Beyond Temporality

Abstract

The break with the time of totality is experienced in the encounter with phenomena impervious to cognitive modes of apprehension, blind-spots beyond the field of cognition. In these phenomena something remains extrinsic to self; an alterity persists which cannot be reduced to the same. The self-evidence of these phenomena is unimpeachable, yet they cannot be incorporated into an established frame of reference or interiorized through subsumption under universal categories. The break with cognitive experience which the upsurge of these realities represents, is apparent not only in positive moral experience but also in the darker ranges of existence. Levinas, while deviating from Heidegger’s analysis of these darker areas, remains faithful to Heidegger in emphasizing their importance. Being-towards-death for Levinas, as for Heidegger, is a fundamental mode of existence and absolutely resistant to cognitive modes of apprehension. In this chapter I shall try to bring to light two species of phenomena which infiltrate and undercut the temporal structure of totality, one negative, being-towards-death, war, economy; the other positive, patience, love, filiality, fraternity. The latter not only break with the time of totality but also introduce an eschatological dimension into the historical order.