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In reading the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille, one encounters alternate readings of the Western tradition that main its discourse yet depart from it in radical ways. Both authors express an esoteric secret that points to the margins of rationality. Only by reading their philosophies as one would engage in verbal discourse, that is, not limiting oneself to rational preconceptions but being open to new experiences, can we communicate with Levinas and Bataille. They can be compared by describing the conditions under which reason no longer functions to secure absolute meaning, or at all for that matter. Not in opposition to traditional philosophical discourse that Levinas and Bataille direct their criticism, but from within they seek to indicate what lies beyond. It is the conception of an individuated self as subjectivity in opposition with the other as distinctly objective that must be reinterpreted to bring forth a particular assumption made in traditional philosophy: that we can achieve an absolute meaning of human existence.
Insofar as Bataille and Levinas both aspire to achieve a significant criticism of the philosophical tradition, especially the concepts of utility and teleology, they also realize that to establish this goal as absolute is to have defeated their purpose already. “I fail, no matter what I write, in this, that I should be linking the infinite – insane – richness of 'possible' to the precision of meaning” (Bataille 69). What is important for them to communicate is that aspect of human life that cannot be adequately supplicated by philosophical knowledge in one way or another. “Man is not to be conceived in function of being and not-being, taken as ultimate references...Intentionality never makes itself simultaneous with the theme it aims at, except by losing its sense, betraying itself, appearing according to the intelligibility of a system” (Levinas 14, 69) Direct access to the experiential limits of the human condition is necessary for understanding what is beyond, and cannot be reduced to our initial, typical, and most predominant access to the world: axiomatic (logic, syllogisms, laws, etc.) and teleological (purposive activity) systems. Up is up and down is down, the sun will come up tomorrow, time goes on and we all die some day. So it goes.
Both Levinas a Bataille are critical of the assumed philosophical ability to reduce human activity and the designation of signification to teleology, phenomenology, or the satisfation of subjectivity. The insufficient attitude is described by Levinas as 'bonne conscience,' a conception of being that remains entirely within an isolated economy of subjective experience. The self attempts to grasp an idea of the infinite that it encounters in the face of the other; analogously, Bataille's notion of inner experience as ecstasy also connotes the distinction between a particular economy of the restricted individuated subject like Levinas, but thematizes somewhat the free play of energy that lies beyond it as a foundation for experience.
Basically, Bataille is more confident in his ability to cursorily describe the ebb and flow of the encounter with mystery, where Levinas emphasizes the ultimate inability to characterize the face of the other when confronted. The authors recognize that the teleological character of human existence, and indeed the locus of our activities, have an intrinsic importance in themselves, but are ultimately inadequate to guarantee the possibility of anything beyond. What teleological activity in philosophical discourse can achieve, however, is the indication of a trace, which, if followed, might lead beyond the walls of the restricted economy of the subject. Levinas calls this attempt at empathetic identification “substitution, at the limit of being, ends up in saying, in the giving of signs, giving a sign of this giving of signs, expressing oneself...Responsibility goes beyond being” (Levinas B 15) In the attempt to approach the infinite as a responsible self, the project is undermined itself as teleological constructions are insufficient from the start.
The liminal phenomenon that Levinas accounts for is this 'bad' conscience that interrupts our intentional consciousness. Responsibility is the limit of the self, “a responsibility for the other to whom I was committed before committing, before being present to myself or coming back to self” (Levinas B 30-31). The task of philosophy that follows from this, I would then suggest, is to critically asses the justification of one's own actions, and employ discursive thought in a sociable manner; based on the essential passivity of the face of suffering, and my tendency to overwhelm it in concepts through purposive action, the communication falls short of sufficient. Philosophy has to have 'the transcendence of inspiration' as its motivation for communicating.
But if the task of philosophy is to communicate meaning, how meaning is communicated and what meaning might be, have too often been categorically assumed in dialectical thinking. Since the foundations of Western thought, while continuously being developed and refined, signification has been sublimated in a discourse of purposive action; the conceptual structures of teleological and phenomenological reality are generally assumed to be the fundamental consistencies of the dynamic human situation. The dialectical oppositions of subject and object, self and other, or same and different, are presumed to have a significant anchor point by which they can be comparatively assessed and hierarchically categorized. These are the everyday operations of modern human life: tacitly accepted phenomenological categories called knowledge. “My effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an imminence, and that there is not rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge” (Levinas A, 57). Knowledge is what is it is in itself and needs nothing further.
Knowledge, thus considered the conceptual structures of immanent experience, is generally identified with the experience itself rather that what it is more fundamentally; a description of the experience and not it's direct content. The subject Communication, then, must be thought in a radically ulterior way, as undermining the goals of purposive activity, yet indicating the foundation of signification beyond the immediate grasp of self-reflective consciousness. For Levinas and Bataille both, subjectivitiy needs to be re-considered in its ecstatic character that evades characterization. There is a paradoxical motion that both authors point to as a rupture; a divestiture of being is a necessary point to notice in their writings, and ultimately, their task as a whole.
Bataille and Levinas both recognize a necessary aspect of human life to be acting within the constraints of limited systems of knowledge, but also specify that there are limitations to philosophical reasoning in securing itself as the only knowledgeable aspect. “I do not deny that philosophy is a knowledge, insofar as it names even what is not nameable, and thematizes what is not thematizable...Ethical testimony is a revelation which is not a knowledge” (Levinas A 107). What he seeks to communicate is a obligation to communication, whereby the limited poietic aspect of human existence be interpreted by an infinite praxical activity beyond it, that maintains it. In rather different ways, Bataille and Levinas both indicate a fundamental freedom that is beyond the capacity of rational formulation, and thus a secret inspiration for the origin of intelligibility. This secret is discursively employed through their descriptions of communication; the self-defeating principle of inner-experience, and the responsibility to respond to the face of the other, for Bataille and Levinas, respectively, indicate how communication leads to a cursory and necessary understanding of community.
Bataille envisions a progressive quality to projective teleology, insofar as it leads to its own breaking down. The conceptual structures we maintain can be pushed to their limits internally, showing the evanescence of their content rather than the expected cohesion. “Inner experience is led by discursive reason. Reason alone has the power to undo its work, to hurl down what it has built up...Without the support of reason, we don't reach 'dark-incandescence'” (Bataille 77). Levinas, on the other hand, puts forth a regressive view of project-oriented activity, where the subject cannot provide itself with the necessary experience for its dissolution. “Consciousness is certain it is going to the ultimate – all that in interrupted before the face of the other man” (Levinas B, 27). This difference, that consciousness can or cannot undo itself, is perhaps the most divergent aspect of their thinking as it applies to this paper: Bataille can encounter the beyond within, whereas Levinas encounters the ineffable other as the boundary toward otherwise than being. This discrepancy lies in how the subject is compelled toward the liminal: for Levinas it's the interruption of self-consciousness by the face of the other that calls my very existence into question; as the originary locus of meaning at the very margin of phenomenal description, the ethical ramifications of my inability to provide for the suffering of all the Other, and my responsibility to do so for having been given the opportunity, compels the response of language. For Bataille, the subject of inner experience can be pushed to the limits of horror by its own purposive activity, only to realize the subsequent loss of purpose when the subject annihilates itself. The return journey of poetry and heterology constitute the origin of the futile project of language.
What I had initially thought was a significant difference between the two authors is summed up well by Bataille: 'The Inner Experience' says the opposite of what it seems to say: it is a movement of contestation, that, coming from the subject, devastates it, but has a deeper relation to the other which is community itself, a community that would be nothing if it did not open the one who exposed himself to the infiniteness of alterity, while at the same time deciding its inexorable finitude. (Bataille, 11) Our confounded efforts to subjugate alterity with benevolent models are based on flimsy language that has only a slight degree of proficiency given the task it assumes to be able to perform.
Nietzsche echoes the commentary on consciousness and subjectivity in many ways similarly to Levinas and Bataille. In The Gay Science, he asserts, “Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making in instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task that is only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.” (Nietsche 85)
From Bataille's perspective, that people have identified only with the sub-liminal aspects of the inner experience and not ventured to the potential depths and breadths of our human experiential spectrum, the instincts of relating to conceptual structures that allow for everyday life to occur are not the essential foundations thereof. This level of experience is satiated by its identification with and complacency for the erroneous consciousness. Some, as Nietzsche points out, are starting to become aware of the errors of consciousness, and hence more clearly perceiving consciousness itself. People getting together to cultivate their inner-experience develop relationships with new forms of energy expenditure, communication. However, the supra-liminal realm of self-consciousness is only appreciable in the context of expenditure of inner experience, that is, using the resources available to grow consciousness, pushing the envelope, living on the edge, until the ultimate expenditure takes place and the nutrients that previously constituted the vessel of consciousness return to source.
From Levinas' perspective, Nietzsche is apt in identifying the human condition insofar as self-satisfied 'bonne conscience' does not recognize the face of the Other and therefore lives erroneously. That some do, however, take up the task of ethics as first philosophy, and lose the self-identified notion of consciousness in recognizing that the source of self is indeed Otherwise, constitutes the essence of communication and the parameters of the human situation. “All my inwardness is invested in the form of a despite-me, for-another. Despite-me, for-another, is signification par excellence. And it is the sense of the 'oneself,' that accusative that derives from no nominative; it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself.” (Levinas A, 8) Here, communication is the occasion for an attempt to reconcile the obligation oneself has for the Other, insofar as the self is responsible to the Other for its' own foundation, even though this task ultimately lies beyond the seeking.
Bataille's notion of expenditure can only be understood as a distinction between fictitious projects generated as a function of a particular economy, that is, under the guise of an erroneous consciousness committed to a closed system of interpretation. “Humanity recognizes the right to acquire, to conserve and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle non-productive expenditure.” (Bataille 168) Rationally speaking, consciousness will always and only depend on the concepts that in one way or another assume to have provided significant enough interpretation of particular phenomena, even though the general concept of the phenomenon of consciousness has been so weakly explicated. Just as productive expenditure, that is, getting food and whatnot, has propelled the species to its current juncture, so too has the non-productive expenditures which cannot be comprehended in terms of syllogisms or dialectics, such as art, communication, dancing, music, aesthetics, fucking, sucking, shitting, and dying, that is, the sacred. Philosophical conventions have efficiently marginalized this distinction, according to Bataille, and focus only on the reciprocal exchanges in a utilitarian calculus. Scientific materialism and post-Christian morality dominate the cultural flow. These all-encompassing addictive beliefs are closing off the wonder of inner-experience.
Traditional self-contained teleological philosophy can generally be reduced to a principle of utility, like activity directed to progress, strategies for maintaining particular economies; for Bataille, completely insufficient to describe the more general experience of life, which as a whole contains all the innumerable particular economies as an ineffable general economy. “There, where you would like to grasp your timeless substance, you encounter only a slipping, only the poorly coordinated play of your perishable elements.” (Bataille 94) The passing of energy from one point to another, expenditure, applies to everything from biological organisms to philosophical concepts. In a word: communication. “Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, besides burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page” (Bataille 94). The only constancy to be construed from the flux of general economy occurs in eddies of communication, particular economies as locations of energy transfers. “What you are stems from the activity which links the innumerable elements which constitute you to the intense communication of those elements among themselves. These are contagions of energy, movement, of warmth, or transfers of elements, which constitute inevitable the life of your organized being” (Bataille 94) Each particular economy engages other particular economies and this is the flow of the general economy. To remain in a single-minded relation to the operation of economics in general is to stagnate and fester. By challenging the notion of communication as only discursive reason, is to communicate the development of consciousness alternatively through novel aspects of the general economy.
These writers stand out to my eye because of their marginal and supra-liminal perspectives, of inner experience as ecstatic rupture and the trace of God in the face of the Other, put the individuated self-satisfaction of any 'relatively independent sub-totality' called an organism, ideology, or whatever into question. This questioning is what constitutes the human condition, to my mind, and the answers can come from the individual deciding how to decode the overabundant mystery that is life. There are many answers available and many ways to integrate or encode them into the self-conscious life. Ought they be chosen according to a sovereign choice or pre-fabricated consensus reality? Where I see the most important difference between Levinas as Bataille is at this limit, the separation of self and other beheld as direct experience. Levinas holds the responsibility of self for other as insurmountable, the infinite questioning of the questioner, whereas Bataille indicates that the distinction falls apart and communication happens.
Either way, here is where communication occurs and the beginning of community can take shape. “For those who laugh, together become like the waves of the sea – there no longer exists between them any partition as long as the laughter lasts.” (Bataille 93) When communication occurs even beyond the words used to communicate, as individuals committed to the development of consciousness as responsibility for the general economy can, the immediate sense of community can happen. “It is with subjectivity understood as self[-consciousness]...in which the ego does not disappear, but immolates itself, that the relationship with the other can be communication and transcendence, and not always another way of seeking certainty, or the coincidence with oneself.” (Levinas B 118) Despite the difference in their approach to the fate of the self in communication, for Levinas its immolation as self-consciousness while retaining the individual ego and for Bataille where even the individual ego is sacrificed to the infinitesimal interchange of energetic impulses, both seem to indicate that this relationship between self and other is the locus of communication. Being responsible to divest oneself of preordained ideologies is the only approach that appropriate for authentic communication, and the start of authentic community.
That Bataille sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation, and Levinas sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation in response to other, a dynamically thematizable sort of relationship can be entertained. Self and other can be in constant communication through the development of new language to describe their experience. This is what I'm calling community, the balance between self-actualization and interpersonal relationships. When common and uncommon perspectives can be put aside for a moment, letting the communication between authentic individuals occur, new forms of language can take root for community to take place. Without a self-involved commitment to the care and development of the other the world will remain obscure and hostile. By communicating authentically a more modest community is possible.
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