ethical relationship of facing between subject and Other, it is not wrong to argue that suffering is inextricably connected to Levinas’s saintly subjectivity. Like Levinas, Lonergan also upholds a connection between suffering and authentic subjectivity, speciﬁcally as he emphasizes the redemptive and teleological dimensions of the Cross, and the possibilities of selfsacriﬁcial love for others. Overall, both thinkers maintain the uneasy correlation of being human with suffering. The theme of suffering as a sign of authentic subjectivity is not limited to the Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Many marginalized groups either voluntarily or involuntarily subscribe to the problematic correlation between authentic subjectivity and suffering. For example, in the United States, the ﬁrst women’s suffrage movements valorized a passive and self-sacriﬁcing notion of subjectivity. In those movements, true women were morally obliged to assume a sacriﬁcial, saintly disposition. Striving for authenticity through suffering, however, is not always as voluntary as in the case of women’s movements. Throughout American history, various cultural and racial groups have been violated and forced to sacriﬁce more than others due to systemic factors. Aware to the involuntary nature of sacriﬁce in such situations, it would seem irresponsible to argue that these groups were somehow

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more sacramental or that their oppression was somehow connected to God and authenticity. With the notion of the protean subject, I ﬁgure not only the sacriﬁcing subject, but the open, evolving, developing, responsible, recovering, reconciling, embracing, hospitable, restless, believing, sacramental subject of postmodernity. Mine is not the only work in which a theologian has been hesitant to designate suffering as the deﬁning characteristic of authentic subjectivity. We cannot ignore the groundbreaking work of womanist theologian Delores Williams. In Sisters in the Wilderness (1993), Williams explains that African American women should refuse to identify themselves with the suffering servant role of Christ, because that particular reading overdetermines and reiﬁes the historical oppression of black women in Western culture. She insists that suffering needs to be situated in the present context of poverty, domestic violence, racism, and sexism. Her research points to the danger of romanticizing, historicizing, and generalizing suffering at the cost of ignoring real problems in society. Human suffering is not a thing of the past: suffering permeates the present in individual lives and communities. Even as suffering is a key dimension of a person’s experience, struggling against that suffering is also signiﬁcant. Beyond suffering, then, being connected to others as they celebrate, love, and struggle for happiness are also important dimensions of authentic subjectivity. Eroding the absurd correlation between suffering and subjectivity must be done with steadfastness, as many inconsistencies in the Christian doctrine of anthropology will be revealed when the correlation is challenged. For example, theologians would be pushed into considering whether community could emerge amid pleasure and joy, rather than in pain. Furthermore, in demystifying the link between suffering and being, social institutions would have to deal with the issue of why the same groups of people seem to sacriﬁce more often than others. Intrinsically, proteanism as a way of interpreting anthropology does not deny the idea that suffering is part of being human, but disproves the notion that suffering is the only important dimension of being human. Trauma and pain are real; yet, they do not deﬁne being human alone. Psychologists know this, for recovery is the point of therapy. Christians know this, for forgiveness is the point of reconciliation.

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Change and conversion in the midst of conﬂictive emotions is endemic to the human condition. As protean subjects, we are opened for others in many ways. This gifted openness for God and others involves not only risk, fear, vulnerability, and pain, but security, love, conﬁdence, and pleasure. In order to develop a discussion of proteanism, several ideas need to be further understood and integrated. The meaning of openness in both the Jewish and Christian traditions must be explored more thoroughly. Inextricably connected to the investigation of openness is dialogue about freedom. The conversation cannot end there, as issues of openness and freedom need to be linked to current conﬁgurations of solidarity. Only after attending to these issues can protean subjectivity ﬁnally emerge as an integrative term that explains the subject as open, free, and social.

5.1 Openness as Gift as Answer to Postmodern Questions of Otherness In the introductory chapter of this book, I suggested that attentiveness to difference is a key theme in postmodern or contemporary continental theory. Moreover, the call for openness to difference can be understood as a reaction against the hegemonic and totalitarian regimes in world history. Postmodern thinkers, such as Lyotard and Levinas, have pinpointed how totalizing, master narratives have led to violence and suffering. Since the implications of openness transcend the realm of theory, in Chapter Four I explored openness through a practical survey of problems in contemporary society. Concluding that our distorted interpretation of difference has led to abuses against stigmatized persons and groups, Lonergan’s and Levinas’s perspectives on difference were broached in order to show that humanity’s engagement with alterity need not lead to nihilism or violence. On the contrary, being attentive to alterity can foster a life of love (Lonergan) and responsibility (Levinas). Below, I will expand this discussion of openness in order to create a new model of being for others in a pluralist community: protean subjectivity.

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Openness as a theme is not new to religious conversation. In Jewish religio-cultural life, openness is related to the act of hospitality. Numerous citations in Torah call the Israelites to open their homes and hearts to others. Some biblical references include: Genesis 18, in which Abraham shows hospitality to the men (angels) who foretell of Sarah’s conception; Exodus 23:9, in which it is declared, “You know the heart of a stranger, for you were all strangers in the land of Egypt”; Deuteronomy 10:19, where the Hebrews are told to “love the stranger therefore, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”; and Leviticus 19:33, where Jewish history is invoked, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am YHWH your God.” These scriptural passages call Israel to extend hospitality to strangers, alienated residents, outcasts, women, children, the sick, and the lame. The link between God’s call to Israel and Israel’s historical predicament of exile is not merely coincidental. When reading Torah, one cannot fail to grasp the connection between Israel’s memory of her own suffering and the desire to thwart another’s suffering. Responsibility for others emerges in a posture of openness and hospitality. In his work on nationalism and xenophobia, Frank Crüsemann reﬂects on the correlation between Jewish identity and an openness to difference. He asks: “What would an ethic look like which does not experience foreigners and what is foreign as a threat? Would it look like a national and religious self-understanding which gains its own identity not in contempt and expulsion but conversely by the protections of others?” (1993, 96). In posing these questions Crüsemann points to the West’s skewed manner of interpreting personal identity and security at the expense of others. This perverse logic is all too familiar to us. Recall that an interpretation of self, which is embedded in an ethics of antagonism and violence, is consonant with the logic of Lacan and Heidegger. For Lacan, the presence of the Other is necessary to stabilize one’s identity. Similarly, according to Heidegger, authentic selfhood is contexualized over and against the uniqueness of other beings. Levinas’s work implicitly rejects both these perspectives. Crüsemann echoes Levinas’s concern for an alternative way of being

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human when he turns toward the Hebrew Scriptures to understand how to live in community with others. Crüsemann understands covenantal ﬁdelity and the Exodus event as two signiﬁcant memories that can help all people reframe what it means to be human in relation to others. Honoring covenant and relationship is a way of life that demands resolve and commitment beyond what is convenient. Covenantal relations call us to give more than seems possible—a posture that is important to authentic subjectivity. The people of the Book know the reality of covenant and the adversity associated with its breach. Modern day people would be wise to think about the complexity of being in covenant or relationship with others. In addition to thinking about the implications of covenant, Crüsemann afﬁrms the Exodus event as a deﬁning moment in the history of all people. Proclaiming that their ancestors were strangers themselves at one time in Egypt, YHWH invites Jews into a posture of being open and hospitable to new strangers. Crüsemann explains: “Because Israel has experienced this exodus, or rather, because [their] identity as the people of this God is grounded in this exodus and permanently consists in it, [they] can act towards people who are now in a comparable situation only as God has acted towards [them]” (105). Moderns would also beneﬁt from reﬂecting on the notions of exodus and exile as they relate hospitably to others. Hospitality that is rooted in scripture is not merely a ﬂeeting act, but a disposition of heart. The term ‘heart’ here does not refer merely to the emotive dimension of the human being, but points to both mind and body. In his work on Lonergan, Miller explores the idea of the heart in terms of the holistic self (1995, 63). The heart, which is a sense of surrender on the affective, volitional, and cognitive levels of being human, orients us for others. This orientation, if we interpret it from the perspective of Levinas, is a turning of the person inside out for-the-Other. Being hospitable, we become exposed to or deposed for others on each level. This exposure is not only a generous, gifted act, but also a commemoration of Jewish suffering and diaspora. Being hospitable, the Jew becomes a better Jew. Many would claim that Jewish hospitality is a thing of the past, a biblical theme that has lost its spirit and rigor after the Shoah. With the realization of the State of Israel, it could be argued that Jewish religio-cultural life has become

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Western in its encroachment on others’ borders and closing itself off to the rest of the world. This is a signiﬁcant debate. It underscores the problem of understanding identity in terms of borders and space, rather than in terms of responsibility and action. While my work does not attempt to uncover the complexity of geopolitics, it does attempt to express that being an authentic subject can only emerge in being for-the-Other. Honoring the memory of covenant and Exodus moves humanity toward being for-the-Other. Still, even in light of the legacy of covenantal responsibility and biblical hospitality, it seems as if modern Western people, including Jews, have forgotten the command for openness. In general, we have forgotten our common ancestry of being hungry in exile. In a sense, we suffer from a religious loss of memory, all suffer from religious amnesia. We have become a people who have forgotten our destiny and call for others, our obligation toward God. In the Introduction, I referred to the secularism of America and the subsequent inability to move toward genuine progress. In order to overcome this problem, we need to overcome this religious amnesia by returning to our common roots and to the covenantal call to hospitality and justice. Such renewal or return is at the heart of Levinas’s philosophical and Talmudic writings. This renewal is enacted in a return to being responsible for strangers. Return for-the-Other does not mean a complete backtracking that ignores the history of pain and suffering brought on by this religious amnesia. On the contrary, a movement toward justice would carry with it all the pain and suffering of the past in an effort to remember and lament any wrong doing. Importantly, in remembering we help move a divided humanity toward reconciliation and justice. Reconciliation is undoubtedly important, but the rhetoric surrounding it often obscures the act of contrition—an admission of sin and an openness to justice. Reconciliation requires contrition and responsible action, which are difﬁcult and risk-ﬁlled gestures. The process of reconciliation is like the movement of the ocean’s tide. With each change of the tide, the ocean returns to the shore, carrying with it the salt from innumerable tears and the wreckage from one too many shipwrecks. The ocean cannot easily dismiss the past, because the past becomes part of the ocean’s composition. The ebb and ﬂow of the ocean underscores the arduous task of relating to others in an

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imperfect, unjust world. Being in relationship is always complicated, full of joy, pain, triumph, loss, love, and hate. Even as YHWH delivers his people from the chains of Egypt, the hopes and dreams of a confused and bitter Pharaoh are drowned in a raging sea. The pathos of the Exodus event is not only in deliverance, but also in lost dreams and the price of justice. Openness as hospitality, according to the Jewish worldview, acknowledges the price of justice, for hospitality is fraught with risk and vulnerability. A renewal of biblical hospitality, which is aware of the complexity of the past and present, is worth the risk in order to answer postmodernity’s call for openness. It is important to realize that even though Levinas is grounded in a Jewish interpretation of openness as hospitality, he resists any totalizing explanation of it. Recall how Levinas rejects the Heideggerian schema of openness in terms of a panoramic gaze and rewrites openness to connote a turning of oneself inside out for-the-Other. Openness, for Levinas, is the passivity of the subject, the vulnerability through which the subject substitutes him/herself for-the-Other. Substitution occurs in a number of ways, in giving up one’s time, food, place, and of course, body for another. Theodore De Boer in understanding Levinas’s work, claims that at the heart of Levinasian logic is a justiceoriented charity. He writes: “Charity without social justice is empty. The nineteenth century taught us that. Perhaps we will learn that social justice without charity is blind” (1997, 24). De Boer refers to the fact that actions for another are somewhat meaningless if they emerge in a relationship devoid of feeling. Affection for another sustains the difﬁcult intersubjective relation in which the hungry party is fed and the naked one is clothed. Signiﬁcantly, for Levinas the desire for another is already present before cognition or volition. This desire or affection for another is the foundation of ethics. Notice how a Levinasian reading of hospitality and charity points to something more than a simple handout. Openness in the form of hospitality and charitable love is that which opens the self for others at all costs, in all times. Like Judaism, Christianity has a developed notion of openness. The kenotic, self-emptying spirit of the Christ event is a situation of raw openness. The vulnerability of Christ being on the Cross for humanity is the exemplary revelation of this openness. Openness, however, is not limited only to Jesus’s suffering on the Cross. His ministry also

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illustrates his openness for others. The Christian Scriptures witness to how Jesus does not merely point to the Other, but compassionately identiﬁes with the Other in solidarity. Jesus’s way has been the standard for the mimesis of believers: to live in Christ means to live as Christ, with an openness of spirit and to Spirit. Claims about openness are modeled upon the life of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels. Most people are familiar with the ‘Golden Rule’: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31, Matthew 7:12). Less familiar is the openness shown to the risen Christ in Luke 24. There Christ is encountered by his disciples as a stranger, and is shown hospitality even before they recognize him (Luke 24:2835). Openness also is illustrated in Hebrews 13:1, where there is a recollection and valorization of the hospitality shown to strangers in Genesis 18. Through a careful reading of Christian Scripture, one can detect that openness is characterized by a compassion for others and solidarity with the marginalized. Openness refers to a charitable disposition. Working within the Roman Catholic tradition, I employ the notion of charity counter to any commonsense usage of the term. Charity in the Catholic sense emerges out of a self-giving desire (eros) and love (agape) that invites one to give more than one is able to give. Such love transcends liberalism or the political correctness that was alluded to in Chapter Four. Charity is not deed alone, but a loving, open, affective disposition that brings about justice. In Christianity, the historical roots of charitable love can be traced back to the Pauline epistles, through the Gospels, and in Christian practice. It is listed as the greatest spiritual gift by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13:13. Gospel references to a charitable disposition are numerous, a few of which I have already listed. In addition to Sacred Scripture, charity is exempliﬁed in social practices. Various religious orders were founded around the idea of charity, including the Franciscans and the Sisters of Mercy. From these developments, charity evolved to designate the benevolence, compassion, magnanimity, and openness, which is called forth by our falling in love with God. Recall that Lonergan explains openness in terms of fact, achievement, and gift. Openness as gift refers to the graced relationship with God that invites transcendence. As the subject falls in love with God and others, s/he is opened to love

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another to the point of action. Charitable love is the motivation and ground of the subject’s openness, of our affective gifted orientation for-the-Other. Lonergan furthers this notion of a charitable openness in his discussion of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ (1960). According to Lonergan, this doctrine “refers to a concrete union of the divine Persons with one another and with man and, again, of men’s union with one another and with the divine Persons” (1). Love pours forth among these relations. In discussing this doctrine, Lonergan focuses on ﬁve loving connections, including; the Eternal Father’s love for the divine Son (love of Son as God); the Eternal Father’s love for the corporeal Son (love of Son as human); the love of Christ for humans, such as himself; the Eternal Father’s love for humanity; and the love of charity for others which is infused into our hearts. This last relation is essential to our discussion, for charitable love binds humanity in solidarity. The love of charity is a supernatural gift; it is the grace that is written into our nature. This gift of grace opens our hearts for God and others.1 Lonergan eloquently explains that through the Mystical Body, Christians can realize their connections with others, and also learn something about human destiny. Consonant with the Roman Catholic tradition, speciﬁcally with the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Lonergan asserts that God is the end, that is, the absolute ﬁnality of human existence. God moves humanity toward this end through the incarnation. In becoming human, God reorients human being for alterity, for others. The incarnation opens us for others. What’s more, Lonergan asserts in “Finality, Love, and Marriage,” that our love of others “is proof of our love of God”(1988, 31). As Lonergan develops the connection between the incarnation and human being for others, he designates the sacraments of baptism and confession as two speciﬁc ways in which humans are oriented and opened for others. Baptism initiates us into community and confession reafﬁrms our relation to God and others. These sacraments posture the subject in two directions, toward God 1

For an intricate analysis of the self-giving relations among the three divine Persons, see Lamb (1998); and Lawrence (1994, esp. pp. 255-277). Lonergan discusses the graced relations among the three Persons of the Trinity in “Mission and the Spirit” (1985, 23-34).

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and others. Lonergan writes: “Hence the great commandment is to love God with all one’s heart and all one’s soul, with all one’s mind and all one’s strength. And the second is like unto the ﬁrst, to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to love one another as Christ has loved us” (1960, 5). Recall from the second chapter that for Lonergan, love is not external to authentic knowing and being, but rather the ground and goal of knowing and acting, of normative subjectivity. Beingin-love-with-God is the fullest moment of being, it is the end of our being. Clearly, as in the case of Levinasian ethics, charitable love is not based on law, but on a supernatural desire toward relationship with others. It is the consonance among feeling, knowing, and acting for others that opens us to God’s gift of relationship. It is important to note that humanity’s relationship with God is asymmetrical in that our charitable love for others can never compare to God’s giving to humanity. The magnanimity of the gift of grace prohibits our giving to others from being excessive. Similar to Levinas’s assertions about being turned inside out for the Other in hospitality, Lonergan’s treatment of charitable grace confers that the Christian believer is opened for others without limits, beyond retribution. The magnitude of God’s grace echoes previous references to the nature of gift and excess. Recall that Derrida and Levinas uphold a deﬁnition of gift that contests an economy of equality, in favor of a deﬁnition of gift in terms of excess. Accordingly, gift refers to the incomparable giving that overﬂows the subject’s intentions and freely anticipates the Other’s needs. Levinas tells us that the subject is not open for-the-Other as a spectacle to be seen or applauded, but is open in complete anonymity and humility. Lonergan’s authentic subject is similarly postured in complete openness. Charity in the Mystical Body of Christ is in like fashion without limits. As mentioned above, for Christians, gift is located primarily in God’s free sacriﬁce in Christ. The Christ event, which includes Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry, death, and resurrection, epitomizes gift. The overﬂowing and magnanimous character of Christ’s substitution for humanity cannot be correlated with any human response to and recognition of that gift. Even as humanity cannot repay God’s gracious

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offer, it can bear witness to such giving through a similar openness, hospitality, and charity. The important word in this last sentence is ‘similar.’ Our giving for others is only analogous to Christ’s giving for humanity. The mimesis of Christ seems to be an impossibility, for Christ shouldered humanity in his ministry, death, and resurrection. These inﬁnite gifts are beyond human agency. Nonetheless, Christians are called to live in the resurrection, are called to shoulder others. Shouldering captures the humility and sacriﬁce that the subject offers freely in his/her openness. Shouldering does not wait for reciprocation, because in most cases it is impossible. In a fascinating work, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996), Miroslav Volf imagines human openness to difference in terms of an embrace. As both metaphor and metonymy, the notion of embrace frames how Christians ought to understand openness to and reconciliation with the Other in the current pluralistic context. It might be helpful to compare Volf ’s notion of embrace to my understanding of shouldering. Volf ’s notion of embrace is an appealing posture for several reasons. First, the posture of embrace highlights the asymmetrical feature of relationships, in which one person is embraced and the other actively embraces. Recall that Levinas, in his critique of Buber, highlights how the notion of asymmetry overdetermines the priority of the Other. Asymmetry respects the height, need, and demand of the Other. Another way in which the idea of embrace is signiﬁcant is in the way it emphasizes the risk and waiting needed in healing, redemption, and reconciliation (140-141). When one embraces someone there is ambiguity about how it is going to be received. One enters into a position of risk and vulnerability in which the end result is unknown. For the person who is receiving the hug, there is an element of risk, even of opening oneself up to pain. A third respect in which the act of embrace is helpful in addressing new concerns about openness is related to the way in which embrace emphasizes the ambiguity and corporeality of persons engaged in acts of openness. Remember our conversation about the signiﬁcance of neither erasing nor fetishizing the body when we speak about subjectivity. Volf ’s exploration of embrace clearly illustrates the corporeal character of intersubjective

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relationships without essentializing any one particular body type or characteristic. Embrace, while proving to be an adequate posture for being open to otherness, still falls short on several points. One disadvantage to the notion of embrace is that for the embrace to be constituted it needs to be reciprocated. In other words, even though it is asymmetrical in that someone initiates the gesture and one receives the gesture, there is an expectation that the embrace is returned. Holding another person is not an embrace, rather two persons holding each other forms an embrace. Such a stance is not a gifted posture of openness, but one that demands recognition and approval. Recall from our previous discussion of gift and satisfaction that both Lonergan’s authentic subjectivity and Levinas’s being for-the Other goes against the notion of reciprocation and payback. We do not open ourselves for others out of our own prerogative and in expectation of a payoff. Instead, we are opened from within for others into a posture of surrender. The notion of embrace highlights the generosity and sensibility associated with openness, yet misses the gifted and irreconcilable mark of openness. Contrary to the notion of embrace, when we shoulder, we are not waiting for a response. We should act and engage others without appreciation or possibly without consent. This might seem problematic in that action without consent seems aggressive and dominating. But more often than not, if we refuse to take action unless there is consent, then it is too late. For instance in the case of domestic abuse situations, shouldering the Other would demand that we get involved even when the situation is ambiguous and private. In such a scenario, there would most probably be no moment at which we would be reassured by the Other’s gratitude or reciprocation. We would be compelled to risk everything as gift for-the-Other. There are various ﬁgures in myth and culture that relate to the notion of shouldering. In Greek mythology, it was the Titan, Atlas, who bore the burden of shouldering the world—his punishment for losing the battle to the Gods. Shouldering the world conﬁned his freedom and prohibited him from again rebelling against the Gods. From this myth developed an understanding of freedom as power over people, and responsibility was interpreted as a burden and punishment. Many Westerners, especially Americans, have a similar perspective. American

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individualism thrives on personal rights, but refuses to realize fully the connection of rights to responsibilities. Nonetheless, we learn from the Judeo-Christian worldview that being obligated to another person to the point of substitution does not limit freedom but creates authentic freedom. Juxtaposed with Atlas who complains about having to bear the world on his shoulders, Christ freely shoulders the world in one moment. In the previous chapters, I noted that Copeland, a Lonergan scholar, calls Christians to shoulder one another in an act of solidarity, and referenced the way in which Levinas speaks about the weight on one’s shoulders. This weight overdetermines the subject’s independence from and solidarity with another person (Levinas 1972, 50). Levinas seems to abandon this explanation of subjectivity in his later work. Nonetheless, Levinasian scholars, such as Lingis, continue to develop Levinas’s notion of subjectivity. They imply that the subject is open and vulnerable to others in terms of a posture of shouldering, bearing the weight of another person’s burden. As metaphor and symbol of being opened for others, shouldering highlights the relational and embodied character of being human as illustrated in Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work. In the above section, Jewish and Christian roots of openness were explored. The theological and theoretical contributions of Lonergan and Levinas were called upon to express the way in which openness marks the gifted relationship between subject and Other. Noting that openness is being explored in contemporary theology, I further explained the advantages of ﬁguring openness in terms of shouldering. Obviously, the notion of being for others in terms of openness is complicated by intersubjective relations, which we will investigate for the remainder of this chapter.

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5.2 The Connection between Openness and Freedom Implied in the conversation about the subject’s openness to otherness is the question of freedom. When faced with the call to open oneself in hospitality or charity, the subject must struggle with choices, with his/her freedom. In intersubjective relations, there seems to be a tension between one’s desire to be for others and one’s desire to be for self. In the Western context, this tension regarding freedom is often framed in terms of rights and power. Freedom here is geared toward self and often is obtained at the expense of others. Extreme instances of such freedom can be located in the violent conquering of other cultures. Furthermore, commonsense knowledge about American democracy has problematically conﬂated freedom with competition and individualism. Relying on the insights of both Lonergan and Levinas, I will depart from these somewhat skewed interpretations of freedom, and will transition from thinking about freedom as a possession of the subject to thinking about it as a gift that enacts right relations. For Lonergan, freedom is enacted in decision, in praxis. Knowing accounts not only for the subject’s experiencing, understanding, and judging, but also for his/her deciding. The subject’s free and active engagement of the world occurs on the fourth level of consciousness, rational self-consciousness, deliberation and action. Freedom from egoism surfaces in the human being’s engagement of the world as “contingence that arises … in the order of the spirit, of intelligent grasp, rational reﬂection, and morally guided will” (Lonergan 1997, 642). Clearly for Lonergan, freedom must always be realized in relation to something larger than the person, in response to progress, order, and the human good. Freedom is understood as liberty when its leads to progress, and anything less is evidence of bias that leads to decline. Lonergan frames freedom in terms of progress and development, implicitly posing teleological implications. In other words, freedom is directed toward an end, a ﬁnality. This ﬁnality is both ﬁnite, which he calls horizontal ﬁnality, and inﬁnite, which he names vertical ﬁnality. In an essay entitled, “Mission and Spirit,” Lonergan refers to horizontal

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ﬁnality as a concrete end or that which meets one’s immediate needs (1985, 24). Vertical ﬁnality is more complex. It reaches toward goodness and enacts transcendence. Vertical ﬁnality is extremely important to Lonergan’s thought because it opens subjectivity to being for God and others. The supernatural grace reached for in vertical ﬁnality equips us with the freedom and power to struggle against decline and move toward progress. Human desire for love and relationship is the ground from which freedom springs forth. In being-in-love-with-God and in right relations with others, human beings are free to move forward. Even as this forward movement is imagined in terms of goals and ends, it should not be understood as hegemonic, totalizing, or singular. On the contrary, Lonergan explains the end as multivalent and complex (26). It is not too strong to suggest that Lonergan’s interpretation of freedom is inextricably linked to his discussion of the openness of the subject. Authentic, open subjectivity emerges in knowing, acting, and loving for others. Freedom is not understood in individualistic terms, but in relation to the human good. Hence, freedom cannot be isolated from the community, but is born in community. In an almost mystical sense, freedom emerges in the midst of alterity. By engaging those that are different from us, we become free. From these ideas, it is evident that Lonergan is cognizant of the danger of abusing one’s freedom. He realizes that if one acts for oneself only, especially in the face of others, then such freedom could deteriorate into egoism and hubris. The perversion of liberty can be classiﬁed under the auspices of social decline and alienation from God and community.2 Like Lonergan, Levinas problematizes the abuses of freedom and worries that freedom has become disconnected from the question of justice. It is not surprising, then, that in “The Old and the New” Levinas comments on the corrupted character of freedom in modernity, on the “crisis of human freedom, power, and knowledge, a reversal of technological power into enslavement” (1987, 128). This enslavement 2

The notion of freedom is prevalent not only in Lonergan’s thought, but in the work of his readers as well. For an analysis of the connections in Lonergan’s thought among freedom, community, and justice, see Lamb (1988). For a glimpse into Lonergan’s critique of the abuses of power and freedom in modernity, see R. Michael Clark (1996).

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is what Lonergan refers to in his discussion of biased decisions leading to regress and decline. Unlike Lonergan, however, Levinas does not read the notion of freedom in terms of decision. Alternatively, Levinas privileges the ethical relation of facing for-the-Other as a justice that is anterior to decisional freedom. Even as Levinas interprets the face as inextricably connected to freedom and responsibility, he refuses to correlate freedom with decision. Before anyone’s personal freedom is the face of the Other—the face which directs one’s freedom. In attempting to emphasize the hostage situation that arises in the face of the Other and/or the trace of the Inﬁnite, Levinas argues in “Time and the Other” that “the subject’s mastery over existing, the existent’s sovereignty, involves a dialectical reversal….This is its great paradox; a free being is already no longer free, because it is responsible for itself ” (1987, 55). Like Lonergan, Levinas rewrites freedom to be ﬂowing from one’s obligation for others. Indeed, the human person becomes subject in being for others. Unlike the Greek view of freedom as being for oneself or for the polis, for Levinas, freedom is born in community. Paradoxically, responsibility is not a burden to be repudiated, but the very mark of one’s separation and connection to others. From the above discussion of freedom, the similarities and differences between the thought of Lonergan and Levinas should be apparent. Unlike Lonergan who has the possibility of interpreting freedom in terms of grace, Levinas maintains that freedom is always after justice. For Lonergan, the believer is infused with grace supernaturally, and thus oriented to right relations with God and others. While for Levinas, even though there is an infusion of the Inﬁnite into the human person, this infusion has nothing to do with the nearness of Christ and everything to do with the Inﬁnity of the Other. Just as Levinas has an ambiguous relationship to the merits of reason, he is hesitant to embrace the notion of freedom, most probably because of his frustration with positivist theology. Levinas appears to be bound to a commonsense notion of freedom in which the human being lives for self or in which the person masters and colonizes others. It is not too strong to suggest that for Levinas, mastery is a perverse form of freedom—liberty taken to an extreme, which costs the lives of others.

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Levinas’s disdain for the modern conﬂation of mastery with freedom becomes most obvious in his writings on death. As explored in Chapter 3, mortality and death, for Levinas, are indicative of the plurality of existence, rather than of individual freedom. Our confrontation with death ends our attempt at mastery, in that in dying something beyond our power and control masters us. Death is the event of otherness that we cannot master. Again, in “Time and the Other,” Levinas explains: The approach of death indicates that we are in relation with something that is absolutely other, something bearing alterity not as a provisional determination we can assimilate through enjoyment, but as something whose very existence is made of alterity. My solitude is thus not conﬁrmed by death but broken by it. Right away this means that existence is pluralist. Here the plural is not a multiplicity of existents; it appears in existing itself (1987, 74-75).

Clearly, pluralist existence, which encompasses the needs of others, thwarts any move for aggressive, egoist freedom. Negotiating between philosophical and religious discourses, Levinas speaks of freedom in parabolic terms: “In suffering the free being ceases to be free, but, while non-free, is yet free” (1969, 238). Through this cryptic sentence, Levinas attempts to show that if a person believes that s/he is free for self, then s/he is not free for others. When this so-called free subject is encountered by the face, his/her freedom is disrupted, even erased. Alternatively, if one acknowledges his/her non-freedom from the beginning, realizes his/her connectedness with other persons, and suffers on another’s behalf, then s/he is truly free. Justice for others brings about freedom. Suffering in this case should not be confused with a sacriﬁce in terms of even exchange. Levinas rejects this notion of sacriﬁce as guilt for-the-Other precisely because it “presupposes an initial freedom” (1998e, 124). For Levinas, we do not casually and arbitrarily decide to be responsible, and responsibility is not born of guilt. Responsibility, rather, is demanded from us through the command and caress of the Other. Signiﬁcantly, critics would be justiﬁed in arguing that in his attempt to challenge both the Western abuse of freedom and the theological

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enterprise, Levinas relinquishes any viable options for speaking about authentic freedom. His ambiguous discussion of freedom leads to an even murkier conversation about solidarity. Here, Lonergan’s work on solidarity and the human good may prove to be a helpful corrective to Levinas’s weaknesses. For even as Lonergan’s notion of freedom is based in decision, it is the already graced, affective relation with the Other that guides decision. Lonergan seems to echo Levinas’s concerns about justice without entrusting the idea of freedom to those who abuse it.

5.3 Openness: An Invitation to Solidarity In the previous two sections, I explored the questions of openness and freedom in relation to the subject in postmodernity. Both dimensions of being human are related to the subject’s connection to the transcendent. In this section, I continue to interrogate the plight of the subject in postmodernity by mapping the subject’s movement from self to others in terms of solidarity. Before proceeding to Lonergan’s and Levinas’s thoughts on solidarity, it might prove helpful to review contemporary research on the topic. As one would expect, contemporary theorists of solidarity, both Continental and American, attempt to push beyond identity politics. Feminist theorist Judith Butler explains the need for coalition beyond identity politics, beyond a logic of sameness. In Gender Trouble (1990), Butler comments: The insistence in advance on coalitional ‘unity’ as a goal assumes that solidarity, whatever its price, is a prerequisite for political action. But what sort of politics demands that kind of advance purchase on unity? Perhaps a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact. Perhaps also part of what dialogic understanding entails is the acceptance of divergence, breakage, splinter, and fragmentation as a part of the often tortuous process of democratization (14).

Following Butler’s lead, we would be wise to imagine coalition beyond constructed identities and beyond particular characteristics. Two

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scholars that are integral to the discussion of the politics of solidarity beyond constructed identities are Jodi Dean and Iris Marion Young. In Solidarity of Strangers, Jodi Dean distinguishes among three types of solidarity, including affectional, conventional, and reﬂective solidarity (1996). She explains that in affective alliances, solidarity is a result of friendship and love, while in conventional coalition, solidarity is organized around common interests. Ultimately, Dean privileges the notion of reﬂective solidarity, which is rooted in dialogue, argument, and debate—an approach loosely wedded to Habermasian discourse ethics. Such an approach seems appealing, particularly if difference actually emerges in the dissent and contestation of the debate. Following the lead of Lynet Uttal (1990), Dean argues that such a notion of solidarity will be messy, yet ultimately fruitful in that at some point norms and agreement will surface. From these three types of solidarity, both Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work resonates most with the idea of affective solidarity, which is based in feelings for others. Another signiﬁcant thinker who examines the politics of solidarity is Iris Marion Young. Earlier I noted how Young interrogates the underlying assumptions in questions about difference. Now I focus on her analysis of domination in which she accounts for group coalition. To begin, Young reinterprets the meaning of a social group as “a collective of persons differentiated from at least one other group by cultural forms, practices, or way of life” (1990, 43). Notice that a social group is not based on biology, but on culture and social practices. As we will soon ascertain, Levinas, like Young, does not distinguish between groups on the basis of gender, race, class, etc., but by way of communal practice. From Young’s investigation, it becomes clear that between and within groups, power and domination are crucial categories in conﬁguring justice. In summary, Dean’s and Young’s reﬂections on group solidarity bring to the surface many questions about community formation. What is the basis of group cohesion? Is coalition based in biology, culture, or some other entity? What is the connection between individual identity and group identity? How do group dynamics affect justice? Probing these questions raised by Dean and Young in light of Lonergan’s and

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Levinas’s concerns about subjectivity, we will learn that any authentic movement toward solidarity should refute a commonsense attitude in which solidarity is built upon biological or social norms. To be sure, authentic solidarity is connected more to feelings than norms. Furthermore, it will become apparent that individual identity emerges from and often stands against group identity. By exploring Lonergan’s and Levinas’s interpretation of solidarity, we also will learn that justice cannot be achieved merely in linguistic skill or moral ideals, but in the concrete participation and untiring commitment of embodied persons. Indeed, Dean very astutely makes this exact point: solidarity necessitates the participation of a plurality of embodied persons (1996, 92-95). As we attempt to link questions of subjectivity, otherness, and community, it is necessary to imagine concrete bodies, that is, ﬂesh and blood people acting for others in affection and love. Lonergan and Levinas can assist us with this challenge. In Insight, Lonergan explains a culturally diverse and progressive intersubjective community in terms of a “cosmopolis” (1997, 263267). The cosmopolis is a life world that struggles against the evils resulting from bias and engages the complexity of intersubjectivity. As intriguing and valuable as it is, the notion of the cosmopolis largely dropped out of Lonergan’s post-Insight writings.3 More prominent in his thought is a notion of solidarity, which he bases on interpretations of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ (Mystici Corporis) and Pauline literature (Romans). Solidarity according to the exegesis of these texts is related to how humans participate in the Body of Christ and how Christ lives in the life of humanity. Drawing on I Corinthians, Lonergan explains how humans participate not only in the story, but also in the mind of Christ. By partaking in the story and mind of Christ, humanity is challenged to bear both the individual and communal burdens of reconciliation and redemption. Implicit in his discussion of humanity’s participation in the Body of Christ is the emphasis on the connection between the subject and others. In order to highlight the paradoxical predicament of being

3

The notion of the cosmopolis is further explored in a relatively recent essay by Martin J. Matustik, entitled, “Democratic Multicultures and Cosmopolis: Beyond Aporias of the Politics of Identity and Difference” (1994).

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human in relation to others, Lonergan writes: “Man is not simply an individual … man is never more than a member of a species” (1991, 11). This means that human beings are not so particular that they cannot be in relationship, or so similar that they can be all interpreted as the same. This insight poses deep ramiﬁcations for the way in which we relate to others. On the one hand, human beings belong to the same species and are connected. As a result, humanity shares a common story, collectively bears sin, and collectively shares responsibility for working toward the human good. Related to this common story is the notion that people are analogically consubstantial with the image of God. On the other hand, individuals are distinctive within the same species and common story. Lonergan’s account of the various patterns of experience, speciﬁcally the dramatic and social patterns, and his exploration of conversion toward authentic subjectivity attest to his concern for the particularity of individual persons. Even though Lonergan is careful not to privilege any sort of individualistic attitude, he clearly explains how each person and group is distinctive in their own personality. Within the common story of the human race and as persons struggle to live in the image of God, a plurality of personalities, narratives, and talents arise. We can refer to this tension between personality and common story as the “one and many” (Lonergan 1991, 152). Realizing the ramiﬁcations of the “one and the many,” the possibility of collective responsibility becomes all the more poignant. Furthermore, for Lonergan, implied in the question of solidarity is the issue of a divine end. As Lonergan asserts that humans are to live in the image of God, he emphasizes humanity’s destiny for solidarity. Discussing how Christ restores humanity from the sin of Adam, Lonergan states: “Christ set up a new motion to harmonise, re-adjust, reintegrate a humanity that had reached the peak of disintegration and death described in the ﬁrst chapter of Romans” (1991, 141). By recreating humanity, Christ lives in each person, calling each person toward God and others. Progress viewed from this end is not based on individualist or egoist desires, but on a call toward God, which results in charity and justice. In “Byway of the Cross,” Clark (1996) eloquently describes the scope of progress:

5~Figuring Subjectivity in Postmodern Context: The Protean Subject 179 Progress, for Lonergan, is not a fascination with technology and industry or proﬁt-making as the standard; but rather it is a fascination with the potentiality of the human race for intelligently and morally overcoming with God’s grace evil with good, or to be instruments in transmitting the pre-motion of social justice in solidarity with all people, especially the poor. The need for the supernatural is that only God can transform evil into good. We cannot do it on our own regardless of how intelligent and moral we happen to be. Evil remains evil until God’s grace moves us to participate in transforming it (37).

Here, it becomes clear that the supernatural and transcendent mystery is needed for us to participate in solidarity, to participate in the Body of Christ. A new generation of scholars have pushed Lonergan’s insights regarding the question of solidarity in order to develop more modern and even postmodern categories for interpreting what it means to be human. Anticipating Dean’s concerns, Copeland argues that solidarity cannot be merely conventional, that is among people who share common interests or are part of a certain group. Copeland, instead, grounds solidarity in memory, and claims that “solidarity begins in anamnesis—the intentional remembering of the dead exploited, despised poor peoples of color—the victims of history” (1998, 42). The notion of memory is integral to a contemporary conversation about solidarity for another Lonergan scholar, Charles Heﬂing. Speciﬁcally, Heﬂing explores how the process of forgiveness involves the act of remembering (1998, 99-113). Right-relationship and solidarity is restored in our recollection of our sin. He writes: “Forgiveness is not canceling that feeling. It is reversing that feeling. It is turning evil into good, consciously, in consciousness, on the ‘fourth level’” (109). Recall that the fourth level of intentionality refers to the subject’s obligation to act responsibly. Forgiveness through remembering marks the brokenness of relationship and the scar of evil, and at the same time, points to the possibility of justice. Forgiveness as a process, according to Heﬂing, rebuilds relations and reconstructs solidarity. Both Copeland’s and Heﬂing’s comments, respectively, on memory and forgiveness provide us with a process that can move the subject

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toward solidarity. Memory evokes our empathy for others, feelings that lead to relations of peace and justice. Likewise, forgiving as action leads toward solidarity and the human good. Here, forgiveness is demonstrated not only in terms of forgiving or being forgiven, but also in terms of remembering the evil and brokenness that caused the sin in the ﬁrst place. A process of forgiveness that encompasses remembering is necessary in order to enact healing and change. Alternatively, when we fail to forgive as part of our movement toward authentic living and loving God, ressentiment develops. Ressentiment is derived from the philosophy of Nietzsche (1969), and refers to “a state of repressed envy and desire for revenge which becomes generative of its own values” (Morelli 1998b, 197-227). A remedy for ressentiment can be found in a love for others, a love that transcends self. Forgiveness is an admirable goal of theology in the new millennium: to remember the evils of the past in order to progress forward in the future. Levinas also emphasizes the notion of memory in his understanding of solidarity. Memory for Levinas emerges in the subject’s primordial obligation for-the-Other. Similar to Lonergan, Levinas rejects commonsense readings of solidarity, which are akin to conventional solidarity. Levinas’s notion of human community is opposed to a popular interpretation of solidarity in which people “‘jostle’ one another to get around a common task” (1969, 213). In opposition to conventional solidarity, Levinas proposes the category of fraternity to illustrate affective solidarity. Fraternity has two dimensions: “Fraternity is radically opposed to the conception of a humanity united by resemblance…. On the other hand, it involves the commonness of a father” (214). Even as human persons are singular, they share in a common heritage. The urgency of fraternity, of this common ancestry, emerges in the fecundity of facing an Other, with the entrance of the third party. Remember that fecundity for Levinas breeds more relationships, more ties. Fecundity that emerges in facing is what grounds Levinas’s discussion of fraternity, for the face “commits” one to fraternity (215). Feeling for others in fraternity moves the subject to saintly subjectivity. In The Ethics of Deconstruction (1992), Critchley further discusses Levinas’s understanding of fraternity. Critchley explains the “double” nature of fraternity as individual and communal, “equal and unequal,

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symmetrical and asymmetrical, political and ethical—with the name monotheism” (227). Community emerges in the tension between these poles, between particular difference and common ancestry. Signiﬁcantly, Levinas’s discussion of fraternity as emerging between sameness and otherness resonates with Lonergan’s claims about the connection between the individual and community—the one and the many. To be sure, however, Levinas (or Lonergan) does not propose that the emergence of solidarity is as simple as the phrase “the one and the many” would have us believe. For Levinas, solidarity demands a certain kind of freedom, speciﬁcally freedom as responsibility. Here, responsibility is not simply law-centered or contract based, but need based. Therefore, responsibility for-the-Other is not possible in rights-centered, individualistic solitude. Moreover, blood ties or contracts are not the essence of solidarity. Solidarity, rather, emerges in the substitution forthe-Other on command. Levinas refers to the detached deliberation of Cain in his explanation of how responsibility and solidarity surpass biology. In “God and Philosophy,” Levinas writes: The sober, Cain-like coldness consists in reﬂecting on responsibility from the standpoint of freedom or according to contract. Yet responsibility for the Other comes from what is prior to my freedom. It does not come from the time made up of presences, nor from presences sunken into the past and representable, the time of beginnings or assumptions. Responsibility does not let me constitute myself into an I think, as substantial as a stone or, like a heart of stone, into an in- and for-oneself. It goes to the point of substitution for the other, up to the condition—or the noncondition—of a hostage (1998d, 71).

Solidarity for Levinas is the condition for the possibility of being forthe-Other. In other words, community exists, beyond superﬁcial blood ties, beyond contract, beyond law—in relationship. As the subject is called into community, freedom is framed in terms of responsibility for members of the fraternity. Even as it is possible to extrapolate an ethic of solidarity from Levinas’s work, it is not easily done. Levinas’s writings resist such systematizing. If one were to attempt to understand further Levinas’s thoughts on

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solidarity beyond fraternity, one would be wise to start with an analysis of his commentary on mystery and religion. In “Transcendence and Height,” Levinas admits to the many implications of a movement for solidarity, including the mysterious dimension of community life (1996, 27-28). The mysterious aspect is related to Levinas’s understanding of biblical narrative, the notion of creation, and religious experience. Through an investigation of the mystery of creation, we can realize Levinas’s thoughts on the subject’s independence from and dependence on others. Recall from Chapter Three that Levinas is careful to accentuate both the separation of the subject from the Other and the proximity of the subject to his/her obligation for-the-Other. This paradoxical position stems from Levinas’s interpretation of humanity as other from the creator. In Totality and Inﬁnity, he delineates humanity’s independence in terms of being created ex nihilo (1969, 102-105). By being created from nothing, humanity is radically other and independent from God. Paradoxically, with this independence comes responsibility. De Boer explains that in the early work of Levinas we ﬁnd that the subject becomes independent so s/he can shoulder the world (1997, 39). This thinking is later framed in terms of passivity in light of distance/proximity. The play between a person’s independence and his/her responsibility is the crux of a Levinasian reading of solidarity. An asymmetrical hostage situation in which the subject is simultaneously independent from and indebted to the Other is the foundation of Levinas’s thought on solidarity. If we return to Young’s work, we learn how justice and difference need not be reciprocal (1990, 26). Like Young, Levinas emphasizes the asymmetrical dynamic among persons and rejects the idea that ethical, personal relations need to be egalitarian. Justice, for Levinas, is about being for-the-Other, rather than being the same or equal to another person. By referring to the work of Young, the assumption of asymmetry can be clariﬁed. Young explains the disjunction between difference and justice in terms of the problem with “impartiality” and argues that the logic of impartiality is an ideal (100-106). She claims that equality politics is not necessarily evidence of justice. Therefore,

justice should be understood not inContext: terms ofThe distribution, but by 5~Figuring Subjectivity in Postmodern Protean Subject 183a careful analysis of oppression and domination. Levinas would agree with Young’s analysis of justice, and argue that movement toward solidarity can only take place with the entrance of the third party, including reason, other persons, the state, and God. In the section above, the theories of Lonergan and Levinas were explored to help us to re-envision solidarity in the current milieu. Implicit in this discussion is the belief that through creation, human beings, regardless of their biology or ancestry, are born in solidarity as interconnected. This bond of intersubjectivity is based in a feeling for the Other, a longing, a desire. Nonetheless, the presence of injustice, sin, and evil works to destroy this primordial solidarity. Even as Lonergan and Levinas conﬁgure solidarity in different discourses, the normative performance of the subject in community is the same: people are to surrender to and celebrate with others in an effort to rebuild the bonds of solidarity. Affectively, the subject is shaped, molded, and positioned in relationships of solidarity with others. The shaping, molding, and positioning or the malleability of the subject is discussed in the next section in terms of proteanism.

5.4 A Figure of Open Embodied Subjectivity: The Protean Subject Mindful of Lonergan’s and Levinas’s concerns about openness, freedom, and solidarity, I now sketch a ﬁgure of the postmodern subject in terms of proteanism. In an effort to avoid the problematic attitude of Atlas, who attempts to shirk responsibility, as well as the issues surrounding the suffering servant, in which pain and suffering is deiﬁed, I have attempted to formulate a ﬁgure for thinking about subjectivity in postmodernity: the protean subject. Postmodernity’s attentiveness to difference, situatedness, and master-narratives challenges theologians to rethink what it means to be human in the pluralist context. A protean model for being human encompasses the insights of both Lonergan and Levinas, as well other thinkers who grapple with issues of postmodernity. In addition to Lonergan’s (1997, 590, 609) and Levinas’s

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(1969, 268) references to proteanism, therefore, I further develop the notion of protean subjectivity through an investigation of its mythical and psychological roots. To reiterate, Proteus is the mythological sea god who adapts to his unstable, external surroundings by changing his form. Homer introduces us to Proteus in The Odyssey (1996). In that famous epic, Proteus avoids Odysseus’s grip by changing form, eventually retreating into the sea by becoming water. An exemplar of malleability, Proteus may prove to be a ﬁne anthropological model in the postmodern context. As a ﬁgure of anthropology, proteanism both captures the radical openness of the subject, yet remains vigilant to the important questions of history, suffering, and agency. Interestingly, the trope of proteanism accounts for both the postmodern situation of disconnectedness and the human desire for goodness. While theology has been virtually silent in promoting Proteus as a ﬁgure of being human, psychology is entertaining the idea. Tracing the legend of Proteus, psychologist, Robert J. Lifton illustrates how concrete, embodied human beings go through a series of transformations during their lives. With each instance of joy, pain, and even traumatic suffering, the subject is altered. It is as if the world pushes in and molds the subject throughout the dramatic pattern of his/her life. Reﬂecting on the malleability of the subject in relation to the world, Lifton coins the notion of the protean self or protean being. Even as Lifton’s proteanism is rooted in the human endeavor for progress, part of the complexity of proteanism lies in the danger of evil or regress. Lifton explains: The protean self emerges from confusion, from the widespread feeling that we are losing our psychological moorings. We feel ourselves buffeted about by unmanageable historical forces and social uncertainties….Enduring moral convictions, clear principles of action and behavior: we believe these must exist, but where? …We are beset by a contradiction: schooled in virtues of constancy and stability—whether as individuals, groups, or nations—our world and our lives seem inconstant and utterly unpredictable. We readily come to view ourselves as unsteady, neurotic, or worse (1993, 1).

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If at ﬁrst glance Lifton’s thought seems pessimistic or depressing, this is true. “Exploring the dark side of human behavior—Chinese thought reform (or ‘brainwashing’), the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, and the Darkest of all, Nazi doctors,” Lifton’s work draws on extensive analysis of suffering (Lifton 1993, 11). Sadly, fragmentation and suffering need not be limited to those instances that Lifton lists. Abuse, rape, murder, and torture plague many people from all walks of life. For some, the atrocities surrounding September 11th have been similarly traumatic. In the North American landscape, the evils of racism and classism continue to have related deleterious effects. In light of these traumatic events, Lifton wonders how the subject can go forward without resorting to more violence and pain. Drawing on his ﬁeld of psychology, which is committed to understanding human development and change, Lifton argues that an alternative to retaliation through violence and alienation is protean resilience. In his discussion of transformation and resilience, Lifton clearly articulates that human beings have concrete choice and freedom in movements of recovery and reconciliation. For Lifton, protean subjectivity wields an indisputable agency. Agency and value are notions often avoided in extreme postmodern accounts of the person; yet, even as Lifton argues for an understanding of proteanism that supports ﬂuidity, he rejects alienation or nihilism. Attentive both to the way in which postmodern culture pulls the subject in various directions and to the need for responsible action in the face of what seems like chaos, Lifton explains: I must separate myself, however, from these observers, postmodern or otherwise, who equate multiplicity and ﬂuidity with disappearance of the self; with a complete absence of coherence among its various elements. I would claim the opposite: proteanism involves a quest for meaning and authenticity, a form-seeking assertion of the self (9).

For Lifton, the self is resilient, changing, organic, and dynamic. Paradoxically, since the person is a changing dynamic, s/he is responsible for his/her resilience through re-creation. Lifton explains: “If the self

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is a symbol of one’s organism, the protean self-process is the continuous psychic re-creation of that symbol” (5). Even after trauma, therefore, Lifton afﬁrms that the self remains. This survival of the self is a signiﬁcant point. For implied in Lifton’s thought is the possibility of the triumph of the human spirit. In the face of violence, injustice, and exploitation, the subject remains present. This presence attests to the alterity of the Other, that even in the midst of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, a core self still endures. Interestingly, Lifton explains this core surviving self in organic and discursive terms. The self develops and changes dramatically in a narrative. This resonates with Lonergan’s explanation of the dramatic and social patterns of experience. Recall how the dramatic pattern of experience chronicles the subject’s life events and the social pattern entails the subject’s engagement with the world. Lifton’s notion of the protean self follows a similar narrative structure. Focusing on the performative dimension of subjectivity, Lifton writes: The symbolizing self centers on its own narrative, on a life story that is itself created and constantly re-created. To be sure, the self can fall from narrative and undergo perceived breaks and radical discontinuities in life story. It can also divide itself into many subnarratives sufﬁciently developed to form their own self-structures or subselves (30).

In terms of performativity, Lifton’s notion of the protean self can be read (again to employ the rhetoric of Merleau-Ponty) as a changing body-subject, an aging body-subject, an ailing body-subject, a peaceful body-subject, a dying body-subject, a sacramental body-subject, each of whom have memories, narratives, and subplots. As body-subject, the person engages his/her agency in order to make choices that affect his/her performance of authentic subjectivity. Through such performative subjectivity, the human person struggles in the shadow and the light of the image of God to develop his/herself, to re-create authenticity. By being responsible on the individual level as well as in the communal sphere, the subject writes his/herself as authentic. This notion of performing or writing oneself as subject was previously mentioned in Chapter Four. There I argued that Levinas’s and Irigaray’s writings are not essentialist, since they work to re-create the

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meaning of the terms ‘body’ and ‘woman’ as they write about them. Similarly, according to Lifton’s protean selfhood, the subject re-creates him/herself as s/he lives. As performative, Lifton’s subject is the holistic free person able to act responsibly in mind and body. The protean virtue of this subject is open, changing, shifting, evolving, organic, and performative. Protean subjectivity integrates many of the insights gleaned from Lonergan’s theology and Levinas’s theory. First, Lonergan’s thought shows that we are always creating ourselves. Walter Conn explains the developmental or protean character of Lonergan’s subjectivity in terms of moral conversion (1988, 48-50). Moral conversion shifts a person’s decision-making process from satisfaction to value in order to highlight the self-developing dimension of being human. In every decision toward authentic living, the subject is capable of “better knowledge and fuller responsibility” (Conn, 50). Lonergan’s connection with Lifton does not end with moral conversion. Proteanism underscores how we relate to people on the basis of feelings, in terms of affectivity. As we can interpret from his writings on gift and love, Lonergan is quite interested in the feelings that undergird intersubjectivity, even if his language fails to make that fact plain. Similar to the way in which Lonergan explains each person to have the same potential for knowing, acting, and loving, Lifton claims that each person has the potential for resilience in the areas of cognition, will, and affection. Proteanism captures the change of heart, which Lonergan attempts to emphasize in his discussion of conversion and transcendence. Lastly, just as Lonergan explains that each human being, albeit bound by one human nature, has a distinctive personal narrative or dramatic pattern, Lifton asserts that each resilient self is embedded in a context and history. Lifton writes: “What we call the self—one’s inclusive sense (or symbolization) of one’s being—is enormously sensitive to the ﬂow of history” (2). Like Lonergan, Levinas is attentive to the particularity of history and context, nevertheless Levinas departs from an explicit account of the developmental character of subjectivity. Indeed, Levinas’s description of subjectivity is apocalyptic and prophetic, in that between each moment the subject is displaced for another person. Thus, there is no linear narrative to explain the subject’s journey. This does not mean

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that Levinas’s interpretation of being human ignores history or context, for the subject’s relations to others is always situational. Nonetheless, his interpretation of subjectivity as waiting for another complicates the way in which we might speak of a subject’s developmental or protean potential. Signiﬁcantly, Levinas even makes a key reference to Proteus in Totality and Inﬁnity (1969, 268). He rejects the Protean mode of being in favor of an understanding of being that is tied to others in terms of fecundity. In order to get a handle on Levinas’s thoughts here, it may prove helpful to turn to the text in question. In the section in which he elaborates on fecundity, Levinas writes: The diverse forms Proteus assumes do not liberate him from his identity. In fecundity the tedium of this repetition ceases…. Fecundity continues history without producing old age. Inﬁnite time does not bring an eternal life to an aging subject; it is better across the discontinuity of generations, punctuated by the inexhaustible youths of the child (268).

This seemingly complicated rhetoric is actually quite straight forward. Levinas wants to explain that fecundity is not merely an extension of one’s life, but a birth of new and diverse perspectives, persons, and relationships. What is more, he demonstrates that what is signiﬁcant for his apocalyptic and prophetic eschatology is not the change from one paradigm to another, but the emergence of new and other narratives. What we learn from this passage is that Levinas is more concerned with clarifying his interpretation of relationship and community in history than with constructing an anthropological model. My interpretation of proteanism differs from Levinas’s assumptions about Proteus for two reasons. First, my discussion of proteanism is set directly within a context of theological anthropology, while Levinas’s reference to Proteus can be understood in relation to his critique of a hegemonic and totalizing reading of history. Although Levinas’s writings, speciﬁcally Otherwise than Being, give rise to implications for any interpretation of being human in postmodernity, overall his life’s work does not aim at constructing an anthropology. Thus, in his reference to the inadequacies of a protean logic, Levinas sounds more like he is grappling with history and grand narrative, than realizing the responsibility of being human. Here, Lyotard’s insights about the

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crushing weight of grand narrative can help ﬂesh out Levinas’s problems with a protean interpretation of history. One could compare Levinas’s critique of the transformative and totalizing character of protean history to Lyotard’s explanation of the libidinal band (Lyotard 1993a). Secondly, I believe interpreting my discussion of proteanism within the context of a constructive theological anthropology would be compatible with Levinas’s overall concerns for responsibility for others. I employ the notion of proteanism, not so that the subject can freely and aggressively control him/herself to avoid responsibility, but to accent the constructed, developmental, and shifting position of the subject. The subject is protean, that is, is transformed to openness only in the presence of alterity, including the divine Other. This interpretation of proteanism acknowledges Levinas’s critique of a totalizing history and expounds on his concern for a responsible subjectivity. As such, proteanism rejects the Heideggerian and Lacanian emphasis on self at the cost of others. Lifton’s work is appealing for many reasons. Already we have grasped that his psychological discussion of proteanism deals both with questions of suffering and pleasure. Remember from our exploration of Levinasian ethics that the categories of pleasure and desire are privileged over satisfaction or use. Constructive theology in the new millennium must explore the implications of joy as well as pain, for that which brings us happiness is becomingly increasingly difﬁcult to ascertain in the contemporary world. Moreover, the way in which Lifton frames proteanism in terms of narrative appeals both to modern and postmodern sensibilities. Modern persons can uphold the evolutionary impulse and developmental dimension of proteanism, while postmoderns can appreciate the narrative form and pluralist possibilities of protean subjectivity. Even though Lifton’s theory emerges within a psychological paradigm, it does not need to be cut off from questions of existential meaning and religion. For God invites the person into protean being, that is, into being open to the risks of self, Other, and community.

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5.5 Conclusion In this chapter, I examined the meaning of openness from several perspectives. The Judeo-Christian renditions of openness in terms of hospitality and charity were emphasized as ways of remembering what it means to be human in community with others and God. Lonergan and Levinas were called upon to ﬂesh out modern and postmodern expressions of openness, freedom, and solidarity. We ﬁnd in both thinkers’ work the theme of suffering on behalf of another. In and of itself, being for others is admirable. But the way in which suffering has been conﬁgured by and for marginalized groups is reason to question the implications of suffering for a notion of authentic subjectivity. In order to avoid the traps of a suffering servant ideology, I introduced the notion of protean subjectivity. Protean subjectivity not only takes into account the suffering aspect of being human, but also includes the remembering, developing, changing, healing, forgiving, celebratory, and sacramental dimensions of being human. Whereas Lifton understands the self as protean and malleable in relation to trauma, I want to extend that malleability to other dimensions of human existence as well, such as in relation to friendship, love, and joy. Indeed, the ﬁgure of the protean subject holds in tension many of themes and issues that have emerged in this dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas. First and foremost, proteanism captures the unavoidable intersubjective connection between subject and Other. Second, the ﬁgure of proteanism highlights a notion of openness, which cannot be possessed by any one subject, but rather is effected by the encounter with the Other. Thus, implicit in the conversation on openness is an attention to its ﬂuidity and dynamism. The subject’s reception of the Other in this ﬂuid and dynamic process is not static or mechanical, but changing and embodied. Third, proteanism captures the boundaries between subject and Other as well as the intense intimacy between subject and Other. Put another way, proteanism underscores the relational, intersubjective quality of being human that is distinctive to Lonergan’s and Levinas’s projects. Shouldering was proposed as a heuristic for deepening our understanding of the responsibility of the subject for the Other beyond the gendered language found in the rhetoric of Levinas as well as in certain ecclesial situations. Proteanism

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builds on the notion of shouldering. As protean subjects, we emerge as persons able to shoulder one another. Fourth, proteanism accounts not only for responsibility to others, but also for maintenance of ourselves, an activity that is often obscured by Levinas’s preoccupation with the Other. My goal in the discussion of proteanism is not to limit the possibilities of being human by constructing a concept or ideal; instead, my intention is to highlight the complexity of openness in the contemporary context. Openness not only involves obligatory relationships for others, but also a reexamination of self. Openness necessitates a transcendence that is sensitive to the present needs of others as well as to the history and events of the past. Protean subjectivity with its emphasis on resilience accounts for such openness.

6 Conclusion

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hroughout this study, I have investigated the relationship between subject and Other in a postmodern context. When I say postmodern context, I refer to the pluralistic society in which we live, an environment that is shaped by both secular and religious attitudes. I have attempted to show that in this global, diverse milieu, Christian theologians need to engage questions of how to be human in the midst of change and ambiguity. In my research, I have illustrated how difference and identity have been terribly misconstrued, particularly but not exclusively by the West in its adumbration of modernity. In reaction to this confusion over difference, I have shown that contemporary continental theorists, including Emmanuel Levinas, have focused their attention on the complexity of alterity. Furthermore, in my analysis, I assume that contemporary theologians should follow and expand this theoretical lead. Importantly, a theological interpretation of alterity in a postmodern milieu must avoid nihilistic conclusions, the seeds of which are embedded in contemporary continental thought. Hence, I made it plain that Christian theologians need to imagine ways of being hospitable to difference without leaving all hope of justice behind. I argued that the notion of openness could function as a bridge between theoretical and theological concerns for difference and justice. Openness, in this investigation, was conﬁgured in a number of ways. Employing the work of Lonergan, Levinas, and Derrida, openness was framed in terms of gift. The open disposition of the subject was noted as gifted because it is excessive, beyond retribution. Openness was also contexualized within Jewish and Christian thought in order to emphasize the subject’s reception of the Other as hospitable and charitable. The open and receptive posture of the subject was then made corporeal through the notion of shouldering. I proposed the metaphor of shouldering to convey the immediacy of the subject’s communal obligation for others, without relying on insidious gender

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stereotypes. Shouldering was shown to be consistent with Lonerganian and Levinasian trajectories of thought. Besides describing the subject as open to others in the praxis of shouldering, I attempted to ﬁgure and name this open, receptive, saintly subject who shoulders others. I considered the idea that s/he is similar to the suffering servant found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet, I concluded that, even though the process of ﬁguring subjectivity in postmodernity must engage the questions of self-surrender and sacriﬁce, attending to issues of being human ought to encompass other dimensions of humanity as well. For instance, normative subjectivity must consider the resilient character of subjectivity in addition to the suffering dimension. In order to avoid the trap of valorizing the notion of the suffering servant, I accented the trope of protean subjectivity to highlight the open, responsible, changing, social, and loving subject of postmodernity. It is perhaps somewhat ironic that I called upon a specter of the Greeks, Homer’s Proteus, to explain the possibilities of openness in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In my endeavor to explain being human in a postmodern, pluralist context, many questions remain unanswered. In this ﬁnal chapter, I identify two avenues for further research. First, I encourage theologians to investigate more boldly the impact of the construction of gender and race on the Christian doctrine of the person. Second, I demonstrate that the concentrated focus on embodiment and affective intentionality in this book creates new queries for sacramental theology. After raising these new questions for theologians, I conclude this chapter by discussing the limitations and beneﬁts of putting Lonergan and Levinas into dialogue with one another.

6.1 Avenues for Further Theological and Philosophical Research In this book, I have been dedicated to dealing with questions of difference and corporeality. Still, these two issues of otherness and embodiment require further scrutiny. One area for further research is in Christian anthropology, and is linked to the question of why gender

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essentialism is different from that of racial essentialism. The tension between French feminists and critical race theorists surfaced in the third and fourth chapters yet was never fully interrogated. Below, I will outline a possible research project for the question of the relationship between gender and race theory in constructive theology. A second area for continued investigation is in the ﬁeld of sacramental theology. The notion of the sacramental subject was alluded to in Chapter Three on Levinas’s saintly subject as for-the-Other and in Chapter Five on the possibilities of the protean subject. The plight of the sacramental subject is more thoroughly analyzed in the second part of this section.

6.1.1 Gender and Race Theory in Christian Anthropology Although many feminist thinkers and critical race theorists have identiﬁed the complexity of reading the body in theology, there is little scholarship comparing and evaluating their different theoretical approaches in explaining the notion of embodiment. In researching and writing this book, it has become apparent that some of the issues which feminists emphasize, such as the question of essentialism, are not easily addressed from the perspective of critical race theory. In future work, it would be enlightening to trace the similarities and differences of understanding the body from the distinctive perspectives of feminist and race theory. Such a study could bridge concerns about gendered and racialized bodies through a discussion of the incarnation. Speciﬁcally, by focusing on the Christ event—God becoming ﬂesh in all human particularity—a discussion about difference and subjectivity might be furthered. Through an interrogation of the role of identity politics in the incarnation, questions relating to the social location of Jesus of Nazareth might be explored. Two issues would be paramount here: the question of the efﬁcacy of a male savior for women, as well as the implications of Jesus’s class, ethnicity, and culture for constructive theology. Ultimately, it would be interesting to examine how the incarnation either sacralizes or neutralizes particular human characteristics and accidents.

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A plan for such a project might follow this four-fold structure. I would begin with an overview of how Christians currently discuss the body in contemporary theological and philosophical discourse. Such a discussion would draw on the insights of phenomenologists, social scientists, and theologians. Then, a review of the feminist contribution to the conversation on embodiment would be helpful. Here, the work that emerges in French feminism would be signiﬁcant to the discussion, and such thought could range from de Beauvoir to Irigaray. Next, an analysis of some of the debates in critical race theory’s attention to the body would be indispensable. Feminist and critical race theories would need to be compared. Even though there has been much critical thinking since the work of Frantz Fanon, his analysis still seems to epitomize the violent effects of racism against blacks. This is not say that other voices are not welcome, for the thought of hooks and Copeland continue to uncover the problems created by white supremacist culture. Finally, one could locate and explain the event of incarnation as a model for reading the body as performative. In this regard, traditional interpretations of the word becoming ﬂesh, as in the work of St. Thomas, as well as the newly emerging theologies of the cross from North America and the two-thirds world, would prove challenging. Through this investigation into how human embodied persons are sanctiﬁed in the incarnation, criticism of the evils of racism and sexism could be furthered. In the postmodern context, as we have learned from Lonergan and Levinas, the Other cannot be avoided. It is the Other that summons the subject to be for-the-Other. Reading the incarnation in terms of radical otherness could highlight the gift of being human in relation to alterity.

6.1.2 New Questions for Sacramental Theology The relationship between the incarnation of Christ and the corporeality of human beings leads us to the second area of possible research, the ﬁeld of sacramental theology. In my research, I have attempted to demonstrate how an intricate analysis of corporeality is signiﬁcant for postmodern Christian anthropology. Although I do not wish to

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be redundant, one conclusion is worth reiterating. Subjectivity only arises in intersubjective relations, in the face of an embodied Other. This Other presses in on the subject and demands that s/he answer the Other’s need. This ethical relation is not founded in the subject’s intellect or will alone, but in the affective desire of the subject forthe-Other. Subjectivity is a passionate relationship, and the dramatic and social patterns of life chronicle the emotive opera among the plurality of human beings. God enters into this opera as a trace, as an inﬁnite desire, as a third party. Hence, being human, while always contextual, changing, and complicated, is even more than that: it is sacramentally charged. Lonergan and Levinas bring to light this sacramental charge. Theologian Stephen Happel comments on Lonergan’s contribution to sacramental theology. In an essay entitled, “The Sacraments: Symbols That Redirect Our Lives,” Happel addresses the affective dimension of Lonergan’s metaphysics (1988, 237-254). There, he speciﬁcally refers to the mystery of symbolic meaning and the self-sacriﬁcial ethic in Lonergan’s thought. Self-sacriﬁce and self-surrender, which occur when one falls in love with God have important ramiﬁcations for two sacraments: marriage and penance. To some, these ramiﬁcations seem clear. In a committed relationship, such as marriage, God’s presence ﬂourishes in the couple’s openness to love and fecundity. And, in the act of contrition in penance, God’s presence looms in the forgiveness and renewal of the self. In both rituals, members of the Body of Christ surrender themselves to God and others. Suffering on behalf of another would seem appropriate here. In a broad brush one could attempt to extend Happel’s insight, arguing that self-sacriﬁce is part of being a gifted, open, authentic, sacramental subject for Lonergan. Nevertheless, in light of our previous comments on the societal expectation that certain groups are to suffer more than others, an understanding of sacramentality in terms of self-afﬂiction ought to be contested. Hence, if one were to apply Lonergan’s work on self-sacriﬁce to the question of postmodern sacramental theology, other issues would need to be addressed. These problems encompass the following queries: how the notion of self-sacriﬁce for others in marriage or in reconciliation is embedded in gender assumptions; how white supremacist logic and Western imperialism frame any discussion

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of the legitimacy of suffering of a minority for the beneﬁt of a majority; and how the reality of Christ’s suffering at the hands of the Roman state ought to reshape the way Christians contextualize self-sacriﬁce. These questions have been building throughout my examination of the ethical relation between subject and Other; and, an investigation into the politics of a sacramental subject would be the next logical step in penetrating the heart of these matters. Like Lonergan, Levinas provides us with resources for discussing the subject as sacramental. In light of Levinas’s Jewish background, some might wonder about my claim that Levinas’s thought can be valuable to a Christian interpretation of sacramentality. Is it dangerous to employ a post-Shoah writer for Christian pursuits? Certainly not, if one appropriates Levinas’s work in an intelligent, honest, and respectful posture. Furthermore, Levinas’s attention to the phenomenology of the body is absolutely necessary for any conversation about the sacramentality of the person. To be sure, implicit in my discussion of the corporeality of the human subject is the assumption that, for Christians, the meaning of the body is overdetermined. We are overwhelmed with bodies and body language. There is the human body of the believer, the ecclesial body, the incarnate body of Christ, and the Mystical Body of Christ. But even as Christians are overwhelmed by references to the body, there seems to be no adequate understanding of the role of the human body in theology. Body is everywhere and nowhere. Although I attempted to show the contribution of Lonergan to the question of corporeality, it has become clear that philosophers, especially phenomenologists, are more skillful at attending to the role, function, and plight of the human body, than theologians. As a result, theologians would be wise to revisit some of the insights of phenomenology to construct an anthropology that takes seriously the open and affective relationship between subject and Other. By now it should be obvious that Levinas is a rich resource for understanding the relation between body and sacramentality in a postmodern context. Writing out of a cultural milieu that remembers the horrors of Auschwitz, Levinas imagines an ethics that emphasizes the plight of the embodied subject and Other. The way that Levinas deals with such notions of incarnation, sacriﬁce, and gender, can help theologians develop more life-afﬁrming ways of discussing the sacra-

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mentality of the Christian subject. It is signiﬁcant to note, however, that at no point does Levinas refer to the subject as ‘sacramental’ in the Christian sense of the word. And, even though his discussion of the singular human embodied person as the site of suffering, mortality, and sacriﬁce might be applicable to questions about sacramentality, it is imperative to realize that Levinas does not intend to develop a Christian notion of sacramentality. In all likelihood his interest in the sacredness of being human is embedded in his afﬁliation with the Talmudic tradition as well as with his critique of the onto-theology of Western philosophy. Nonetheless, reading Levinas’s understanding of incarnation, passivity, and substitution as a Christian theologian, the implications of his work for sacramental theology are striking. For those who are still uncomfortable with relating Levinas’s work to Christian theology in this way, one key way to connect Levinas’s work with the notion of the sacramental is to return to his reading of Cartesian metaphysics. Levinas draws on Descartes’s notion of the Inﬁnite in the subject, thereby alluding to the subject as the site of sacrament. Descartes claims that it is the presence of the Inﬁnite in humanity that makes it possible for the human being to be in relationship with the Inﬁnite. Indeed, alterity exists in the midst of our being human, in our own human being. The feeling for the Other, or what I have been alluding to as affective intentionality, is the basis for all living. Alterity within us calls us out of ourselves for others. Feeling for and with others, moves us to know and act in relation to others. For Levinas, and as I will continue to argue, for Lonergan, alterity within us calls us for the Other in our midst. As I persevere in contextualizing Lonergan’s and Levinas’s work within larger traditions, it should be known that reading the subject as a site of sacrament is not a new project. French theologian, LouisMarie Chauvet, asserts that the body of the Christian believer is instrumental to his/her reception of grace. He writes: “The liturgy is not a matter of ‘ideas’ but of ‘bodies’ or, better, ‘of corporeality’” (1995, viii). By referring to the body as both a signiﬁer and the signiﬁed, Chauvet shows that corporeality can be interpreted as sacramental. Still, constructive theology needs to go beyond the groundbreaking work of Chauvet and interpret the subject as sacramental within the global context. This means that what body symbolizes needs to be

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complicated. Tough questions such as these need to be addressed. Are all bodies sacramental or only those which are deemed normative? What role does history play in recognizing some bodies as sacramental while interpreting others as deﬁcient? How does power inﬂuence the way we designate some bodies as sacramental and others as profane? These questions seem to ﬂow logically from the interrogation of embodied difference in Chapter Four. The next step would be to rethink what it means for all human beings to be understood as authentic in mind and body. The task of developing a theological anthropology that effectively mediates sacramentality with postmodern interpretations of the bodysubject undoubtedly would be rigorous. Scholars need to read beyond their ﬁelds. Although the notion of the body-subject as the site of sacrament is not a new idea, the questions raised by contemporary continental, feminist, and critical race theorists complicate any attempt to speak about the human subject as the site of God’s presence. For instance, Roman Catholic theologian Susan Ross, questions the Church’s presuppositions about body and gender in understanding sacramentality (1998). She wonders how “a tradition which venerates material” is “hostile” to bodies, women’s bodies in particular (9). What’s more, she asks why women’s bodies are not understood to be just as revelatory as men’s bodies. In the current milieu, theologians interested in questions of the sacramental are obligated to deal with questions and insights coming from feminist studies, critical race theory, and cultural anthropology. If one were to embark on a study of sacramentality in postmodern context, both Lonergan and Levinas would prove to be valuable voices in such a project. Lonergan’s work on the embodied subject and patterns of experience complicates any facile interpretation of being human. Furthermore, his clear analysis of the human good, which engages the issues of bias and conversion as well as progress and decline, underscores the way in which Christians imagine the individual person or communal church as sinful or sacramental. Levinas’s notions of corporeality and substitution also would augment such a study. Moreover, if one were concerned about the reiﬁcation of suffering, then the conversation about the self as a site of sacrament would need to go beyond the thought of both Lonergan and Levinas. To embark

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on such a project, again, theologians would be wise to call upon the work of French feminists, critical race theorists, and thinkers of the two-thirds world. In the above section, I sketched areas of research that were touched upon in this book and that need to be further explored: a conversation between feminists and critical race theorists and studies in sacramental theology. These two areas while seemingly disparate are radically related. Both deal with understanding the social dimension of humanity. Both examine the politics of difference. Both are concerned with the ﬂourishing of human beings for God and for others. Both are integral to understanding what it means to be human in the postmodern context.

6.2 Evaluation of the Dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas I began this research with the understanding that Lonergan and Levinas would be unlikely, yet evocative interlocutors. Reading Lonergan and Levinas through a superﬁcial and commonsense lens, one could certainly claim that they have little in common. Casual conversation in the academy is grounded in the assumption that Lonergan is thoroughly modern and Levinas is deﬁnitively postmodern. Nonetheless, from this critical engagement with these two thinkers, it should be apparent that Lonergan and Levinas are indeed grappling with similar problems of modernity. Both Lonergan and Levinas ﬁnd a conceptualist or thematizing attitude problematic, both reject a naïve interpretation of freedom, both uphold some variation of the notion of intersubjectivity, and both rework the gestures of openness out of their respective religious traditions. And so, after having been immersed in their thought, consumed by their concerns, and entrenched in their disparate rhetorical styles, I am apt to say that they could have been dialogue partners. They could have learned a great deal from each other, and their projects could have been enhanced by such a conversation. In this ﬁnal section, I explore the advantages and disadvantages of this dialogue. I pinpoint where the ﬁctive dialogue breaks down, and note the limits of employing contemporary continental philosophy

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in constructive theological anthropology. In the second part of this section, I delineate the advantages of putting Lonergan and Levinas into dialogue with one another. It should become clear that their differences, while important, are not divisive enough to designate the worldviews of Lonergan and Levinas as incommensurable. To begin with the problems in this hypothetical dialogue, we could argue that this conversation between Lonergan and Levinas is patently artiﬁcial, since both interlocutors are deceased. If they were still living, the chance that they would have conversed seems slim. They lived and learned in different worlds. Bernard Lonergan was a Roman Catholic, a priest, a Jesuit, a theologian. Even though he had a ﬁrm grasp of existential and continental philosophy, he thought and wrote within a Catholic milieu. He struggled to bring Catholic theology up to the level of the times by attending to knowing, objectivity, and reality; history, culture, and society. Even if his cognitional theory leads to a critically derived metaphysics, Lonergan was not interested in dismissing ontology altogether. Emmanuel Levinas, on the other hand, lived and breathed in another world. He was a Jew, a prisoner of war, a philosopher, a Talmudic thinker. We are well aware that Levinas was frustrated with philosophy’s privileging of such terms as objectivity, being, and reality. Thus, his concern was not to raise philosophy to the current times, but to deal with philosophy’s involvement in the violence and suffering enacted against the marginalized in history. Levinas had no interest in reviving the terms of modernity, because modernity, for Levinas, was (is) an instance of violence and totalization. A second way in which a conversation between Lonergan and Levinas breaks down is related to the topic of suffering. Lonergan’s interpretation of suffering is Christocentric. From his positive (i.e. non-methodological, non-cognitional) theological writings, we can gather that his point of reference for pain and pleasure is the Christ event. The transcendent and transformative grace of Christ is his priority and focal point for thinking and being in the world. In other words, Lonergan’s Christology, even if only sketched here, shapes his anthropology and ethics. Levinas’s interpretation of suffering differs from that of Lonergan’s on two levels. First, Levinas is heavily inﬂuenced

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by deconstructionist and poststructuralist thought. Consequently, Levinas’s rendering of suffering is shaped by questions of openness to difference, rather than any disposition toward grace or divine instinct. Second, Levinas differs from Lonergan in his particular reference for suffering: the Shoah. Although one cannot easily argue that Levinas is a representative Jewish thinker, his corporeal connection to the violence of the Shoah marks his thought as deﬁnitively post-Shoah writing.1 It is clear from his writings that Levinas interprets suffering as concrete, tangible, embodied, corporeal, rather than linked to the transcendent in any fashion. Levinas’s visceral connection to the Shoah, which encompasses his birth as a Jew, laboring in camps, and surviving the unforgettable, frames his thinking as dedicated to a speciﬁc type of suffering: human suffering. Undoubtedly, Lonergan’s critical metaphysics is connected to questions of suffering; nonetheless, his reference point is shaped by the ministry, death, and resurrection of one particular Jew, rather than the death of six million anonymous Jews. In sum, Lonergan and Levinas appear to interpret suffering through different lenses. For Lonergan, suffering is Christocentric; consequently, all human suffering could be read, albeit tangentially, in terms of the Cross. From this perspective, even with blood on human hands, suffering is paradoxically connected to the transcendent. Alternatively, when reading Levinas’s work, one encounters a distinct twist on the paradoxical situation of suffering. According to Levinas, all suffering is human driven; nonetheless, God emerges when one suffers by substitution for others. Thus, Levinas’s reading of suffering, unlike that of Lonergan’s, has a human-centered orientation. Like Lonergan, though, suffering that is born in a Levinasian responsibility for others, possesses a divine, sacramental character. Much of the way Levinas links suffering to the divine results from his consistent referencing of the suffering-servant motif in Isaiah 53. As I already mentioned, it is imperative that the distinct worldviews of Lonergan and Levinas are never confused. The alterity between their individual histories and personalities must be respected. Still, much can be gained from putting them into dialogue. From the perspective 1

David Ford states that Levinas is “too controversial” to be labeled as a quintessential Jewish thinker (1999, 31).

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of Catholic theology, an encounter with Levinas’s contemporary continental thought is advantageous in a number of ways. Alternatively, Levinas’s argument could be strengthened by the foresight of a broad thinker, such as Lonergan. Below I outline what contemporary theologians could gain by appropriating Levinas’s thought, ways in which Lonerganian thought could contribute to Levinasian scholarship, and areas in which Christian theology in general could be strengthened by the dialogue between Lonergan and Levinas. First, this Talmudic thinker’s intricate analysis of social relations helps bring to light the ephemeral and positional character of otherness. For instance, the way in which Levinas explains alterity, not merely in terms of gender (or race or class), but in terms of desire, could facilitate a more nuanced notion of solidarity. Even as Lonergan is attentive to otherness, Levinas’s complex notion of the ethical character of being, that is, the always already obligatory stance for the Other can reﬁne Christian notions of solidarity. Solidarity is the acknowledgment that we are already connected and responsible for others. By integrating Levinas’s thought into Christian theology, one could argue more strongly that being human is about being for others ﬁrst. Being human emerges in affective relationships. What’s more, Levinas’s interpretation of responsibility, gift, and fraternity is grounded in a rich religio-cultural tradition as well as in a history of suffering. Christians would be wise to attend to their engagement of this tradition and history, good, bad, or otherwise. While there is an overwhelming amount of scholarly reﬂection on implicit Christian involvement in the Shoah, more work needs to be done on the doctrinal level of reconﬁguring justice and collective responsibility. Ofﬁcial Church statements, including Catholics Remember the Holocaust, are a beginning (1998), but reconciliatory efforts need to continue. I am very ﬁrm on this point, even more so after reading James Carroll’s comprehensive history, Constantine’s Sword (2001). There, Carroll identiﬁes so many of the theological and secular issues surrounding the Church’s relationship to Judaism and the Shoah. Catholics would do well to follow Carroll’s lead in thinking through the politics of memory.

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Third, Levinas’s criticism of Heidegger’s political afﬁliation ought to be taken seriously by Catholic theologians. It is questionable that so much Catholic ink is spilled on Heidegger’s philosophy, with little or no attention to his questionable background. Like Levinas, I realize the magnitude of Heidegger’s philosophical project, and the danger of his politics. At the same time, I agree with Lonergan that people are their foundations, not merely in their words but also in their deeds. Theologians need to be thoughtful about the use of Heidegger’s philosophy for constructive theology in the new millennium. Not everything moving forward is progress, according to Lonergan. It is important to wonder whether our fascination with Heidegger might be indicative of a lack of critical reﬂection on our decline. The insights of Levinas can strengthen Christian discourse in even more ways. The way in which Levinas links the embodied subject to the site of justice is an appealing way to address the legacy of an insidious mind/body dualism in theology. Moreover, the manner by which he plays with corporeality in his discussion of being human enlivens theologians to better deﬁne their interpretations of the relation between biological accident (such as sex and pigment) and spiritual destiny. Fifth, Levinas’s conﬁdence in the demand of the Other to bring about the best in the subject is the most that postmodern theory has to offer the theological enterprise. Levinas never doubts the integrity, particularity, ability, and gift of the Other. Such a positive attitude toward diverse persons and cultures might facilitate more life-afﬁrming missionary strategies in which people are not colonized and totalized into the faith, but welcomed and invited. Lastly, theologians, particularly Lonergan scholars, could beneﬁt from Levinas’s writing style. Levinas’s vigilance to the call of the Other is present not only in his theory, but also in his writing technique. His language has been described as “evoking”—a term that captures Levinas’s beautiful blending of biblical narrative, philosophical question, romance language, and personal journey (De Boer 1997, 147). His evocative style of discourse invites the reader into a disposition of being for-the-Other. As Levinas’s reader anxiously awaits his next linguistic turn, s/he learns what it means to wait for the command of

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the Other. Indeed, Levinas’s theory is performative in the best (nonfaddish) sense of the word. I cannot make this point too emphatically. Scholars appropriating Lonergan’s thought could learn from Levinas’s performative, evocative style. Arguably, Lonergan’s cognitional theory would have been received more readily if he had changed his rhetorical style. At this point, it is up to the next generation of scholars to interpret Lonergan’s writings more performatively. For the content and aim of Lonergan’s work is clearly valuable: being human is inextricably connected to the potential to know, act, and love for others. Still, this concise axiom is burdened, and even worse, obscured by the static discourse through which it is communicated. To our current postmodern sensibility, Lonergan’s theoretical approach is off-putting, even alienating.2 Obviously, the discourse through which a message is communicated is extremely important. If the rhetoric that relays the message is alienating, then the message could be misunderstood or lost altogether. Realizing how important the process of understanding is to Lonergan’s interpretation of authentic subjectivity, I ﬁrmly believe that the sensual and affective language in Levinas’s theory could help to articulate not only the head, but also the heart of Lonergan’s anthropological subject. In a sense, the goal of any scholar’s work should be performative, in that what they say matches how thay say it. On the other hand, it is not as if Lonergan would have nothing to say to Levinas’s strand of contemporary continental thought. Indeed, if Levinas had encountered Lonergan’s person, Levinas would have been challenged. First and foremost, Lonergan could have asked Levinas a painful, yet necessary question: why are you so illusive on the questions of reason and being? This is a strange problem to pose to Levinas because his entire project is grounded in debunking the totalizing gaze of ontology. Nonetheless, I think theologians, before they blindly embrace Levinas’s thought, need to think about his rejection of being. In other words, after reading Lonergan one wonders whether Levinas’s emotive reaction against the primacy of being actually needed to be 2

Some Lonergan scholars have even commented on their initial reluctance to continue reading Lonergan because of the somewhat ambiguous, off-putting style of writing. See Clark’s article, “Byway of the Cross,” (1996), as well as Miller’s essay, “All Love is Self-Surrender,” (1995) for more on this problem.

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so dramatic. Indeed, in Levinas’s writing of the ethical structure of for-the-Other, is not being for-the-Other implied? In addition to rethinking his discussion of ontology, Levinas’s work could be better utilized if he had explained more clearly the connection between non-being or beyond being and human agency. Levinas does attempt this with his work on the third party but more needs to be done. One wonders how Levinas accounts for the subject’s enactment of justice, the use of reason, and the human motive for goodness. Here, a larger framework or context for understanding Levinas’s overall goals would prove helpful. More strongly put, I think that Levinas’s ethics would be improved by Lonergan’s method. Michael Purcell makes a similar claim about the need in Levinas’s thought for a method. However, Purcell employs the work of Rahner to extend Levinas’s claims (1998). I think a more ﬁtting match for this task is Lonergan, with his reﬁned strategy for moving toward authentic progress and realizing the human good. Lonergan does not confuse method with abstract ideas and rules, but discerns method in our own operations. This question leads us to the ﬁnal way in which Lonergan’s project can inﬂuence future thought on Levinas. Whereas Levinas’s work opens Christian theology to many important questions, he never really answers any of them. He neither has a well-deﬁned method nor a structured anthropology. Levinas describes the limits and issues surrounding anthropology, yet never constructively envisions one. In this respect, Lonergan’s anthropology of the authentic subject provides Levinas with the structure he needs to move forward in his efforts at justice and solidarity. To be sure Levinas’s writings are evocative, but Lonergan’s thoughts are constructive. In order to develop Christian community, both questions and answers, deconstruction and construction are necessary. Levinas’s weaknesses, in terms of his ambiguous notions of freedom, agency, and justice and his lack of method, are indicative of his descriptive rather than explanatory anthropology. In other words, where Levinas describes the problems in Western philosophical anthropology in relation to both the biblical milieu and his own experience, Lonergan attempts to explain what it means to be human in relation to other humans. Being human means developing and engaging the potential to experience, understand, judge, act, and

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love in the face of others. Both being vigilant to and actively accountable for the Other is signiﬁcant for humanity to ﬂourish. Wrapping up any research project is difﬁcult, especially on two thinkers as proliﬁc as Lonergan and Levinas. New questions and insights continue to emerge. Still, some factors can be taken into consideration when consctucting theology in this new millennium. First and foremost, otherness in our diverse, global context is a reality. Given the destructive ways of dealing with otherness in the past, theologians need to reframe the notion of difference positively in order to avoid the same mistakes. Lonergan and Levinas can help with the project of reframing otherness, quite ironically by using traditional religious and philosophical terms. Moreover, otherness is related to questions of body, gender, and race. While these topics were not fully explored here, we cannot ignore the experiential, affective, and incarnate character of being in relation to others. Levinas’s use of gendered, sensual language overdetermines the concrete, embodied character of being human, while Lonergan’s discussion of the patterns of experience emphasizes the corporeal nature of being human. Theology in the 21st century would be wise, then, to address Christian anthropology by way of feelings, sensuality, and alterity. Phenomenology, feminist theory, and critical race theory can assist in this pursuit. In addition, the discussion of being needs to be further explored, even if critically. Still, ontological debate might be better received in aesthetic rhetoric, rather than in scholastic language, for performative language is not faddish but suits the sensibility of our times. This shift in language should not ignore the consistent need for theological method, and moral judgment and decision. Too often contemporary continental thought seems to avoid the problem of relativism. Finally, in order for Christian theology in the new millennium to engage the concerns of people from culturally diverse backgrounds, inter-religious and interdisciplinary projects such as this one need to be pursued. For as stated from the beginning, no single discourse can capture the challenges and triumphs of being human today.

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Bibliography Texts by Emmanuel Levinas Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Inﬁnity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ______ . 1972. Humanisme de l’autre homme. Fata Morgana. ______ . 1973. The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Translated by André Orianne. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ______ . 1978. Existence and Existents. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. ______ . 1985. Ethics and Inﬁnity, Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Translated by Richard Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ______ . 1986. “The Trace of the Other.” In Deconstruction in Context: Literature and Philosophy, edited by Mark C. Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ______ . 1987. Time and the Other [and additional essays]. Translated and introduction by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ______ . 1989. The Levinas Reader. Edited by Seán Hand. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ______ . 1990. Difﬁcult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Translated by Seán Hand. London: The Athlone Press. ______ . 1993. Outside the Subject. Translated by Michael B. Smith. London: Athlone. ______ . 1996. Basic Philosophical Writings. Edited by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ______ . 1998a. Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. ______ . 1998b. Discovering Existence with Husserl. Translated by Richard A. Cohen and Michael B. Smith. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ______ . 1998c. Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other. Translated by Barbara Harshav and Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press. ______ . 1998d. Of God Who Comes to Mind. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ______ . 1998e. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Translated and introduction by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ______ . 1999. Alterity and Transcendence. Translated by Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Texts by Bernard Lonergan Lonergan, Bernard J.F.. 1935-1938. An Essay in Fundamental Sociology. Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute, unpublished manuscript. ______ . 1957. Lecture Notes on Existentialism. Boston: Thomas More Institute. ______ . 1960. “The Mystical Body of Christ.” A Domestic Exhortation at Regis College, Toronto, November 1951. Mimeographed edition. Toronto: Regis College. ______ . 1968. The Subject. Milwaukee, WI: University Press. ______ . 1971a. Doctrinal Pluralism. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press. ______ . 1971b. Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Edited by J. Patout Burns, S.J. Introduction by Frederick Crowe. New York: Herder and Herder. ______ . 1971c. Method in Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . 1973. Philosophy of God, and Theology: The Relationship between the Philosophy of God and the Functional Specialty, Systematics. London: Darton. ______ . 1985. A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J.. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. ______ . 1988. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert Doran. Vol. 4, Collection. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . 1990. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Edited by Elizabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli. Vol. 5, Understanding and Being, The Halifax Lectures on INSIGHT. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . 1991. “PANTÔN ANAKEPHALAIÔSIS (The Restoration of All Things),” preface by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 9, no. 2: 134-172. ______ . 1993. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert Doran. Vol. 10, Topics in Education. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. _______ . 1996a. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Edited by Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert Doran. Vol. 6, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . 1996b. A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J.. Edited by William F. J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . 1997. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert Doran. Vol. 3, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ______ . n.d. The Incarnate Word: Supplement. Boston: The Lonergan Center, typescript.

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Index Abraham, 50, 96, 161 affection, 11, 21, 33, 74, 88, 164, 177, 187, 217 agape, 165 alienation, 14, 26, 44, 71, 80, 143, 172, 185 alterity, 8, 15-20, 38, 41-44, 48-49, 53, 61-62, 66, 94-96, 98, 101, 104, 107109, 111-112, 116, 118, 120, 122123, 126-133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145-151, 153-157, 160, 166, 172, 174, 186, 189, 193, 196, 199, 204, 208-209 Anderson, Victor, 153, 211 anthropology, 8, 14-15, 19-20, 22-23, 26, 30, 35, 39, 54, 56, 61, 65, 7475, 87, 91, 107, 154, 156-157, 159, 184, 188, 195-196, 198, 200, 202203, 207-208 Aquinas, Thomas, 24, 56, 61-62, 166, 210 Arendt, Hannah, 39 Aristotle, 62, 76, 211 asymmetry, 111, 168, 182 Atlas, 169-170, 183 Auschwitz, 57, 198 authenticity, 39, 63, 68, 72, 74, 78, 81, 158-159, 185-186, 212 Baudrillard, Jean, 135-138, 151, 211 Beauvoir, Simone de, 124, 196, 211 being, 1, 3, 5, 8-9, 11-25, 27, 29, 32-33, 37-44, 48-50, 52-54, 56-60, 62-76, 78-91, 93-96, 98-104, 106-110, 112-128, 130, 132, 134-152, 154178, 180-184, 186-191, 193-194, 196-200, 202-210, 213-214, 216

bias, 16, 20, 71-75, 84-85, 90-91, 133, 140, 143, 145, 148, 154, 171, 177, 200 blackness, 132-133, 153, 155, 211 blacks, 129, 137-138, 153-154, 196 body, 21, 23, 27-29, 33, 53-56, 79-80, 83, 87-91, 114, 117, 121-123, 125-126, 138, 152, 154-155, 162, 164, 166167, 169, 177, 179, 187, 195-200, 205, 208, 210-213, 215-217 Body of Christ, 166-167, 177, 179, 197198, 210, 212, 216 body-subject, 55-56, 86, 125, 151, 155, 186, 200 Bordo, Susan, 28, 54-55, 211 Buber, Martin, 47-48, 168, 211 caress, 104, 107, 117, 119-120, 174, 214 Carroll, James, 205, 211, 216 Catholic, 2-3, 11, 15, 17, 38, 57, 62, 75, 98, 165, 200, 202, 204-205, 212, 215-216 Catholicism, 98 Chalier, Catherine, 149, 212 charity, 18, 71, 85, 101, 104, 164-168, 171, 178, 190 Chauvet, Louis-Marie, 199-200, 212 chosenness, 98 Christ, 3, 57, 116, 159, 165-168, 170, 173, 177-179, 195-198, 202-203, 210, 212, 214, 216 Christian, 3, 8, 14, 20-21, 35, 57, 61, 65, 74, 87, 91, 96, 116, 118, 157, 159-160, 165, 167, 170, 193-196, 198-199, 204-205, 207-208, 211, 215 Christianity, 35, 86, 165 Christology, 3, 203

220

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church, 200, 204-205, 211-212 class, 2, 13, 21, 72, 129, 132, 176, 195, 204 classicist, 15, 51, 64-66 cogito, 27-30, 40, 79, 100 cognition, 16, 21, 24-25, 29, 32, 62-63, 78, 82, 88, 99, 114-117, 141, 164, 187, 217 cognitional process, 24, 32, 67, 82-83, 142 cognitional theory, 24, 51, 145, 202, 206 conceptualism, 51-53, 56, 64, 97-98, 134, 139 consciousness, 25, 28, 31-32, 39, 55, 58-59, 61, 63, 67-70, 78, 80, 99, 110-111, 116, 121-122, 124, 141, 171, 179, 215, 217 consciousness, differentiated, 69 continental theory, 11, 15, 17, 38, 43, 54, 56, 145 conversion, 16, 18, 20, 26, 34, 49, 53, 70-72, 77-78, 81, 84, 86, 91, 139-140, 142-144, 160, 178, 187, 200 conversion, intellectual, 70, 143 conversion, moral, 71, 144, 187 conversion, religious, 49, 71, 77, 84, 86, 91, 142, 144 Copeland, M. Shawn, 11, 14, 67, 118, 129, 153-154, 170, 179, 196, 212 Corinthians, 165, 177 corporeality, 8, 28-29, 54-55, 60, 64, 87, 121-123, 126, 152, 168, 194, 196, 198-200, 205 cosmopolis, 177, 216 covenant, 102, 162-163 creation, 117, 123, 128-129, 182-183 Critchley, Simon, 124, 180, 209, 212 critical race theory, 150, 195-196, 200, 208 Crüsemann, Frank, 161-162, 212 culture, 2, 11, 15, 22, 43, 64-66, 69, 73, 96, 119, 127-128, 131-132, 134, 138139, 144, 153-154, 159, 169, 176, 185, 195-196, 202, 211, 213 Dallery, Arleen, 152, 213 Dasein, 39-43, 81, 102, 120

Dean, Jodi, 176-177, 179, 213 decline, 14, 72, 80, 89, 142, 171-173, 200, 205 deconstruction, 180, 207, 209, 212215 Derrida, Jacques, 17-18, 37-38, 96, 114, 145, 167, 193, 212-214, 218 Descartes, René, 7, 19, 25, 27-30, 34-35, 53, 61, 79, 99-101, 147, 199 desire, 18-19, 38, 42-47, 50, 53-54, 57-60, 65, 68, 72, 74-76, 78, 80-83, 86, 91, 96, 99-101, 103, 109, 116-117, 122, 129, 139, 147-150, 152, 155-157, 161, 164-165, 167, 171-172, 180, 183-184, 189, 197, 204, 211-212 Deuteronomy, 161 diachrony, 52, 110-112, 114, 120 dialectic, 66, 141-143, 211, 214, 217 dialogue, 8, 15, 20, 56-58, 60, 108-109, 130, 132, 141-143, 156, 160, 176, 190, 194, 201-202, 204 discourse, 16-17, 27, 45, 48, 56, 62-63, 70, 93, 96, 107-108, 112, 131, 135, 147-150, 152, 176, 196, 205-206, 208 distance, 48-49, 94, 108-109, 111-112, 118, 133, 138, 148, 150, 182 dualism, 90, 205 écriture féminine, 152, 213 ego, 40, 44-45, 47, 96, 124, 154, 217 egoism, 20, 37, 43, 46, 49, 72-73, 81, 85, 110, 125, 171-172 embrace, 36, 90, 157, 168-169, 173, 206, 218 encounter, 19, 43, 45, 52-53, 57, 79, 93-94, 100, 106-107, 116, 118, 139-141, 145, 150, 156, 190, 204, 211-212, 214 Enlightenment, 13, 15, 23, 25-26, 6061, 79, 214 equality, 128-130, 138, 152, 167, 182 eros, 44, 76-77, 105, 165 essentialism, 126, 148, 151-152, 154156, 195 ethical relation, 23, 57, 95, 106, 108, 115117, 125, 146-150, 173, 197-198

Index

221

ethics, 13, 35, 38, 51, 55, 57, 60, 74, 85, gift, 2, 7-8, 11-12, 17-20, 22, 46, 74, 82, 94, 99, 111, 117, 125-126, 139, 156, 84, 86, 91, 96, 102, 106, 118, 123, 161, 164, 167, 176, 180, 189, 198, 152, 160, 165-169, 171, 187, 193, 203, 207, 209, 211-212, 214 196, 204-205 exile, 161-163 God, 14, 17-18, 20, 26, 34-36, 48-50, existentialism, 23, 26, 35-36, 38, 210, 53-54, 56-58, 62-63, 67, 70-72, 78216 81, 83-86, 91, 93-96, 98, 100-101, existentialist, 26, 36, 40, 67, 89, 124 105, 116-118, 140, 143-147, 156-157, Exodus, 94, 99, 161-164, 212 159-163, 166-168, 172-173, 178-184, exposure, 46, 103-104, 112, 125, 162 186, 189-190, 195, 197, 200-201, 203, 209-211, 216, 218 face, the, 8, 14-15, 18, 36, 40, 57, 61, grace, 18, 71, 86, 166-167, 172-173, 179, 75, 84, 91, 93-97, 102-105, 107-108, 199, 203, 210, 214, 218 116, 125-126, 145-146, 172-174, 180, guilt, 105, 174 185-186, 197, 208, 212 facing, 20, 93-95, 102-103, 111, 115, Hebrews, 161, 165 117, 119-120, 139, 146-150, 158, Heﬂing, Charles, 179, 214 173, 180, 213 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 44faculty psychology, 7, 20, 61-63, 70, 73, 45, 212 91, 213 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 20, 23, 38-43, 48, Fanon, Frantz, 137-138, 151, 154, 196, 67, 81-82, 102, 104, 118, 120, 161, 213 205, 213-217 fecundity, 39, 54, 117, 124, 149-150, height, 97-101, 114-115, 168, 182 152, 155, 180, 188, 197, 214 Holocaust, 95, 204, 212 feelings, 17, 21, 33, 43, 53, 61, 71-74, Homer, 157, 184, 194, 214 115, 133, 140-142, 153, 157, 176- hooks, bell, 132 177, 180, 187, 208 hospitality, 104, 112, 148, 161-165, 167feminism, 152, 196, 211-213 168, 171, 190 feminist theorist, 175 hostage, 46, 95-96, 99, 119, 123, 149, feminist theory, 208, 211 173, 181-182 ﬁnality, 166, 171-172 human good, 15, 26, 36-37, 49, 67, 72ﬁnality, horizontal, 171-172 73, 85, 89, 171-172, 175, 178, 180, ﬁnality, vertical, 172 200, 207, 212 forgiveness, 160, 179-180, 197 Husserl, Edmund, 23-24, 38, 58-59, 63, fraternity, 180-182, 204 68, 115, 121, 126, 209, 214, 216 freedom, 8, 13, 15-16, 20, 22, 34, 37, 39-42, 49, 73, 94, 99, 102, 104-105, idealism, 13, 23, 25, 31, 49, 57, 64, 110, 129-130, 133, 160, 169-175, 121 181, 185, 190, 201, 207, 209-210, immanentism, 31, 50, 59 216-218 incarnation, 49, 57, 122-123, 125, 146, Freud, Sigmund, 44 166-167, 195-196, 199 individualism, 40, 170-171 gender, 8, 13, 21, 117, 119, 121, 124-127, Inﬁnite, 34, 48, 57, 95, 99-104, 106, 129, 132, 146, 148, 150, 153-156, 108, 115, 124, 126, 147, 168, 171, 175-176, 194-195, 197, 199-200, 173, 188, 197, 199 204, 208, 211 Inﬁnity, 99-101, 105, 173, 182, 188, Genesis, 161, 165 209 intentionality, 2, 7, 12, 20, 38, 53, 55, 5859, 61-63, 68, 70, 73-74, 87, 91, 100,

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Michele Saracino Lonergan and Levinas

106, 109, 115, 122, 179, 194, 199 intentionality analysis, 7, 20, 61-63, 70, 73, 91, 122 intentionality, affective, 12, 53, 62, 87, 199 interiority, 79-80, 100, 103, 107, 109, 118-119, 125 intersubjectivity, 20, 23, 29, 56, 76, 81-82, 86, 89, 107, 145, 156-157, 177, 183, 187, 201, 216 intimacy, 94, 99, 118, 147-148, 190 Irigaray, Luce, 117, 148, 151-152, 186, 196, 214 Isaac, 96 Isaiah, 158, 204 Israel, 2, 50, 136, 161-163 Jesus, 3, 15, 96, 165, 167, 195 Judaism, 48, 58, 94, 165, 205, 209 justice, 11, 13, 17, 22, 65, 72, 74, 76, 96, 98-99, 107, 114-117, 121, 125-129, 150, 156, 163-165, 172-180, 182-183, 193, 204-205, 207, 215, 217-218

Lawrence, Frederick, 86, 144-146, 166, 211-217 Leviticus, 161 liberal, 99, 128-129, 135, 156, 212 Lifton, Robert J., 184-187, 189-190, 215 Lingis, Alphonso, 34, 42, 46, 104, 112, 114-115, 118, 150, 155, 170, 209, 215 love, 2, 11, 20, 36, 44, 49, 52-54, 58, 65, 71, 74, 78, 84-86, 89, 91, 105-106, 117, 140-141, 143-144, 146-149, 155-156, 158-161, 164-167, 172, 176-177, 180, 187, 190, 197, 206, 208, 216 Luke, 165 Lyotard, Jean-François, 17, 37-38, 74, 77, 103, 145, 160, 189, 215

Marion, Jean-Luc, 40, 127, 137, 176, 216, 218 mask, 97-98, 101, 137 materiality, 117 maternity, 123-124, 149-150 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 19, 25, 27, 29-35, Matthew, 3, 165 53, 61, 115, 214, 217-218 memory, 15, 62, 105, 161, 163, 179-180, knowing, 15, 21, 24-27, 29-30, 32, 40, 205, 212, 215 50-53, 59-61, 63, 65, 67-71, 74, 76- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 23-24, 38, 80, 82, 84, 88, 90, 105, 112-113, 115, 55-57, 87, 90, 122, 126, 186, 211, 121, 142, 167, 171-172, 187, 202 215-217 knowledge, 11, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27-28, messianic, 112-113 30-33, 35, 41, 49, 51-54, 57-60, 62, metaphysics, 36, 46, 52, 76, 99, 121, 147, 67, 70, 72, 75, 77-78, 81, 83, 90, 197, 199, 202-203, 211 105, 113, 116, 119-120, 154, 171- mind, 21, 27-29, 46, 54, 60, 62, 65, 69, 172, 187, 216-217 71, 75, 79, 82-83, 87, 90, 93, 98, 100, 129, 135, 141, 156, 162, 167, 177, Lacan, Jacques, 7, 20, 23, 38, 43-48, 128, 187, 200, 205, 209, 212-213 161, 212, 214-215 modernity, 11, 15-16, 26-27, 30, 48, 50, lack, 13, 41, 43-48, 105, 109, 128, 133, 52-53, 78-80, 91, 172, 193, 201-202, 135, 138, 147, 205, 207 215-217 Lakeland, Paul, 16, 215 Mosaic, 102, 148 Lamb, Matthew, 143, 145, 166, 172, Moses, 94, 118 215 language, 16, 18, 37, 47, 62-63, 97, 107- naked, 94, 97, 154, 164 110, 112, 117, 119-120, 124, 126, nakedness, 97-98, 114 128-132, 138, 148, 150-153, 155-156, 187, 191, 198, 205-206, 208, 218

Index

223

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7, 19, 25-27, 30, 35-37, 61, 80, 180, 214, 216-217 nudity, 97

political correctness, 129-130, 165, 212 positivism, 64 postmodern theory, 57, 205 postmodernism, 16, 214, 217 objectivity, 17, 27, 29, 31-33, 46, 83, postmodernity, 16, 66, 91, 119, 148, 159, 202, 211, 217 164, 175, 183, 188, 194, 215, 217 ocularcentrism, 50, 56, 60 posture, 7-8, 18, 20-21, 26, 32, 34, 37, Odysseus, 50, 184 40-43, 47, 49-50, 56, 60-61, 63, 65, Odyssey, The, 157, 184, 214 67-69, 71-77, 79-85, 87, 89, 91, 93, ontology, 16-17, 23, 38-39, 41, 51-52, 101-107, 109-110, 112-115, 117, 100, 146, 151-152, 154, 202, 206119-121, 123, 125-126, 134, 141, 207 145, 155-157, 161-162, 167-170, onto-theology, 199 193, 198 openness, 7-8, 11, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 34, progress, 13, 15, 67, 72-73, 89, 129, 39-42, 47, 49, 61-62, 66-67, 70-71, 131, 142, 163, 171-172, 178-180, 78, 82-86, 91, 93, 96, 101-107, 110, 184, 200, 205, 207 112-113, 120, 123, 145, 149, 152, protean subject, 8, 22, 55, 64, 66, 70, 91, 156-158, 160-161, 163-172, 175, 123, 157, 159-161, 163, 165, 167, 183-184, 189-191, 193-194, 197, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 201, 203 183-191, 194-195, 215 orientalism, 134-135, 143, 217 Proteus, 157, 184, 188, 194 otherizing, 133-134, 136, 139 proximity, 94, 102, 109-110, 114-115, otherness, 8, 14, 16, 20, 45, 48, 58, 60, 65, 118, 120, 182 77, 107, 110-112, 119, 122, 127-128, psychoanalysis, 43-44, 46-47 131-139, 141, 145-149, 152, 154-157, psychology, 7, 20, 61-63, 70, 73, 91, 155, 160, 168-169, 171, 174, 177, 181, 184-185, 213 194, 196, 204, 208, 218 Purcell, Michael, 2, 50, 68, 207, 217 passivity, 33-35, 41, 46-47, 103-106, 112-113, 120, 123, 126, 148, 158, 164, 182, 199 paternity, 123-124, 149-150 patterns of experience, 53, 87-88, 90, 139, 178, 186, 200, 208 pattern of experience, biological, 88 pattern of experience, dramatic, 89, 140-141, 186 pattern of experience, social, 89-90, 142, 145 Paul (Saint), 2, 16, 165, 214-215, 217 phenomenology, 23-24, 38, 55, 57-59, 63, 90, 121-122, 198, 209, 214-216 picture-thinking, 25-26, 29-31, 50-51, 59, 81 Plato, 38, 42, 49, 99, 211 pluralism, 65, 145-146, 210 pluralist, 13, 39, 64-65, 161, 174, 183, 189, 194

race, 8, 13, 21, 96, 127, 129, 132, 150, 153-156, 176, 178-179, 194-196, 200-201, 204, 208, 213-214 racism, 14, 131, 159, 185-186, 196 reason, 2, 15, 27-30, 34, 53, 56, 59-60, 140, 158, 173, 183, 190, 206-207, 214, 217-218 regress, 36, 80, 131, 173, 184 relativism, 26, 65, 75, 83, 145, 208 relativist, 13, 15, 26, 75, 145 religion, 11, 13, 49, 113, 127, 182, 189, 216 responsibility, 18, 20, 23, 33-35, 39, 42, 46, 63, 67-68, 72, 75-76, 78-79, 84, 86, 94, 96, 98, 101-102, 105-110, 114, 116, 118-121, 123-124, 126, 135, 150, 156-158, 160-161, 163, 170, 173-174, 178, 181-183, 187, 189-191, 203-204, 215

224

Michele Saracino Lonergan and Levinas

responsibility, collective, 178, 204 speech, 20, 46-48, 52, 107-109, 112-114, ressentiment, 180, 216 117, 119, 126 revelation, 2, 43, 47, 50, 57-58, 94, stigma, 46, 128, 130 99, 165 subject, 2, 7-8, 14, 16-22, 24-50, 52-91, rights, 6, 13, 101-102, 128-130, 138, 93-129, 131, 133-135, 137-153, 155152, 156, 170-171 161, 163-175, 177, 179-191, 193-200, Romans, 177-178 205-207, 209-216 Ross, Susan A., 200, 217 subject, alienated, 26, 35-36, 78, 131 sacrament, 199-201 subject, authentic, 7, 30, 33, 64, sacramentality, 21, 152, 197-200 73- 75, 77, 81-82, 84, 88, 91, sacriﬁce, 96-97, 101, 121-123, 126, 146, 163, 167, 207 149, 152, 158-159, 167-168, 174, subject, immanentist, 25, 30-32, 34194, 199 36, 49, 78 Safranski, Rüdiger, 39-42 subject, truncated, 25, 29-30, 78 Said, Edward, 35, 47, 60, 102, 109, substitution, 43, 46, 54, 96, 103, 120, 111, 113, 120-121, 134-135, 138, 123, 126, 149, 164, 168, 170, 181, 143, 151, 217 199-200, 203 Said, the, 109, 111, 113, 120 suffering, 13-14, 16-17, 75, 95, 103, saint, 37, 98 119, 123, 133-136, 158-163, 165, saintliness, 93, 99 174, 183-185, 189-190, 194, 197sameness, 108-109, 127-128, 130, 138, 199, 201-204 175, 181 suffering servant, 158-159, 183, 190, Saying, the, 109-111, 113 194 scaling, 138 synchrony, 111, 120 secularism, 163 self, 31-34, 36-37, 40-41, 44, 46-50, 60, Tallon, Andrew, 2, 6, 12, 56, 217 66, 70, 74, 79-80, 82, 85, 93, 97-98, Taylor, Charles, 34, 79, 100, 209, 215, 101-103, 106-107, 109, 118, 120, 217 122-123, 125, 131, 134, 144-145, teleology, 112 155, 161-162, 164, 171, 173-175, telos, 112 180, 184-187, 189-191, 197, 201, temporal, 68, 85, 111 211, 213, 215-218 thematization, 16, 41, 47-48, 52-53, 56, self-appropriation, 61, 66-67, 70, 80, 83, 58-60, 97, 100-101, 105, 108, 11186, 139, 144 112, 115, 133-134, 151 sensibility, 11, 52, 98-99, 114-115, 117, theology, 2-3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16-17, 21, 119-120, 158, 169, 206, 208, 215 24, 48, 57, 61-62, 65, 68, 71-72, 75, separation, 28-29, 94, 111, 123, 150, 79, 95, 119, 127, 139-140, 170, 173, 173, 182 180, 184, 187, 189, 194-202, 204sex, 44, 89, 124, 129, 205, 211, 214 205, 207-208, 210-215, 217-218 sexism, 14, 131, 148, 159, 186, 196 third party, 58, 116, 180, 183, 197, Shoah, 13, 16-17, 136, 163, 203-205 207 shoulder, 107, 118, 120, 155, 158, 168- time, 15-16, 20, 22, 26, 34, 42, 47, 54, 170, 182, 191 60, 62, 66-68, 85, 93, 96, 105, 107shouldering, 18, 20, 117-120, 126, 153, 108, 110-114, 117, 119-122, 124-126, 155, 157, 168-170, 191, 193-194 134, 143-144, 151, 154, 158, 162, solidarity, 8, 119, 160, 165-166, 170, 175164, 173-174, 179, 181, 188, 205, 183, 190, 204, 207, 213, 215 209, 213-214, 216

Index transcendence, 18, 44, 48, 50, 53-54, 56, 65, 70, 74-75, 77-78, 80-86, 90, 96-98, 100-103, 107, 109, 115, 120, 122, 124, 141, 172, 182, 187, 191, 209, 213, 217 transcendent, 34, 50, 56, 73, 98, 101, 179, 203, 218 transcultural, 77-78, 80, 82-83, 139, 142-143, 145-146, 215 Übermensch, 36-37, 80 Volf, Miroslav, 168-169, 218 voluptuosity, 54, 124, 148 whiteness, 132-133, 153 whites, 129, 153-154 Williams, Delores, 159, 217-218 wonder, 20, 74-77, 80, 82-83, 86, 124, 131, 157, 198, 205

225