From the Real Other to the Ultimate Other

Sagi, Avi

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_7

Avi Sagi⁴

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 99))

Abstract

The central claim I attempted to defend in this book is the primacy of the subject, including vis-à-vis the other, as it comes forth in the epistemic, ethical, and hermeneutical realms. In the epistemic aspect, the subject is the one who acknowledges the other as a subject and negates his existence as an object. In the ethical aspect, the subject is the agent who takes upon herself her experiences vis-à-vis the other and, finally, the subject is the being who interprets the modes of the subject’s appearance as a real self. Without the subject’s action, the other could not have appeared as a real self, and this appearance is itself contingent on the ethic of inner retreat that releases the subject from the temptation to objectify the real self. In a realm founded on the primacy of the subject, then, the ontological primacy of the other is increasingly significant.

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Notes

1.
Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative (New York: Anchor Press, 1994), 7.
2.
On this matter, see Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, trans. Batya Stein (New York: Rodopi, 2002), 5–24, and the list of sources therein.
3.
Louis Dupré, “Truth in Religion and Truth of Religion,” in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerriére (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 19–20. Dupré justifiably viewed Hegel as a dominant figure in this shift. Already at the start of his activity as a thinker, Hegel had suggested this move. See, especially, G. W. F. Hegel, “Fragment of a System,” in Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 309–320. For a discussion of this text, see Pini Ifergan, The Tragedy in Ethical Life: Hegel’s Philosophy and the Spirit of Modernity (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2010), 95–101 [Heb]. See also Jeffrey L. Kosky, “The Birth of the Modern Philosophy of Religion and the Death of Transcendence,” in Transcendence, Philosophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond, ed. Regina Schwartz (New York: Routledge, 2004), 13–30.
4.
Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Noble (Connecticut: Archon Books, 1972), 174.
5.
Ibid., 163.
6.
Ibid., 151.
7.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversation on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 57.
8.
See Alan Keightley, Wittgenstein, Grammar, and God (London: Epworth Press, 1976), 73–87; D. Z. Philips, Faith after Foundationalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).
9.
Scheller, On the Eternal, 120. See also 146–147.
10.
On the significance of this distinction, see Avi Sagi, “Faith as Temptation,” in Faith: Jewish Perspectives, ed. Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 12–122.
11.
From the U-Netane Tokef piyyut in the Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur prayers. See Machzor, ed. Menachem Davis (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 2004), 799.
12.
See also Dupré, “Truth in Religion and Truth of Religion,” 38–40.
13.
See J. N. Mohanty, Phenomenology and Ontology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 140.
14.
Dupré, “Truth in Religion and Truth of Religion,” 40.
15.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garret Barden and John Cumming (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 269.
16.
Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, trans. John B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 68.
17.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), xi.
18.
This issue is discussed at length in Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 65–78.
19.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 105.
20.
Ibid., 94.
21.
Cf. Steven W. Laycock, “God as the Ideal: The All-of-Monads and the All-Consciousness,” in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerriére (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 250–256.
22.
Ibid., 250. See also Arvind Sharma, To the Things Themselves: Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenomenology of Religion (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 24.
23.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Collier, 1961), 29, n. 1. See also 30, 33–34.
24.
Ibid., 29, n. 1.
25.
Ibid., 29.
26.
Ibid., 24.
27.
Ibid., 42 (emphasis in the original).
28.
Ibid., 48.
29.
Ibid., 59.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Ibid., 60–61.
32.
Ibid., 73.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid., 75.
35.
See W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion, trans. J. B. Carman (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 6. For an extensive discussion of the relationship between inside and outside perspectives, see Sharma, To the Things Themselves, 2–9.
36.
Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 3. (emphasis in original).
37.
Cf. Ibid., 13–14.
38.
Ibid., 49–50.
39.
Acknowledging the fundamental limitation of Husserl’s phenomenology, which precludes the rescue of the subjective experience, various scholars have suggested focusing on other aspects of it that could be helpful to the phenomenology of religion. Among them is the emphasis on the full description of the researched phenomenon, the opposition to the reduction of religion to other contexts, intentionality, and the eidetic observation that enables us to grasp the essence of religion as it is exposed in light of its actual manifestations. On this matter, see Douglas Allen, Structure and Creativity in Religion: Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade’s Phenomenology and New Directions (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 275. See also Sharma, To the Things Themselves, 19–30.
40.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), 49^e.
41.
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong, vol.1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 214.
42.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 99.
43.
Ibid., 103.
44.
For a phenomenological interpretation of negative theology, see Scheller, On the Eternal, 172–179.
45.
In this utterance, Rosenzweig negates clear-cut distinctions: “Can we really draw so rigid a boundary between what is divine and what is human?” Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1961), 242.
46.
Ibid., 243–244 (emphasis in original).
47.
Ibid., 246.
48.
Franz Rosenzweig, God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, ed. Barbara E. Galli (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 138.
49.
Ibid., 140–141.
50.
Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe, ed. Edith Rosenzweig (Berlin: Schocken, 1935), 626.
51.
Georg W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 111–118.
52.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, 210–214.
53.
Emmanuel Levinas held that the “Here I am” turns primarily to the other. See Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 74–75. Levinas makes a dual mistake. First, he does not acknowledge the autonomy of religious life, which for him is always founded on the primary attitude toward the other. Second, the God of Levinas is a transcendent being, with whom no exclusive relationship can ever be established. Notwithstanding Levinas’ description, this phenomenology is not appropriate for believers given that, contrary to Wittgenstein and contrary to the approach presented here, Levinas did not address the believers’ religious language seriously enough.
54.
For an analysis of the leap and its meaning, see Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard, Religion and Existence: The Voyage of the Self, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000).
55.
Cf. Scheller, On the Eternal, 174.
56.
See, for example, Merold Westphal, “Phenomenologies and Religious Truth,” in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerriére (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 110–113. See also Laycock, “God as the Ideal,” 251–256.
57.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 195. See also 194.
58.
Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 77. See also 94.
59.
William Richardson, “Heidegger and God—and Professor Jonas,” Thought, XL (1965), 30.
60.
Heidegger, On the Way to Language, 81.
61.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Martin Heidegger Basic Writings, revised edn, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1993), 217.
62.
Heidegger, On the Way to Language, 124.
63.
Ibid., 66.
64.
Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), 286.
65.
Heidegger, On the Way to Language, 123.
66.
Ibid., 57, 81.
67.
Ibid., 77.
68.
Ibid., 124.
69.
Ibid., 125.
70.
On this issue, see Heidegger, Being and Time, 256–261.
71.
Ibid., 263.
72.
See Scheller, On the Eternal, 198–199, 265.
73.
For a literary testimony, see Avi Sagi, Prayer after the Death of God: A Phenomenological Study of Hebrew Literature, trans. Batya Stein (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016).
74.
Sifre Devarim, ve-Zot ha-Berakhah, 346 (Finkelstein edn., 403–404). Cf. Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, trans. Reuven Hammer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), Piska 346, 359.
75.
Midrash Tehilim, Buber edn., Psalm 123. Cf. The Midrash on Psalms, trans. William G. Braude (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).
76.
Samuel Hugo Bergman, On the Path (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976), 184 [Heb].
77.
Ibid., 185.
78.
Sefat Emet, Leviticus, Be-Har, s. v. ve-shavtah ha-aretz.
79.
See, for example, James Edward Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press, 1988), 157–161; Amit Pinchevski, “The Audiovisual Unconscious: Media and Trauma in the Video Archives for Holocaust Testimonies,” Critical Theory 39 (2012), 144–145.
80.
On the problematic surrounding this testimony, see the comprehensive book of Elizabeth F. Loftus and James M. Doyle, Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Criminal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
81.
Yaakov b. Asher, Arba’ah Turim, Tur Orah Hayyim, § 290, Beth Yosef, 2, s. v. va-yakhel Moshe. R. Yosef Caro relies here on an earlier treatise. See Shiboley ha-Leket, Shabbat, § 96. See also Shulkhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim, § 290, 2.
82.
Cf. Scheller, On the Eternal, 198, 249.
83.
Sefat Emet, Deuteronomy, Ki Tavo.
84.
Avi Sagi, Judaism: Between Religion and Morality (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1998) [Heb].
85.
On morality’s dependence on religion, see Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995).
86.
For a detailed analysis of Shkop’s approach, see Sagi, Judaism: Between Religion and Morality, 335–349.
87.
See Shimon Shkop, Sefer She’are Yashar, vol. 4 (New York: Va’ad le-Hotsa’at Sifrei ha-Ga’on Rabbi Shim’on, 1969), 4 [Heb].
88.
Ibid., 9.
89.
R. Ben Zion Hai Uzziel, Derashot Uzziel, Avot (Jerusalem: Va’ad le-Hotsa’at Kitvei ha-Rav, 1991) 3–4 [Heb].
90.
Ahad Ha-Am, “Two Masters,” in Selected Essays of Ahad Ha-Am, trans. Leon Simon (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1912), 91–92.
91.
Uzziel, Derashot Uzziel, 3–4.
92.
Ibid.
93.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Religious Praxis: The Meaning of Halakhah,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed. Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 14. See also Sagi and Statman, Religion and Morality, 121.
94.
Avi Sagi, “Justifying Interreligious Pluralism,” in Jewish Theology and World Religions, ed. Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn (Oxford: Littman Library, 2012), 61–85.
95.
Avi Sagi, Jewish Religion without Theology, trans. Batya Stein (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 1–42.
96.
Ibid., 43–66.
97.
Martin Buber, From the Treasure House of Hassidism: A Selection from Or Haganuz, trans. Haim Schachter (Jerusalem: WZO, 1969), 46.

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Department of Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Avi Sagi

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Sagi, A. (2018). From the Real Other to the Ultimate Other. In: Living With the Other. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_7
Published: 14 January 2019
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