Perhaps
as a consequence of the close ties between phenomenology and existentialism in
the 20th Century so it may be associated with atheism. This
association of existentialism with atheism is not unfounded as existentialists
such as Albert Camus subscribed to the view of life as totally meaningless. And
indeed Jean-Paul Sartre was a vehement atheist. The same may be said of
Nietzsche though in many respects it may be argued he remained firmly within
Lutheranism.[1] Then
there is Kierkegaard, a man who may even be deemed a Christian fundamentalist
by some. The most significant reaction to Husserl’s transcendental
phenomenology came from Martin Heidegger was a student of theology before he
moved onto philosophy and developed hermeneutical phenomenology. But it was the
reactions to Heidegger which took the most overt stances on the question of
God. It may safely be said from the outset that there is no reason
phenomenology can be strictly either theistic or atheistic.
The
reactions to Heidegger took both theistic and atheistic forms. In Sartre’s
reaction to Heidegger he presented an existential phenomenology which was
atheistic as it acknowledged the human desire for God. Then Emmanuel Levinas
introduced an ethical element into phenomenology which went further than a mere
acknowledgement of the desire for God. If we take phenomenology as the study of
appearances, as Heidegger did, then it may seem as though it begins at a secular
point and doesn’t necessarily rule out the existence of God. As it would seem
that the study of appearances could well be agnostic on the question of God, as
it is beyond appearances, phenomenology may be better described as non-theistic
rather than atheistic in this sense. We might be able to maintain this stance
on Husserl and Heidegger, but it is disputable and even more so when we move to
the later phenomenologists.
The
explicitly atheist phenomenology can be found in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre,
where God is a contradiction as God would have to exist at the modes of
in-itself and for-itself. Being-in-itself is the mode of being held by
inanimate objects, whereas being-for-itself is integral to human freedom – a
human being is not a human being in the sense that a stone is a stone.[2] The
for-itself arises once in-itself has been negated by it, then it rushes into
the future as the human subject strives towards authenticity. In this process
then the for-itself becomes what it isn’t – being-in-itself – and negates what
it was. This is the exact condition of human freedom from which the desire for
God emerges. There is a hypothetical being-in-itself-for-itself and that is
God, it implies a coincidence of the self with the self and absence of the
negation that it takes to form the self. But it is the instability of the
subject, which Sartre described, that opens up a temptation to ‘flee from
being’ and into bad faith. This is where the desire for God comes from and it
is followed by the futile attempts to reach out to this impossible mode of
being.
Of
course, it may be said, it is the framework in which Sartre works that has
closed off any space for God from the outset. So it is the framework which is
to be questioned here. But not to revert to a non-existent ‘neutral’ space from
which we can see whether there is or isn’t a God. Rather we should look assess
the problems with Sartre’s framework and then look at a rival framework. The
problem might be down to some of the vestments of Cartesianism that Sartre
brings to the table. The conception of freedom that Sartre develops is
predicated on a notion of consciousness as nothingness.[3] Because
freedom is consciousness it is detached from the causal forces of the external
world. There is literally nothing which traps the self ‘inside’ consciousness
because there is nothing there. It boils down to a modified version of the
mind-body distinction that Descartes drew. It’s precisely this aspect of the
Cartesian tradition that Heidegger wanted to throw out completely.
It
is this levelled plain of radically free individuals, with the subject as an
unstable moral agent – lacking any objective moral values – whose relations
with others is typified by feelings such as shame. Sartre was preoccupied with
the ‘look’ which separates the subject off from the world and turns them into a
thing. The Other raises the instability of our already fragile consciousness.[4] The
existence of the Other is not problematic, though the Other is a potential
threat to the freedom of the subject.[5]
The subject exists as in-itself and for-itself but does not exist in isolation,
to the contrary the subject must coexist with others and so the subject is not
just for-itself it is being-for-others. The Other reduces the for-itself
subject to a thing-like in-itself existence, the subject is deprived of its
autonomy and freedom. The relationship with the Other is inevitably prone to
conflict, the subject can only dominate or be dominated. As Garcin says
famously at the end of Sartre’s No Exit
“There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is – other people.”[6]
The
important thing to remember about Sartre is that he was writing in reaction to
Heidegger, who had thoroughly rejected the Cartesian tradition. To do this
Heidegger had questioned the basic claim that the knowledge we have of
ourselves differs from the knowledge we have of others at a fundamental level. Heidegger
used the word Dasein to signify not
just the subject, but the temporal unfolding of existence – we might think of
it as experience. In this way we are embodied experiencers of a world that we
are thoroughly wrapped up in and share with others who compose the They.[7] The
mind-body distinction is something to be thrown aside, along with the notion
that there is an external world from which we can retreat. Heidegger had
conceived of being-in-the-world to
signify the human existence as bound up with reality, both as constitutive and
constituted by it. For Heideggerians then Sartre fails insofar as he doesn’t
totally reject Cartesianism, even if it only survives in modified form.
This
is where Emmanuel Levinas enters the picture with a take on the Other which is
in opposition to the position that Sartre had carved out. Levinas shared
Heidegger’s worries about the implications of a selfhood which is cut-off from
the world in its autonomy. And at the same time Levinas was concerned about the
absence of an ethics in Heidegger’s project. For Levinas the Other is not a
threat to one’s freedom, that we can only dominate or be dominated by. Rather
the face-to-face encounter with the Other is positive as it challenges the
self-assurance and self-containment of the subject. It inaugurates the
possibility of an ethical code.[8] The
naked face of the Other appeals to the subject in a way that cannot be ignored
or forgotten. It is an appeal for the subject to go towards, to welcome and to
take responsibility for the Other. The identity of the subject is dependent on
the Otherness that is always and already present before the subject is
constituted, it is founded by the ethical demand to take responsibility for the
Other. This is where a space for God is prised open.
Recall
the words of Terry Eagleton that “To move from Husserl to Heidegger is to move
from the terrain of pure intellect to a philosophy which meditates on what it
feels like to be alive.”[9] We might add that Levinas takes off from
‘what it feels like to be alive’ to the realm of the ethical. The
encounter with the Other is a mere glimpse of the Infinite, or more bluntly
God, from which the most we can receive is an imperative.[10]
The only means of relation to God is through moral conduct and this is
especially the case in regards to the Other. Levinas was one of a line of
Jewish phenomenologists, which began with Husserl and included such unlikely
bedfellows as Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. But Levinas may have been the
first in this line to introduce a Judaic turn to phenomenology. The trace of
the ever elusive Infinite which we detect in the face of the Other comes in the
form of an obligation in the same way that all Moses received from God at Mount
Sinai were the mitzvoth – the
commandments.[11] The
Infinite seems to hold no content for us, but what we can relate to and that is
moral in character.
There
is a moment in A Serious Man (2009)
which holds some relevance as Rabbi Nachtner says “Hashem doesn’t owe us
anything. The obligation runs the other way.” God has left us to our own
devices, which is why we can and must do His work. We might even go to the end
and conclude that God does not intervene because we are the intervention. For
Sartre it is the Other which is presupposed, for Levinas it is the Infinite
which is presupposed. But it is Levinas who grounds our moral obligations in
theistic terms. In doing so, Levinas reformulated the Cartesian case for the
existence of God by substituting the Infinite for the Other. And so we could
charge him, as we would Sartre, with bringing back the old baggage as part of
his bid to bring morality into phenomenology. Though it should be noted that
Levinas called for a revision of intersubjectivity as developed in the
Cartesian tradition and by Husserl. This means that the basic concept of the
subject: a mind which grasps what it confronts in experience and turns it into
its content. The troubling assumption being that everything is ‘given’ as
representation, even though everything is ultimately other than the mind it can
be possessed by the mind.[12]
There
is a more direct way whereby the subject can stand in such relations, e.g.
face-to-face with another person. For Levinas the relation to the Other is
essential to what it means to be human, it is irreducible. It’s a negative
theology of sorts as Levinas shirked from a theorisation of God. If you can
theorise about him then he isn’t God, this view that we cannot theorise Him
seems compatible with the Heideggerian view of phenomenology as a study of
appearances. Deliberately Levinas avoided the game of providing an argument for
the existence of God as that would be ‘bad theology’. So the idea of a
practical atheism may have had its use in terms of coming to grips with what it
means to be human. This differs with the early work of Heidegger which carries the panentheistic tones of Heidegger's Christian background. But it also differs sharply with Heidegger's later nostalgia for the Pagan plethora of Greek gods. By contrast Levinas refuses any compromise with polytheism and insists on a universalist approach tempered by particularism.
[1] Jackson,
R: Nietzsche the Key Ideas (Hachette
UK, 2010) pg.118-124
[2] Macey, D:
Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin
Reference, 2001) pg.201-203
[3] Solomon,
RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y
[4] Wartenberg,
T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications,
2008) pg.60-69
[5] Macey,
D; Dictionary of Critical Theory
(Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.284-286
[6] Sartre,
JP; No Exit (Samuel French, Inc.
1958) pg.46-47
[7]
Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld
Publications, 2008) pg.51-60
[8] Macey,
D; Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin
Reference, 2001) pg.284-286
[9] Eagleton,
T; Literary Theory: An Introduction
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1983 | Second Edition, 1983) pg.47-57
[10] Putnam,
H; Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to life
(Indiana University Press, 2008) pg.68-82
[11] Putnam,
H; Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to life (Indiana University Press, 2008)
pg.87-94
[12]
Mautner, T; Dictionary of Philosophy
(Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.348-349
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