attitude that is given me by grace and which I then will.
This attitude that I can have toward nature, humans,
and spiritual beings is contrasted with the I-it attitude
in that the I-thou is exclusive, direct, present, and
mutual while the I-it does not relate to the other as unique
and mediates the relation with knowledge and relates to it
in the past and the it does not relate mutually to me.
Buber shows how it is the exalted melancholy of our fate
that every thou in our world must become an it, but
with grace and will they can once again become our thou.
Also, in every I-thou relation we do meet the eternal thou.
On pages 68 and 69 of Totality and Infinity Levinas says that he
does not have the ridiculous pretension of “correcting” Buber, but
he is critical of the mutuality of the I-Thou relation and thereby
thinks of our responsibility called forth by the face of the other as
a “me voici” relation rather than an “I-Thou” relation in order
to give the other that height of being more important than myself.
For Levinas the I is the subject of my totality that is nourished
by enjoyment and will kill for a crust of bread in preferring self.
The me of the “me voici,” the “here is me” at your service, is
the me of the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative,
responsible self who will give the bread out of my mouth to the other
so that it is given to me to give by the call of the other who is
to be served by me with a duty that is mine before the other I.
Levinas builds upon the notion of love as responsibility of an I
for a thou by seeing love as coming from the lowly humble me
who can serve the noble other as the I who makes demands on me.
II,1.5 And a Transcendence beyond Plato’s Divine Madness
Plato’s philosophy explains this world of Heraclitean physical
becoming in terms of the Parmenidean metaphysical realm of Being.
This realm of Being is central to Heidegger’s ontology and is not
all that helpful when it comes to formulating a sensitive ethics.
But Levinas sees in Plato’s metaphysics a Good beyond Being
that the Platonic philosophy of love in both The Symposium
and in The Phaedrus gets in touch with as the Beautiful Good.
On page 43 of Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes:
Western philosophy has most often been an ontology:
a reduction of the other to the same
by interposition of a middle and neutral term
that ensures the comprehension of being.
Just above that on the same page he writes:
A calling into question of the same
which cannot occur within the egoist
spontaneity of the same
is brought about by the other.
We name this calling into question
of my spontaneity
by the presence of the Other ethics.
On page 48 Levinas begins to discuss “Transcendence as the Idea
of Infinity” and he shows how the metaphysics of Plato and
Descartes discovers a divine infinity that is transcendent.
To think the infinite, the transcendent, is not to think an object.
On page 49 he writes:
The “intentionality” of transcendence
is unique in its kind;
the difference between objectivity and transcendence
will serve as a general guideline
for all the analyses of this work.
He then discusses the divine madness of Plato’s sublimated eros.
II,1.6 And an Infinity beyond Descartes’ Infinite
Levinas treats Plato and Descartes together as he shows how
they each in different ways had a transcendent infinity
in their metaphysics and this was felt in Plato’s Phaedrus.
On page 49 Levinas writes:
Against a thought that proceeds from him
who “has his own head to himself,”
he affirms the value of the delirium
that comes from God, “winged thought.”
This enthusiasm and divine madness is thought in its highest
sense and is a kind of ecstatic possession by the divine Other.
Plato discovered something akin to Levinas’s infinity that calls
me and teaches me of the other when I behold the face of the other.
Levinas shows how Plato and Descartes are not thinking of
an object but are in touch with the transcendent, the other.
However, the transcendence that is the point of Levinas’s book
does not empower the I by sublimating the power of vulgar passion
to become the energy of noble passion and its new creativity.
Rather, the face of the other, as Levinas writes on page 50,
lets the desire proper to the gaze
turn
