And Here Every Power Begins: Levinas on Ethics and Intentionality

By: Sterling Hall

Ethics emerges from Levinas' view of intentionality precisely
because intentionality lies at the crossroads of encountering an
object and the notion of meaning. If ethics can be taken, at its
basest, to be a relation with the other, then intentionality would be
the beginning of any proper discussion on ethics. The primary shift
between Husserlian and Levinasian view of intentionality is that
Husserl seems to revel in the ontological aspect of intentionality,
whereas Levinas wishes to move beyond this intentionality to
a 'meaning-giving' which is fluid and non-concrete.
First though, to gain an understanding of how ethics emerges from
the thinking of intentionality, we need to have some sort of
understanding of what intentionality is. For Husserl, intentionality
is equatable with the phenomenological project, that intentionality
is “consciousness of an object by way of a meaning”. As Levinas put
it, “Intentionality … designates a relation with the object, but a
relation essentially bearing within itself an implicit meaning” (RR
115). This means that when we are confronted with an immediate object
in the world, we bring the consequence of our subjective histories
into the interpretation and understanding of that object. For example,
if we look at a map of the United States, for instance, we don't just
see an abstract geometrical shape, or the differing colors that make
up the states and the ocean (or, at least immediately we don't), but
we see a picture or map of the United States. This is because, in our
confrontation with the object, we bring the totality of our prior
understandings, our 'horizon', into play in confronting the object.
And this swelling of our past history in the confrontation of an
object is what both Husserl and Levinas call 'intentionality'.
Intentionality is not totalizing though; in fact, it realizes the
infinity present in exteriority. When we bring our subjective meanings
to an object in the interpretation of that object, we never get the
full 'picture' of what is before us: “intentionality bears within
itself the innumerable horizons of its implications and thinks of
infinitely more 'things' than the object upon which it is fixed” (RR
116). The reason that we think of 'infinitely more 'things'' is
twofold: (I) similar to the interpretation of a book, and the infinite
amount of interpretations that can be contained in the text (due to
the 'horizons' the reader brings to the object), the encountering of
any object is bound up in our limitless horizons that we bring to the
object; and (II) the object is the sum of these infinite
interpretations, not just of our horizons, but of any possible
horizons from an other, and is thus forever beyond totalization, or as
Levinas puts it, “the reduction of the other to the same” (PII 48,
among many other places). The infinity present in the object, through
the horizons we bring to the intention of it, make the object forever
beyond our grasp, forever outreaching us, forever flowing outwards and
beyond our singular being. It is in “reason”, or the attempt to
cognize and subjectivize the object to the same, that the unethical
act begins, for here “every power begins” (PII 50). It's a power,
because you try to force the object of consciousness into a finite
box, instead of relating to it, instead of letting it be, in its
infinity.
This is the point in which ethics rises up from the discussion of
intentionality. Not only is there the theoretical juncture here, at
the beginnings of a indefinite intentionality, but a historical
juncture as well, a break from other thinkers in the phenomenological
tradition. As has been noted, Levinas takes much from the philosophy
of Husserl (as can bee seen at the beginning of his essay The Ruin of
Representation, which starts “To meet a man is to be kept awake by an
enigma. Upon meeting Husserl, the enigma was always that of his work”
(RR 111)), most importantly his conception of intentionality, but
Levinas takes a step forward from his predecessors by breaking from
the ontological investigations of Heidegger. In shifting the
philosophical discussion from the inward-heavy, phenomenological
investigations of 'being' to a philosophy that was aware of an other
outside of the self, Levinas was able to take up the project of ethics
which was decidedly missing in Heidegger's work. After an extended
discussion of how Heidegger's philosophy is one that, in conjunction
with the rest of western philosophy, reduces the same to the other, he
concludes noting that the prominent ideas of Heidegger's
phenomenological project, the placement of 'being' above 'beings' and
the placement of ontological discussions above metaphysical ones, “end
up affirming a tradition in which the same dominates the other, in
which freedom, even the freedom that is identical with reason,
precedes justice” (PII 53). He ends with the rhetorical
question, “Does not justice consist in putting the obligation with
regard to the other before obligations to oneself, in putting the
other before the same?” (PII 53).
Here it would likely be prudent to mention Levinas' concept of
freedom as a mediating step between intentionality and ethics. Freedom
is traditionally seen to have both ethical and personal aspects: the
term 'free' is tied up with ideals like 'justice' and 'autonomy' and
thus gets lumped together with the other major theoretical
advancements of the modern era, but freedom is also always freedom
from some other – it's highly personal and subjective (think of the
stereotypical 'Romantic' subject standing at the edge of the world,
free from all its constraints). This is where Levinas comes in:
freedom relates to the other (and thus has at least something to do
with ethics), but does it in a way that prohibits justice from being
realized. Freedom, for Levinas, is “the feat of remaining the same
despite the unknown lands into which thought seems to lead”, equatable
to “autonomy [and] the reduction of the other to the same” (PII 48).
The 'unknown lands' are the infinite horizons that belong to the
other, but by 'remaining the same' when confronted with this radically
other being, by keeping inside the self without projecting oneself
outwards, freedom is equatable with the motion of 'reducing the other
to the same'. Hence 'freedom' allows Levinas to make the jump
from 'intentionality' to 'ethics' by opposing freedom to justice. It
shows that our conception of the other is just as important as our
actual physical relations to the other; the lesson is somewhat
biblical: we can't just interact with the other ethically, but we must
think in an ethical manner to the other as well.
As mentioned, contrasted with 'freedom' is the notion
of 'justice', or as he puts it, “Justice well ordered begins with the
other” (PII 56). This is because:
“This life that bestows meaning may reveal itself otherwise, and
presuppose for its revelation relations between the Same and the Other
that are no longer objectification, but society. The condition of
truth may be sought in ethics” (RR 120).

So, whereas 'freedom' is something that takes place internally and

is always freedom from an other, 'justice' is something that needs
some relation to another, it takes place alongside and other. 'Well-
ordered' justice, though, isn't simply relating to the other, it's a
relation that is 'no longer objectification', that doesn't devalue the
other in its infinity.
Passing through the binary opposition of 'freedom' and 'justice'
allows Levinas to create the bridge connecting 'intentionality'
to 'ethics', connecting phenomenological methods into a discussion of
our relation to the other. This relation is modeled further by the
works of Husserl and Heidegger and then Levinas' break with their
phenomenological project:
“in a phenomenology where the activity of totalizing and totalitarian
representation is already exceeded in its own intention, where
representation is already finds itself placed within horizons that
it somehow had not willed, but with which it cannot dispense, an
ethical Sinngebung [meaning-giving] becomes possible, that is, a
Sinngebung essentially respectful of the Other. In Hussurl...social
relations...are abruptly awakened” (RR 125).

This is the apogee of Levinas' conception of ethics as it arises

from intentionality. Phenomenology's project was to try and
understand 'phenomena' as they appear, purely, but understanding
objects in such a way lead to the realization that every object (the
other more than any other) exceeds the horizons we bring to it.
The indeterminateness of the other leads to an other intentional
relationship, a 'meaning-giving respectful of the other'. To do this,
we need to forgo freedom, as Levinas conceives it, as a reduction of
the other to the same, and replace it with justice, a relation to the
other without domination, with distance, a relation where 'society'
is forged. The connection between ethics (proper) and intentionality
is that they both deal with the other in its infinity and respect
the distance always already present in such. As was quoted above,
Husserl's intentionality allows for social relations to be 'abruptly
awakened', but ethics emerges afterwards, in the early morning haze
present after the jolt of a reappearing reality, in the foggy distance
of non-perception, and in the daze of a non-dominating consciousness.