Paganism as a Political Problem: Levinas’s Understanding of Judaism in the 1930s

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an original, thought provoking, and well-written article which deserves to be published, contingent upon a few minor changes and clarifications which are detailed below.  The article makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of Levinas' thought and to modern Jewish thought more generally.  I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it.

Here are my comments, in no particular order:

What is "mystical" about Levinas' theopolitics?  The answer, according to the author, seems to be that Levinas associates "elementary Judaism," in Durkheim's sense, with Durkheim's concept of the sacred.  But isn't it in the case that Levinas, at least in his post-war writing, argues that Judaism rejects something like Durkheim's sacred in favor of "the holy"? 

The language of "mystery" returns on page 15, where it is seemingly equated with religious ritual (and thus continuous in some sense with paganism).  Yet religious ritual need not be mysterious in essence, even to its participants.  It can be--and in halacha often needs to be--undertaken with self-conscious awareness of what it is meant to produce, psychologically, ethically, socially, etc.  Thus this way of understanding ritual, in Levinas and in general, needs to be better explained.

It would be worth clarifying what the author means by "political theology" and "theopolitics" and how they are different (e.g. on page 3, at the conclusion of section 1).  Theopolitics is not a term which, to my knowledge, Levinas himself uses.  What does the author mean by it?  

On page 7, it's not clear in whose voice the two paragraphs in the middle of the page (beginning "From this point on..." and "Hitlerism is a distortion...") are being written.  Are these Levinas' thoughts?  Critchley's?  The author's?  In particular, the language here about "liberal critics" and the "veil of ignorance" points toward editorializing rather than interpreting.  Along these lines, I think more needs to be said to argue for the point, as restated on the following page, that "Hitlerism and racism" can "genuinely claim to be founded concrete intuitions (sic)".  Is this Levinas' argument or the author's?  This problem occurs elsewhere in the article as well, which might sometimes be the fault of the journal's typesetting and omitting of quotation marks for block quotes.

On Levinas' reading of Maimonides: While I agree that Levinas does not approach the Guide with the mindset of a sober, historically-attuned interpreter, I wonder whether his reading of Maimonides' defense of creation is quite as detached from the text as it is made out to be here.  Maimonides, it is true, does ultimately defend the primacy of divine will, at least for the act of creation.  Yet in Maimonides' neoplatonic reality, creation, though voluntaristic in origin, must be continuously sustained via emanation--that is, via God's constant sustenance of the forms.  That's not (in my view) an essentially "mystical" doctrine, though it is foreign to many of us.  And it seems to come close to what Levinas is saying in his reading.  

Author Response

RESPONSE TO REVIEWER 1

This is an original, thought provoking, and well-written article which deserves to be published, contingent upon a few minor changes and clarifications which are detailed below.  The article makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of Levinas' thought and to modern Jewish thought more generally.  I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it.

Here are my comments, in no particular order:

What is "mystical" about Levinas' theopolitics?  The answer, according to the author, seems to be that Levinas associates "elementary Judaism," in Durkheim's sense, with Durkheim's concept of the sacred.  But isn't it in the case that Levinas, at least in his post-war writing, argues that Judaism rejects something like Durkheim's sacred in favor of "the holy"? 

RESPONSE. One of the methodological principles of the essay is to avoid reading Levinas’s later thought into his earlier thought. This highlights the significant differences between earlier and later Levinas. Earlier Levinas does not distinguish between the sacred and the holy. Later Levinas would never describe Judaism as a mystical religion, certainly not in a favorable way. I will note something to this effect in the essay. The Reviewer is correct that the young Levinas finds the mystical in Judaism’s elementary existence, and that this mystical is to be distinguished from the elementary form of pagan existence. Durkheim’s position on the elementary is crucial here. I will say something brief about this.

The language of "mystery" returns on page 15, where it is seemingly equated with religious ritual (and thus continuous in some sense with paganism).  Yet religious ritual need not be mysterious in essence, even to its participants.  It can be--and in halacha often needs to be--undertaken with self-conscious awareness of what it is meant to produce, psychologically, ethically, socially, etc.  Thus this way of understanding ritual, in Levinas and in general, needs to be better explained.

RESPONSE. This is indeed true of some theories of ritual and halakha, such as JD Soloveitchik. But not of Levinas’s view in the 1930s, for whom halakhic ritual disrupts naturalism by establishing contact with the supernatural mystery of existence. Later, after Levinas discovers the Talmud, his position indeed comes closer the kind of ‘halakhic idealism’ Reviewer 1 describes. Levinas then comes to reject the prospect of contact with mystery or holiness and speaks of “loving the Torah more than God,” which is close to the kind of reflective midrashic agency Reviewer 1 seems to have in mind. In the 30s, however, he maintains that every account of how halakhic meaning is reflectively produced is downstream and derivative of its “original essence,” which can only be found in “an accurate description of its execution” (1937b). 

It would be worth clarifying what the author means by "political theology" and "theopolitics" and how they are different (e.g. on page 3, at the conclusion of section 1).  Theopolitics is not a term which, to my knowledge, Levinas himself uses.  What does the author mean by it?  

RESPONSE: I will clarify this in the revised submission. Levinas does not use either of those terms. Political theology is Schmitt’s term for the secularized appearance of theology in political form. Samuel Brody has argued that Martin Buber develops an inverse account of Schmitt according to which the term "theopolitics" adopted by Buber "is intended to function as a deep inversion of 'political theology', a conceptual attack on Schmitt and what he stands for…where political theology deploys the power of the divine in the service of the authoritarian state, theopolitics denies any possibility of truly legitimizing institutional human power." Levinas' thought in the 1930s moves in a similar direction as Buber. In Levinas’s terms, Jewish politics is to be grounded in “the holy history” of Israel and finds in this history a way of escaping the absolute authority of human political institutions. For Levinas, the people of Israel, riveted to their religious-historical mission, stand in judgment only before their God. See Brody, Samuel Hayim. Martin Buber's Theopolitics (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought) (pp. 8-9). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.

On page 7, it's not clear in whose voice the two paragraphs in the middle of the page (beginning "From this point on..." and "Hitlerism is a distortion...") are being written.  Are these Levinas' thoughts?  Critchley's?  The author's?  In particular, the language here about "liberal critics" and the "veil of ignorance" points toward editorializing rather than interpreting.  Along these lines, I think more needs to be said to argue for the point, as restated on the following page, that "Hitlerism and racism" can "genuinely claim to be founded concrete intuitions (sic)".  Is this Levinas' argument or the author's?  This problem occurs elsewhere in the article as well, which might sometimes be the fault of the journal's typesetting and omitting of quotation marks for block quotes.

RESPONSE: (1) Some of that is Levinas’s words, the journal got the indenting wrong, I’ll be sure to attend to that. (2) My intention is also to show how Levinas’s thought anticipates criticism of liberalism made, for example, by later thinkers who criticize Rawls. I will clarify that. (3) I will emphasize again that Levinas indeed thinks that racism is founded on a distortion of fundamental intuitions, which is why racism has no validity but often gets wide traction.

On Levinas' reading of Maimonides: While I agree that Levinas does not approach the Guide with the mindset of a sober, historically-attuned interpreter, I wonder whether his reading of Maimonides' defense of creation is quite as detached from the text as it is made out to be here.  Maimonides, it is true, does ultimately defend the primacy of divine will, at least for the act of creation.  Yet in Maimonides' neoplatonic reality, creation, though voluntaristic in origin, must be continuously sustained via emanation--that is, via God's constant sustenance of the forms.  That's not (in my view) an essentially "mystical" doctrine, though it is foreign to many of us.  And it seems to come close to what Levinas is saying in his reading. 

RESPONSE: I agree that Levinas’s defense of creation has much to recommend it. It is a brilliant concise appropriation of Maimonides. Moreover, Levinas himself follows through on the line suggested by Reviewer 1. In De l’existence a l’existent there is a discussion of occasionalism at a key juncture. I will therefore remove the phrase that suggests Levinas’s interpretation is ‘detached’, and I thank the Reviewer for this comment, which deserves further attention.

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall summary:

-Magnificent essay excavating a crucial and timely message from the young Levinas, with concise yet precise explanations of the concepts about concrete intuitions taking the place of metaphysical transcendence opening the possibility of Hitlerism. Love the emphasis on diaspora as essential to Jewish spirituality, and the emphasis on creation as attunement within being to the mystery of the world. A pleasure to read!

Areas for improvement/weaknesses with suggestions:

-At line 262, but also at line 117, the use of “defend” raises a red flag for me as a reader due to Levinas’s comments about Asian culture and religions (saying that it’s just exotic dance compared to the West). So each time this word is used, as a reader my first instinct is to wonder whether this is also Levinas’s xenophobia (in addition to the stress in this essay on National Socialist paganism). Could the essay emphasize or at least correct Levinas so that the defense is specifically against Hilterist paganism and not, say, Daoist “paganism"?

See, for example, Alford, C. Fred. “Levinas and Political Theory.” Political Theory, vol. 32, no. 2, 2004, pages 159-160 specifically.

These kinds of statements are not just in his interviews and confessional religious writings. Consider the following: “But Greek metaphysics conceived of the Good as separate from the totality of essences, and in this way Ethical Understanding (without any contribution from an alleged Oriental thought) it caught sight of a structure such that the totality could admit of a beyond.” Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 1969, 102. See also Levinas, “Jewish Thought Today,” 165.

I think given the general tensions with the State of Israel’s current treatment of Gazans it is worthwhile to briefly mention this clarification, that while Levinas might have personally been xenophobic, that does not mean the philosophy he inspires has to be, and that this essay is directed exclusively at Hitlerism. (Unless, of course, aiming at Asian traditions and even Islamic traditions is part of what the author wants readers to get… in which case, go ahead and say it. But that would undermine the umpf of a really superb essay with a performative contradiction rather than responsibility to the others of others or ever further third men.)

I think this can be handled in 1 or 2 sentences to make the author’s position here explicit.

Specific comments/edits:

-Line 10 – 1930s

-Line 16 – Judeo-Christianity – I suggest separating these and using the “Greco-(Judeo)-Christian” phrasing used in the body of the paper, because critics have pointed out the backreading of harmony through the hyphen, as if there has always been “Judeo-Christian” solidarity, which is false to even imply. This phrase only started being used regularly mainly by Christians after Vatican II. See note about lines 65 and 438 below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian

-Line 25 – I suggest changing “the” to “a” because there were probably other Jewish thinkers formulating philosophical responses. But if it truly is THE first, it might help to save saying that until the evidence is shown over the course of the essay.

-Line 65 – I think “Judeo-Christian” should be in quotation marks to keep it attributed to Heidegger rather than assuming it throughout the essay as a constructive and instructive phrase.

-Line 198 – missing a closing quotation mark

-Lines 245-249 – Is this a block quotation? Maybe the lowercase “t” is a typo.

-Line 438 – see line 16 above. I suggest using quotation marks to set if off as someone else’s term, unless the author wants to own the phrases latent Christian supremacy.

-Lines 447-454 – Is this a block quotation? I encourage the author(s) to mark and explain exactly what they want with block quotations and if paragraphs continue after them (no indent) or if it is truly a new paragraph following the block quotation (indent). This is something I’ve run into in publishing with Religions—a bit rushed on the editing with that. Just be on your toes!

-Line 465 – see line 16 above. I’ll stop noting that here. (see 1156)

-Line 571 – there’s an odd space at the end of the line.

-Line 717 – I wonder if the “the” could be dropped from “the Jews” – the sentence seems to read the same without an essentialist implication.

-Lines 775-783 – seems like a block quotation. Is line 790 also the start of a block quotation?

-Lines 843 – here and in other places “f” seems italicized randomly.

Author Response

RESPONSE TO REVIEWER 2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall summary:

-Magnificent essay excavating a crucial and timely message from the young Levinas, with concise yet precise explanations of the concepts about concrete intuitions taking the place of metaphysical transcendence opening the possibility of Hitlerism. Love the emphasis on diaspora as essential to Jewish spirituality, and the emphasis on creation as attunement within being to the mystery of the world. A pleasure to read!

Areas for improvement/weaknesses with suggestions:

-At line 262, but also at line 117, the use of “defend” raises a red flag for me as a reader due to Levinas’s comments about Asian culture and religions (saying that it’s just exotic dance compared to the West). So each time this word is used, as a reader my first instinct is to wonder whether this is also Levinas’s xenophobia (in addition to the stress in this essay on National Socialist paganism). Could the essay emphasize or at least correct Levinas so that the defense is specifically against Hilterist paganism and not, say, Daoist “paganism"?

See, for example, Alford, C. Fred. “Levinas and Political Theory.” Political Theory, vol. 32, no. 2, 2004, pages 159-160 specifically.

These kinds of statements are not just in his interviews and confessional religious writings. Consider the following: “But Greek metaphysics conceived of the Good as separate from the totality of essences, and in this way Ethical Understanding (without any contribution from an alleged Oriental thought) it caught sight of a structure such that the totality could admit of a beyond.” Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 1969, 102. See also Levinas, “Jewish Thought Today,” 165.

I think given the general tensions with the State of Israel’s current treatment of Gazans it is worthwhile to briefly mention this clarification, that while Levinas might have personally been xenophobic, that does not mean the philosophy he inspires has to be, and that this essay is directed exclusively at Hitlerism. (Unless, of course, aiming at Asian traditions and even Islamic traditions is part of what the author wants readers to get… in which case, go ahead and say it. But that would undermine the umpf of a really superb essay with a performative contradiction rather than responsibility to the others of others or ever further third men.)

I think this can be handled in 1 or 2 sentences to make the author’s position here explicit.

RESPONSE: This is an important point, but most of its relevance goes beyond the scope of this article, which seeks to examine Levinas’s political theology in the 1930s, pointing only occasionally to the philosophical extension of this position in his post-War philosophical works. I am deliberately avoiding to read Levinas’s complex relation to the state of Israel back into the 1930s, precisely in order to showcase its significant differences from his post-1948 position. The same goes for his attitude to non-western cultures, which is entirely absent from his writings in the 1930s. I agree, though, that it is worth mentioning that Levinas’s use of the term “pagan” is intensely contextual. It does not refer to Daoist or Muisca peoples, for example, and indeed it completely mischaracterizes Greek philosophical paganism, which is in no way “riveted” to being.

Specific comments/edits:

RESPONSE: My thanks to Reader 2, I have addressed all these issues in the resubmission.

-Line 10 – 1930s

-Line 16 – Judeo-Christianity – I suggest separating these and using the “Greco-(Judeo)-Christian” phrasing used in the body of the paper, because critics have pointed out the backreading of harmony through the hyphen, as if there has always been “Judeo-Christian” solidarity, which is false to even imply. This phrase only started being used regularly mainly by Christians after Vatican II. See note about lines 65 and 438 below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian

-Line 25 – I suggest changing “the” to “a” because there were probably other Jewish thinkers formulating philosophical responses. But if it truly is THE first, it might help to save saying that until the evidence is shown over the course of the essay.

-Line 65 – I think “Judeo-Christian” should be in quotation marks to keep it attributed to Heidegger rather than assuming it throughout the essay as a constructive and instructive phrase.

-Line 198 – missing a closing quotation mark

-Lines 245-249 – Is this a block quotation? Maybe the lowercase “t” is a typo.

-Line 438 – see line 16 above. I suggest using quotation marks to set if off as someone else’s term, unless the author wants to own the phrases latent Christian supremacy.

-Lines 447-454 – Is this a block quotation? I encourage the author(s) to mark and explain exactly what they want with block quotations and if paragraphs continue after them (no indent) or if it is truly a new paragraph following the block quotation (indent). This is something I’ve run into in publishing with Religions—a bit rushed on the editing with that. Just be on your toes!

-Line 465 – see line 16 above. I’ll stop noting that here. (see 1156)

-Line 571 – there’s an odd space at the end of the line.

-Line 717 – I wonder if the “the” could be dropped from “the Jews” – the sentence seems to read the same without an essentialist implication.

-Lines 775-783 – seems like a block quotation. Is line 790 also the start of a block quotation?

-Lines 843 – here and in other places “f” seems italicized randomly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx