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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DIALOGUE The Challenges of Interconvictional Dialogue according to Emmanuel Levinas

Roger Burggraeve, Levinas scholar & Christian ethicist KU Leuven

Source: R. BURGGRAEVE, “Dialogue of Transcendence: A Levinasian Perspective on the

Anthropological-Ethical Conditions for Interreligious Dialogue,’ in: Journal of

Communication & Religion, 37 (2014), nr. 1, Spring, pp. 2-28.

Introduction

The theme “Levinas and Interreligious Dialogue” can be approached in different ways. One

can study Levinas’s1 view on the relationship (and the tension) between monotheism and

religion, namely between the Holy and the sacred. It is also evident that one can investigate

Levinas’s view on Christianity, and immediately in its wake his view on Jewish-Christian

dialogue.2 Another possibility consists in one’s ‘relecture’ of one’s interpretation of

1 For the references to the works of Levinas, the following abbreviations of the original French edition, along

with the cited page(s), will be used throughout this essay. The cited page(s) from the available English

translations is (are) indicated after the forward slash (/): AE: Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, La

Haye, Nijhoff, 1974. [English translation (ET): Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by A.

Lingis. The Hague/Boston/London, Nijhoff (Kluwer), 1981.]; AT: Altérité et transcendance, Montpellier, Fata

Morgana, 1995. [ET: Alterity and Transcendence, translated by M.B.Smith, New York, Columbia University

Press, 1999; BPW: Emmanuel Levinas. Basic Philosophical Writings, edited by A. Peperzak, S. Critchley and R.

Bernasconi, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1996; CPP: Collected Philosophical

Papers, translated by A. Lingis, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, Kluwer/Nijhoff, 1987; DEHH: En découvrant

l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris, Vrin, 1967; DL: Difficile Liberté. Essais sur le Judaïsme, Paris,

Albin Michel, 1976 (2nd ed.). [ET: Difficult Freedom. Essays on Judaism, translated by S. Hand, Baltimore, The

John Hopkins University Press, 1990.]; DVI: De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, Paris, Vrin, 1982. [ET: Of God Who

Comes to Mind, translated by B. Bergo, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 1998.]; EN: Entre nous.

Essais sur le penser-a-l’autre, Paris, Grasset, 1991. [ET: Entre nous. Thinking-of-the-Other, translated by M.B.

Smith and B. Harshav, London/New York (NY), Continuum, 2006.]; HN: A l’heure des nations, Paris, Minuit,

1988. [ET: In the Time of the Nations, translated by M.B. Smith, Bloomington (IN), Indiana University Press,

1994.]; HS: Hors sujet, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1987. [ET: Outside the Subject, translated by M.B. Smith,

London, The Athlone Press, 1993.]; IRB: Is It Righteous to Be. Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, edited by J.

Robbins and translated by J. Robbins, M. Coelen, with T. Loebel, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press,

2001; LC: Liberté et commandement, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1994; NTR: Nine Talmudic Readings,

translated by A. Aronowicz, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990; PhI: “La

philosophie et l’idée de l’Infini”, in: DEHH, p. 165-185. [ET: “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity”, translated

by A. Lingis, in CPP, p. 47-59.]; QLT: Quatre Lectures talmudiques, Paris, Minuit, 1968. [ET: in NTR, p. 1-88,

entitled “Four Talmudic Readings”.]; SaS: Du sacré au saint. Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques, Paris,

Minuit, 1977. [ET: in NTR, p. 89-197, entitled “From the Sacred to the Holy. Five New Talmudic Readings”.];

TH: “Transcendance et Hauteur” (followed by “Discussion” and “Correspondence”), in LC, p. 49-100. [ET:

“Transcendence and Height”, translated by S. Critchley, in BPW, p. 11-31.]; TI: Totalité et Infini. Essai sur

l’extériorité, La Haye, Nijhoff, 1961.[ET: Totality and Infinity An Essay on Exteriority, translated by A. Lingis,

The Hague/Boston/London, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979.]; VA: “La vocation de l’autre” (interview by

Emmanuel Hirsch), in: E. HIRSCH, Racismes. L’autre et son visage, Paris, Cerf, 1988, p. 89-102. [ET: “The

Vocation of the Other”, translated by J. Robbins, in IRB, p. 105-113.].

2 Cf. G. HANSEL, “Emmanuel Levinas et le christianisme,” in: Cahiers du Judaïsme, 13 (2003), pp. 96-114.

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Christianity, inspired by Levinas’ thought on the face, responsibility and God.3 These, and

others, are all valid points of departure. But preceding these questions, it is in our opinion

necessary to first explore the contours of interreligious dialogue itself. After all, is it not

imaginable that our view on the phenomenon of interreligious dialogue puts our relationship

with our conversation partners in that dialogue on the wrong track? The question therefore is:

what are the conditions for an authentic interreligious (interphilosophical/interconvictional)

dialogue? For the answer to this question we direct ourselves to Levinas’s view on dialogue

itself, as he developed it in Totality and Infinity and gave it a stronger synthesis in his essay

‘Dialogue’.4 Concretely, we will discuss how interreligious dialogue is based on a double

asymmetry, namely a ‘natural’ and an ‘ethical’ asymmetry in which the former is expressed in

a ‘dialogue of immanence’ and the latter in a ‘dialogue of transcendence’.

1. NATURAL ASYMMETRY: IDENTITY AS A REALISTIC STARTING POINT

Insofar as the thought of Levinas moves from the same to the other, it always starts from the

same, of which the ‘I’ is the eminent embodiment. This implies that even interreligious

dialogue always starts from the ‘I’ and its selfness, including the need for delineation and

identity-building.

The phenomenological thought of Levinas, especially as it unfolds in the period of his

first major work Totality and Infinity: Essay on Exteriority (1961), never starts in an abstract

or absolute manner from the radical other and the other as expression of this alterity, but

always from the same and the self. Before he expounds on his view phenomenologically, he

sketches the general framework step-by-step in the first section: “The same and the other” (TI

1-78/31-105). It is striking how he evokes not a dualistic opposition, in the sense of ‘the same

OR the other’ – some interpreters have fallen into this trap – but rather a link between ‘the

same AND the other’ (the same as with totality AND infinity). Even though he puts emphasis

on exteriority in a new and radical manner, namely on the radical alterity of the other, still he

never speaks of alterity in itself, separated from its relationship to the same. The movement

towards the radical other, of which the face of the other is its form par excellence (in contrast

to other, relative forms of alterity in the world) (TI 8/38), always begins with the same, and

thus with the self: “Alterity is possible only starting from me” (TI 10/40). Or more

extensively: “The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is

other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as

entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain

absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I” (TI 6/36).

1.1 The self as the same: intrinsic and dynamic identity

Since the obvious – ‘natural’ – starting point for the dialogue with the other lies in the same,

and thus in the self, we now concentrate on the same. At this point we must avoid an

important pitfall. Often the same, with the self in its wake, is rather quickly approached in the

3 Cf. G. GORDON, Solitude and compassion. The path to the heart of the Gospel, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books,

2009; G. MORRISON, A Theology of Alterity. Levinas, von Balthasar, and Trinitarian Praxis, Pittsburgh, PE,

Duquesne University Press, 2013. 4 E. LEVINAS, “Le dialogue. Conscience de soi et proximité du prochain,” in: M.M. OLIVETTI (ed.),

Esistenza, mito, ermeneutica. Scritti per Enricio Castelli (Archivio di Filosofia Vol. II) , Padova, Cedam, 1980,

pp. 345-357; ID., “Dialog”, translated in German by H.-J. Görtz & M. Lorenz-Boursot, in collaboration with A.

Müller-Herold, in: F. BÖCKLE, F.-X. KAUFMANN, K. RAHNER, B. WELTE, R. SCHERER (eds.),

Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft (Teilband I), Freiburg/Basel/Wien, Herder, 1981. Republished in

DVI 211-230/137-151.

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negative, instigated as it were by Levinas himself, who sees in the same – and in the self – the

source of violence, as will be made clear later. This real possibility of violence, however,

should not lead to a one-sided approach, in this case an unrelenting critique, without attention

to the positive significance of the same, as Levinas explicitly acknowledges and supports

phenomenologically. It is more correct to speak of a literal ‘double-sided’ significance of the

same and the self, namely both a constructive as well as a risky significance. We will first

present the positive significance and later the risky in order to show the dynamism that ensues

from the very nature of the same and the self.

When Levinas discusses ‘the same’ and identity, he distinguishes between external

and internal identity. External identity rests on a characterization from the outside on the basis

of characteristics that are discovered in the being that is described, and whereby this being can

also be distinguished from other beings. But Levinas is interested in the first place in internal

identity, which is based on a process of identification from the inside. In concrete reality, both

forms of identity are closely related, certainly in the human person, in the sense that external

identity further unfolds and reinforces internal identity.

Phenomenologically, Levinas describes the human ‘I’ as the same par excellence,

namely as a creature develops from its own unfolding as a self that is the same and remains as

such, or rather becomes it even more. He qualifies the same as a creature that is structurally

autonomous and independent. He even expresses it in religious terms, in the sense that the

human person is created by God who separates the creature from Himself and thus separated

it can of itself be, judge and act: “It is certainly a great glory for the creator to have set up a

being which, without having been causa sui, has an independent view and word” (TI 30/58-

59). He even labels this as a form of ‘atheism’, not so much intentional but rather structural or

‘metaphysical’ (TI 50/77), namely as an expression of the radical independence of the ‘I’ that

does not need – or no longer needs – God in order to exist. An implication of one’s

createdness as a separated being is that the human subject exists, moves and acts ‘apart from

God’: “One lives outside of God, at home with oneself (…). The soul, the dimension of the

psyche, being accomplishment of separation, is naturally atheistic” (TI 29/58).

This structural separatedness, however, is not given definitively. It must also be

attained. Autonomy is a potentiality that still must be actualized. At this point, we stumble

upon internal identity, namely on self-identification from the inside. Levinas has devoted so

much phenomenological analysis to this process, especially in Totality and Infinity, but also

earlier, namely in Existence and Existents (1947) and Time and the Other (1947). We shall

briefly sketch this dynamism, which Levinas links in his second major work Otherwise than

Being or Beyond Essence (1974) to being as ‘verb’, namely as activity, fulfilment,

development (AE 4-5/4-5).

Every being and every living creature wants to be, but the human person is also

marked by the care to be, which Levinas calls ‘conatus essendi’ (attempt at being) after a term

by Spinoza. Put more strongly, the human person embodies and manifests being in an eminent

manner by consciously and actively arrogating being and substantiating its own being. Indeed,

the human person is a ‘creature of reason’ (‘animale rationale’) that can develop its existence

in a rational manner through its grasping rationality (DVI 15/35). Precisely in that manner, the

human person manifests itself as an ‘I’ that, in and through all its activities, attempts not only

to maintain itself as the same but also tries to develop itself as a dynamic and creative identity

that endeavors ‘to establish’ itself even more as the same par excellence: “To be I is, over and

beyond any individuation that can be derived from a system of references, to have identity as

one’s content. The I is not a being that always remains the same, but is the being whose

existing consists in identifying itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to

it. It is the primal identity, the primordial work of identification” (TI 6/36). This dynamic

process of identification takes place by directing oneself to the other than oneself in the world

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and by transforming the world through labor into a possession and ‘place’, or rather into an

‘environment’ to ‘live in’ and to ‘enjoy’: “The way of the I against the ‘other’ of the world

consists in sojourning, in identifying oneself by existing here at home with oneself [chez

soi]” (TI 7 /37). And this dwelling is in turn a jumping board for the I to conquer the world

and thus to transform its own being into ‘well-being’ (TI 79-158/107-183). This dynamic

identity that is driven from the inside expresses itself concretely in ‘individuality’, based on

specific characteristics, whereby the ‘I’ can likewise distinguish and separate itself from other

beings, and upon which external identity is constructed. The ‘I’ defines itself by delineating

itself. This corresponds to our daily experience and also to the phenomenological description

of diversity. We constantly stumble upon innumerable forms of difference – and thus of

individuality – between human beings. Here, the classic distinction is invariably used between

‘genus’ and ‘species’: “a being who is particular in his genus” (VA 97/110). One

distinguishes the particular, specific and unique within the more general, overarching genre,

which in turn is particular and special with respect to still more general and encompassing

genres. Here what we have in mind are place and date of birth, character or personality, sex,

colour of skin or form of the nose or the eyes, etc.: “There is individuation of human bodies,

but one can also individuate souls, by character, by tastes, by intellectual level, by good

qualities or by psychological faults” (VA 97/110).

1.2 “The tribal is not proscribed, it comprises many virtues”

However, there is not only an individual but also a collective identity whereby the human

person further specifies and defines itself. People are not solitary but social beings (Aristotle).

They indeed do not drop from the sky but are born. Through their lineage people belong to

groups with their own characteristics and habits. The first environment where people belong

is the family. Via the family one belongs to other groups, namely those of ethnicity and

nationality. The factual circumstances of birth determine to a large extent the group to which

we belong. Via ethnicity or nationality we are likewise embedded in networks of relationships

with their own specific economic, political, cultural and historical qualities. This

individuality, which distinguishes one group of people from another, is usually experienced as

‘natural’ on the basis of its pre-given objective character and also on the basis of the fact that

that objective identity usually has an established history. Upon closer inspection this

individuality more and more turns out to be the result of construction and development.

However this history may have taken place, this individuality is more and more experienced

as a participation in qualities, characteristics, habits and traditions that – often separately, but

certainly in their specific cohesion – differ from other particularities with their own

characteristics, value patterns and behaviors. Precisely in and through this belonging to

groups and communities, people develop their social identity. It would seem that this social

identity is of an external nature, but what is unique to humans is that they identify with it so

much so that they transform these communitarian forms of identity into internal forms of

identity and experience them as such. The differences between groups of people are, in other

words, traceable back to attributes, characteristics and qualities whereby they can be granted a

specific particularity: family, people, race, gender, culture ... Usually these specific

characteristics are united and ‘arranged’ into a cluster, with it own internal – whether or not

historically or artificially construed – cohesion, whereby people can be distinguished from

each other not only individually but also socially. We can call this particularity the ‘natural’

identity of groups and in this regard also label it as valuable and worthy of consideration, just

as Levinas states explicitly: “It is not that the tribal is proscribed; it comprises many virtues”

(VA 96/109). The tribal is not evil in any way whatsoever and must not be repressed or

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forbidden; it offers many possibilities and expresses itself, moreover, in a number of

laudatory qualities and virtues like immanent, warm solidarity within the ‘bond of fate’.

1.3 Significance and value of religious identity

As shown by this analysis, even the religious community to which one belongs – usually by

birth, unless if by conversion – falls under the social identity. Based on behaviors, rituals,

convictions and traditions, religion acquires an objective form that proffers to its participants a

particular identity that is recognizable both within and without, and makes a ‘difference’.

Levinas illustrates this in his reference to the ‘tribal’ by referring at the same time to the

identity-establishing significance of the divine election of the Jewish people. As the ‘chosen

people’ Israel experiences its ‘being set apart’ from other peoples as a source of value and

dignity, upon which its individuality precisely rests. Even when this election may not lead to

the haughty pretence of being ‘better’ than others, it still gives a special significance to the

existence of the people of Israel, out of which ensues an ineradicable feeling of self-worth.

Levinas points out expressly how the Bible is also the book of a people (VA 97) and how the

children of Israel, according to that Biblical tradition, are presented as the descendants of the

patriarchs. They receive the vocation and mission to substantiate being the chosen people by

keeping the covenant, by maintaining and studying the Mitzvoth of the Torah (cf. the Talmud

as a ‘unique’ form of Jewish thought). Hence Levinas affirms: “The children of Israel are

introduced as the descendants of the patriarchs. Consequently, the virtues of Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob, the glory of their relations to other men, are presented as very elevated” (VA

96/109). We likewise find Levinas’ reflections on this particular religious identity namely in

his so-called ‘Jewish’ works, which are collections of his numerous essays on specific Jewish

themes and his Talmudic commentaries: “Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism” (1962- 1976/1990); “Nine Talmudic Readings: Four Talmudic Readings – From the Sacred to the

Holy” (1968 & 1977/1990); “Beyond the Verse” (1992/1994); “In the Time of the Nations”

(1988/1994); “New Talmudic Readings” (1996/1999).

The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for Christians, Moslems and for all who confess

and practice a specific religious conviction in the bosom of a certain confessional or religious

community. Since the linguistic turn in philosophy and theology, the insight has grown that

the religious identity of the participants and of the religious community is not primarily, or at

least not only, constituted by the ‘official teachings’ or the doctrinal ‘essence’, but just as

essentially by the ‘symbolic order’ of signs and symbols, holy places and temples, rituals,

linguistic forms and all sorts of traditions, temporal ordering and feasts, etc. This stands in

contrast to the classic ‘modern’ thought that prefers to proceed from the idea of the cogito as a

pre-given essence, whereby the form, namely the word, would only be an accidental frame.

Postmodern thought acknowledges that the idea or content or mind as essence in itself are not

primary, but that these only exist and become real thanks to the word, the form, the body.

1.4 Criticism of multi-religious comparativism

In order to illustrate the importance of religious identity as a starting point for an honest and

realistic, and at the same time authentic, interreligious dialogue, we now formulate a critical

reflection on ‘multi-religious comparativism’. It lies in the extension of multi-cultural

comparativism and intends to approach the religious and confessional phenomenon without

any ideological bias or preference for a certain religion or persuasion. Supporters of

compartivism consider all religions (and persuasions) as reciprocally ‘equal’ and ‘equivalent’.

This view is rooted in the intellectual tradition of comparative philosophy inspired by the

Enlightenment. There, one proceeds from a scientific approach whereby one looks as

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objectively and neutrally as possible upon the manifestations and functions of different

religions. This comparativism is quite attractive in present-day pluralistic societies. It pretends

to respect the uniqueness and non-exchangeable identity of each different religion, and thus

not to reduce the other religion in one or the other brutal or subtle and covert manner to one’s

own confessional thought. Comparativism attracts because it does not give preferential

treatment to any religion. Diametrically in contrast to some monotheistic doctrines, which

pose the exclusive and necessary character of their own truth and confession as paths to

salvation, it does not start with the pretentious (to say the least) thesis that there is but one true

religion. By means of its approach, religious comparativism wants to avoid all forms of

fundamentalism, intolerance and ‘religious’ or ‘holy wars’, which very many religions have

been guilty of in the course of history. For the sake of peace, pluralists reject in principle

every axiological asymmetry between religions. They no longer accept exclusive truths. One

religion is not more right or better than another. It doesn’t make any difference whether you

reach salvation via this or that religious experience, denomination or confession.

Comparativists take on a neutral position whereby the difference in ‘the path to the divine’

becomes irrelevant. Or better, truth claims are not only deemed irrelevant but also dangerous,

precisely because they – fanatically driven – lead to violent conflicts and holy wars. But the

question then is whether a mere pluralistic, comparative approach to religions in its turn does

not lead to a denial of religious identity.

Indeed, a mere business-like, ‘external’ and neutral comparative arrangement with regard

to religions has its unrelenting reverse-side. The thesis of the comparativists leads

inadvertently to relativism and indifference or syncretism, wrapped or veiled in the interest

for ‘other’ religions (and cultures): religious exoticism, a today fashionable form of idolizing

of the other. At the same time, such a relativizing arrangement presupposes a so-called

objective and distanced observation, as already mentioned. But religious comparativism

thereby presupposes something that is in fact impossible, namely that those who perform the

comparative study of different religions stand entirely outside the comparison, and thus as

outsiders can explore, describe and compare religions with each other. The question, however,

is whether such a neutral and objective outsider, namely the ‘scientist of religion’, does exist.

Indeed, ideologically speaking, doesn’t one already have an assumed standpoint, or at least a

conviction, albeit not reflexive or scientifically founded? Isn’t total ‘non-involvement’

impossible? And if one pretends such a neutrality, isn’t it conceivable that one risks

introducing one’s own ideological or religious preference, which one does have inadvertently,

into one’s comparative approach to religions (and persuasions)? Such a move is no less

ideologically manipulative, but more indirect and subtle, and thus less subject to verification

and critique. Everyone, even the comparative scientist of religion, is already an involved party

in the approach to and comparison of religions. There is no abstract universal, transcendent

standpoint possible, but only a particular ‘biased’ position from one’s own religious or

ideological particularity and identity, in which one is de facto rooted. And even if such an

external approach were possible, then it would be uninteresting for interreligious dialogue.

For such a comparative observer remains literally an ‘outsider’ in the sense that he or she has

no feeling – or rather desires not to have any feeling – for the described religions in their

diversity, because one desires to remain neutral. But then such a comparative observer cannot

likewise succeed in touching and expressing the visceral identity of religions as the ‘insiders’

experience it. We must therefore decide that multi-religious comparativism not only impedes

but also makes interreligious dialogue impossible, even though it seems at first sight to offer

an interesting entry to that dialogue. And even if a scientific ‘multi-religious’ exploration

were possible, this would not yet be ‘inter-religious’ dialogue. Only out of a real and

developed identity can a true – honest and realistic - interreligious dialogue come to be, even

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if such an identity in its turn is far from sufficient, as will be made explicit in the second part

of our essay.

1.5 Reverse-side of ‘the same’: “dialogue of immanence”

Up to this point, we have only spoken positively about the significance of the same and the

self for interreligious dialogue. At the very beginning, however, we announced the ambiguity

of the idea of identity (the same and the self). We would now like to enter into this and reflect

on the implications of this thought on identity for the possibility or difficulty, or even

impossibility, of interreligious dialogue.

Levinas links the idea of the same not only with the self but also with the idea of

universality and truth. For that he goes back to Greek philosophy, which is according to him

an answer to the fundamental experience of plurality with its accompanying forms of contrast,

conflict and violence. The situation from which reality must be redeemed is that of “the

scission of being into the same and the other” (TH 56/13). This rupture brings along division

and opposition, out of which ensue violence and war. According to Greek philosophy,

plurality as a source of violence manifests itself in an exceptional way in ‘opinion’ (doxa),

“recognised as the sole enemy because it takes advantage of credulity and ignorance” (QLT

76/34). The fickle irrationality of opinion, which precisely on the basis of its irrationality –

thus when it is at its best – radicalises itself into fanaticism, also finds its expression and way

in forms of religiosity and religion that celebrate that ‘lived-through’ participation and

exaltation in the sacred. Translated to our times, we could state that opinion dresses itself in

the phenomenon of the many religions, stronger still in the many-headed monster of all sorts

of religious fundamentalisms that claim, or rather proclaim viscerally, that they embody the

essence, the flesh and soul of their religion purely and with full conviction. The ‘clash of

religions’ and the wars of religion reach back precisely to this. Hence Greek philosophy

arrives at the insight and conviction that the plurality of the same and the other, which carries

in its wake the irreconcilable opposition of irrational opinions and religions, must be

overcome by bringing back plurality to a unity wherein differences disappear, or rather are

‘sublated’ (in the sense of Hegel’s dialectic ‘Aufhebung’). And the possible path towards such

unity lies in knowledge and the search for the truth, or rather for universal truth that

reconciles all differences. The clarity of knowing that in essence can only be, or at least

should be and become, an absolute knowing, saves humans from the demons of irrationality

and violence. Only by means of knowing – knowledge of the one truth, for truth is always

truth for everyone – do humans conquer the evil heteronomy of confusing multiplicity and

find the way to freedom and self-determination on the basis of reason (PhI 166/48).

According to this view, the differences that confront reason are not ultimate, but no

less original. Being separated from each other is a decay, a sort of ‘original sin’, which makes

necessary the redemption of unification, or rather reunification, wherein separatedness is

sublated and the original unity is restored: “seeking the return to and the fusion with Unity”

(TI 76/102). Unhappy plurality and its contradictions can – and must – be surpassed by

striving for, or rather by returning to, an all-encompassing unity, a totality wherein all are

reunited and literally made ‘one’ again. “Peace is the return of the multiple to unity, in

conformity with the Platonic or the Neo-Platonic idea of the One” (AT 138/131). Levinas sees

in this the permanent and stubborn return of idealism as the path to salvation: “the ancient

privilege of unity which is affirmed from Parmenides to Spinoza and Hegel” (TI 75/102).

Through reason, or rather, through obedience to reason, the ‘I’ finds liberation from alienation

and slavery and can return to its origin, the original unity, which is at the same time the future

and destination of the ‘I’.

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As an extension, Plato states that a peaceful encounter between people is only possible

through the mediation of ideas. Conversation face-à-face is only possible when the

conversation partners share ideas with each other, and it is only possible to share these ideas

when they are true and thus are valid both for the one as well as for the other. This leads Plato

to the insight that the soul of the speakers must be related to the ideas and thus that the

conversation partners are indeed associated by sharing in the same world of ideas.

Conversation partners attune themselves with each other and can strive for unanimity because

they are related to the same world of ideas. Perhaps unity cannot yet be achieved today, and

perhaps that unanimity will still entail much effort, but one day it will become a reality: the

utopia of and hope for universality that unites and of which the current, still deficient

universality is a prefiguration.

Upon closer inspection, the conversation of the one with the other is, according to this

view, actually a conversation of the soul with itself (TI 43/71), and thus an embodiment of the

same based on the reduction of the other to the same, namely the one. Through one’s internal

conversation with oneself, one actually already knows the other even before the encounter

with the other. Consequently that encounter with the other is actually no longer really

necessary. Such an encounter remains undoubtedly pleasant and interesting, but it is literally

tailored to one’s own interests. The other is an ‘alter-ego’ in the sense that the ‘I’ and the

other are each other’s equals and also interchangeable, precisely because in their ‘reason’ they

are inspired by the same striving for truth. Through the reasonable search for and sharing of

true ideas, or rather of ideas that are considered to be true and thus can and must be tested as

to their truth, conversation partners become perfectly reciprocal. This brings about a sociality

as “the unity of the multiple consciousnesses that have entered into the same thought in which

their reciprocal alterity is suppressed” (DVI 217/141).

In his already mentioned synthesis ‘Dialogue’, Levinas labels this reciprocity between

conversation partners based on ideas that can be shared as a “dialogue of immanence” (DVI

214/139). By exchanging thoughts with each other in reasonableness and truth, the ‘I’ actually

returns to itself in its dialogue with the other. Dialogue is then nothing else than an ‘inner

discourse’, ultimately the ‘immanence of the self’. The ‘I’ finds in its soul – in its reason – the

insights that are also carried by the other in itself. That is the reason why they can

communicate with each other, not because they stand before each other as the same and the

other but because through their ‘being reasonable’, namely their being attuned to ideas and

their truth, they are actually already the same and thus one: “this exchange of ideas will hold

ultimately within the single soul, in a single consciousness, in the cogito that Reason remains”

(DVI /141). In this regard the soul does not ultimately need the other at all to learn something

new; it finds everything already in itself. Or as the Greek adage goes: ‘gnothi seauton’,

descend into yourself and find the whole world in its intelligibility, in other words as object of

investigation and striving for reliable knowledge. And everyone can develop this knowledge

because all people are essentially the same as bearers of reason that stands open to all things.

This is “the path of predilection of Western humanism”, “pure love of truth and intelligibility”

(DVI 217/141).

This leads Levinas to the following conclusion on the ‘dialogue of immanence”: “This

is the famous dialogue that is called to stop violence by bringing the interlocutors to reason,

establishing peace in unanimity, and suppressing proximity in coincidence” (DVI /141). The

radicalness of this view on dialogue is that truth as the rationality of the universal idea not

only precedes dialogue, but also forms the condition of possibility for conversation (DVI

219/143).

1.6 Identity as pitfall for interreligious dialogue

9

Applied to religions and their mutual dialogue, this can only take place when one bridges the

differences and contradictions by striving for the ‘universal religion’ or ‘universal religiosity’

that underlies and precedes the particular forms in which the various religions, in their origins

and histories, find in fact their explanation but likewise their non-essential coincidence. Hence

the efforts in some interreligious theologies to arrive at the one underlying ‘metaphysical’

view on the essence or the ‘eidos’ of religion tout court, in the conviction that the differences

between religions are not only relative or accidental but also impede the dialogue. Precisely

for that reason they must be surpassed by a universal religion whose essential characteristics

one attempts to distill. Those characteristics appear in all religions, although they have

acquired their historical incarnation in different forms. Since these forms are accidental and

thus incidental, they need to be relativized and raised to a ‘higher unity’ of universal

religiosity that binds all people beyond all boundaries, contradictions and conflicts that are

caused by particular religions. This inclination for a transcendent, singular religion and

religiosity likewise appears in religious comparativism mentioned above. Indeed, it considers

every religious conceptualization, every concrete view on God, as too limited a view, which

must be surpassed by a more general perspective onto the divine and the ‘holy’, without

filling this in further. If pluralists were to make this ‘holy’ more concrete, they would no

longer be able to state that all religions and all religious experiences have a connection to the

‘one, true divine’. Actually, pluralists consider particular religions as approaches that are

‘outmoded’ and that need to be ‘superseded’. They go back to manifestations of the

transcendent and universal divine that are contingent and historical, time-bound, space-bound

and culture-bound. The transcendent and universal divine not only surpasses these

manifestations but is of itself in a form that cannot be expressed. Or to put it in a Kantian

way: pluralism reduces the different religions to ways of acknowledging and worshipping

‘phenomenal’ gods – God as ‘phenomenon’ – while God as ‘noumenon’ – the noumenal

reality of God – permanently remains inaccessible.

At this point we stumble upon a paradox. Even though one wants to accord the

conversation between the different concrete religions a philosophical or metaphysical

foundation, this vision still signifies the end of that conversation. Upon closer inspection, no

mention is made of irreducible partners that enter into conversation with each other out of

their separatedness and alterity. There is no ‘other’ who stands before ‘me’. One can only

encounter another in a superior unity that relativizes or even sublates the same (the ‘I’) and

the other (the other) because in their diversity one also sees the source of contradiction and

conflict, and thus of the horror of religious wars, which we already discussed above. If we

want true peace then we must – as the saying goes – leave behind the diversity of religions

and their doctrinal, symbolic and practical systems (of teachings, laws and prescriptions,

ritual modalities and traditions) for a new universal system of meaning that is worked out

philosophically and tested as to its truth.

According to Levinas, however, this means that there is no longer any real dialogue

between various religions, since conversation is only possible against a common –

philosophical, metaphysical – background. However particular they may be, religions in the

end are not irreducible to each other. A conversation can then only signify that they find each

other in that which binds them commonly, on the basis of the common search for truth, the

one truth. Such a conversation only makes sense when – to make a comparison with the

‘Weltethos’ of Küng – it searches for a ‘Weltreligion’ that binds all people with each other

beyond all differences and contradictions and conflicts. Such a unity, such a bond is perhaps

not yet meant for today; but someday – in the distant future, or perhaps even

‘eschatologically’ in the other, new world – such a unity can come to be whereby ultimate

peace also becomes possible: a peace which we can already strive for now by discovering and

developing each other’s commonality. But once again, upon closer inspection, this is no

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dialogue since one is ultimately only in conversation with oneself just as the others are

attuned to the same. Or rather, the paradox is still greater because through the struggle against

violence that ensues from plurality, in this case from religious plurality, one ends up in a new

form of violence. To put it laconically: the struggle against violence brings about violence. By

striving towards unity and identity, the same, one tames the other so much so that the one

becomes part of the same. And that leads to the denial or even the destruction of the other,

which according to Levinas is the core of violence, in this case the violence between

religions. One acknowledges the value and the truth of the ‘other’ religion insofar as they can

be reduced to the value and truth of one’s own religion. At first glance, perhaps attention is

paid and acknowledgement given to the ‘other’ religion, but upon closer inspection it is only a

hidden form of reduction of the other to oneself, to the same, to the universal truth, of which

one pretends to be the eminent incarnation: the true fold to which others in the end must

‘come home’.

2. ETHICAL ASYMMETRY: DIALOGUE OF TRANSCENDENCE

It is precisely this violence that flows forth from the struggle against the violence of plurality

– and the diversity between religions – which bring Levinas to develop, entirely in line with

‘dialogical thought’ (Rosenzweig, Buber, Marcel), the ‘dialogue of transcendence’ as the

foundation for every conversation, and thus as foundation for an authentic interreligious

dialogue. His entire philosophical journey can be described as an immense attempt at

developing a thought wherein plurality is not a source of violence, but rather a source of non-

violent conversation that in its turn forms the condition of possibility for a real and unreserved

and at the same time peaceful relationship between civilizations and religions. Above, we saw

how the entry via ‘the same’ – one’s own identity – is necessary in interreligious conversation

and offers possibilities, but also stumbles upon serious boundaries. And those boundaries

precisely have to do, as we also saw, with the identity of the self and the same. Even though

the same is both the factual as well as the indispensable starting point for interhuman

conversation, and thus for interreligious dialogue, still it cannot be an endpoint. A surpassing

is needed to ‘the other than the same’, without this other being swallowed up in the same.

For Levinas, not only the same, and the ‘I’ as eminent expression of the same, but also

the alterity of the other – the ‘unique’ other – forms the basis or condition of possibility for

every interhuman, and for every interreligious dialogue. Or rather, it is not only about the

phenomenology of the alterity of the other, but also about the relationship of the same with

the other, or more correctly it is about the quality of that relationship, namely the ethical

quality. We now would like to shed light on this double dimension of the ethical asymmetry

between the self and the other, whereby the phenomenological (anthropological) and ethical

conditions for an authentic interreligious dialogue are highlighted.

2.1. Reversal of perspective: from the same (the ‘I’) to the other (the other)

Central in the work of Levinas stands his thought on the other, or rather on the radical alterity

of the other. His ideas in that regard are generally known. In this alterity lie both a negative

and a positive dimension. The negative dimension lies in the unknowability of the other. Even

though we already observe the other and we know the other through its manifestation, the

other never coincides with its manifestation. The other is always more and different, or rather

is irreducible to her or his ‘appearance’ in all its forms and modalities. The other is literally

‘invisible’ (TI 6/34). The other presents herself or himself to me as a ‘withdrawing’

movement, or rather as ‘withdrawal in the withdrawal’, a never ending ‘retreat’ or ‘self-

11

emptying’ (kenosis): an infinitizing infinite. The face of the other is the epiphany of an

unsurpassable enigma and mystery, and therefore ‘holy’ or literally ‘sanctus’, separated and

not accessible. Therefore no ‘image’ can manifest the other in its otherness. The other is

transcendence, beyond the appearance!

On the other hand the alterity of the other has a clearly positive meaning. The other

reveals one’s otherness, and unicity, through the nakedness of her or his eyes looking at us

(the eyes are the most naked part of the face), and through speaking – not just objectively but

as invocation: ‘You’, even if the other remains silent. The face of the other is expression,

irreducible self-expression, not based on references and characteristics but from within. To

understand this correctly, the distinction Levinas makes between ‘difference’ and ‘alterity’ is

necessary. At first glance, it would seem that difference is the way in which the alterity of the

other presents itself to me. The other appears indeed thanks to all sorts of characteristic

elements that distinguish her or him from others, and thus also from me. Think of

physiognomy and the graphic form of the face, the shape of the body and the way it moves,

character and personality, relational and social network, professional status, cultural and

religious background, etc.: characteristics we already spoke of in the first part. The alterity of

the other, however, is more radical in the sense that it not only surpasses the difference of the

other but likewise breaks through it. That the other looks at me and addresses me means that

the face breaks through its appearance, and thus through its differences and characteristics.

The other is the one who speaks to me, before I know the other, in other words before I can

qualify the other through her or his attributes and ‘specific individualities’. My knowledge of

the other is not a condition of possibility for my ‘radical experience’ of the other. Therefore

Levinas can affirm in a paradoxical way that it is not difference that makes alterity, but

alterity that makes difference: “Ce n’est pas du tout la différence qui fait l’altérité, c’est

l’altérité qui fait la différence” (VA 92/106). The alterity of the other is also the condition

which allows us to understand the differences of the other, even though her or his alterity can

never be reduced to these differences.

With this phenomenology of the alterity of the other, which for Levinas is precisely

the face of the other, we have not yet reached what he calls ‘the dialogue of transcendence’.

The face is simply the revelation of radical transcendence, namely of the irreducible

uniqueness that surpasses every genre and every specificity, and in this regard the necessary

condition for the possibility of dialogue, or rather for a dialogue that is a true dialogue and not

a disguised monologue with oneself. But more is needed for such a dialogue, namely a

relationship whereby the self as the same involves itself with the other as the radical other.

This then is no longer about a ‘natural’ but an ‘ethical’ relationship. We can label this ethical

relationship as the sufficient condition for the possibility of conversation, in the understanding

that this ethical relationship precedes the factual conversation. In his study on ‘Dialogue’

Levinas makes use of different expressions: “a dialogue before dialogue”, “an original and

foregoing dialogue”, “a prior dialogue: the encounter with the other”, or in more biblical

terms: “In the beginning there was Relation” (Buber) (DVI 224/146). In this ethical dialogue,

or rather encounter, a proximity is realized that does not sublate but deepens the distance.

With this we stumble upon the global design of Levinas’s magnum opus ‘Totality and

Infinity’. There he sketches not only the two poles, the same and the other, but also the

relationship between them. He thereby begins to search for a relationship that is a true

relationship and that at the same time does not sublate the separation and the distinction

between them. Concretely, he searches for a non-fusional and non-suffocating relationship

between the same and the other, for a bond wherein both partners remain separate from each

other (TI 8/38; 75/102): “a relation in which the terms absolve themselves from the relation,

remain absolute within the relation” (TI 35-36/64). And this distance-in-proximity takes place

in and through the ethical relationship as the conversation ‘face-to-face’: “I do find in the

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other a point that is absolute – not by amalgamating with the other, but in speaking with him”

(TI 23/52). Levinas resumes this thesis in ‘Dialogue’ as follows: ‘Simultaneously, in dialogue

[as encounter with the other] an absolute distance between the I and the You is hollowed out,

absolutely separated by the inexpressible secret of their intimacy, each being unique in its

kind as I and as You, each one absolutely other in relation to the other, without common

measure or domain available for some sort of coincidence” (DVI 221/144). It is about time

that we make the ethical relationship between the same and the other more explicit.

2.2. Respecting and acknowledging the other

That the other comes to me and expresses herself or himself to me means that the natural

asymmetry, proceeding from the self (as the same) towards the other (the other) is reversed

into an ethical asymmetry. The priority of the same in the natural asymmetry is turned inside

out with an eye to the priority of the other. That is why Levinas speaks of the ‘authority’ and

the ‘mastership’ of the other. By means of speaking to me, the other not only expresses

herself or himself but also ‘teaches’ me. And the first content of this teaching is the other’s

otherness. In this way by her or his epiphany the other orientates the dialogue. In this regard

the speaking of the other can in no way whatsoever be reduced to one or the other form of

Socratic maieutics (TI 146/171). The word and the first content of this word, namely the

alterity of the other, comes to me from elsewhere and contributes more to me than what I find

and contain in myself (TI 22/51): “the absolutely new is the other” (TI 194/219). The face

reveals the other as my superior: “To approach the other in conversation… is to receive from

the other beyond the capacity the I” (TI 22/51).

Hence the ethical relationship to the other begins as obedience and listening: “the

passivity of listening” (DVI 226/148) and “learning”. Here, wisdom is not based primarily on

knowing by means of descending into the self and finding the whole of reality reflected there.

On the contrary, it goes back to an absolute not-knowing. It then takes place as the turning

towards the other who must ‘make me wise’, meaning to say must reveal the ‘other’ to me as

the ‘new’: the source of true ‘wonder’ (DVI 226/148). Hence Levinas states that the ethical

relationship to the other begins as ‘respect’ and ‘acknowledgement’ (EN 48-49/43). So that

this acknowledgement is not understood wrongly, we must point out that this

acknowledgement of the other is not based on ‘re-cognition’. One often proceeds

thoughtlessly on the assumption that acknowledgement is based on the recognition of the

other, in the sense that one ‘recognizes’ things in the other that one also finds again in oneself,

and thus on the basis of that which can already be found in oneself. On the basis of this

relatedness (in the soul) one can then give acknowledgement to the other as an ‘equal’ –

precisely because one is a ‘soulmate’ through that which slumbers in the depths of our own

souls. Such an acknowledgement, however, which remains seeing the other as an ‘alter-ego’,

does not do justice at all to the radical alterity of the other. As radical other, and thus not

identifiable with known and shared facets, the other ‘signifies’ by its very epiphany – its face

– an unconditional appeal to be acknowledged and confirmed as other.

It is this fundamental ethical principle of ‘acknowledgement’ – appreciation – that also

brings along knowledge of the other. In Totality and Infinity Levinas expresses this by means

of stating that justice comes before truth: “la justice précède la vérité” – “truth presupposes

justice” (TI 62/90). In this regard, what is implied in the acknowledgement is also a respectful

knowledge of the other. The ethical relationship with the other, which is not only sensitive to

the other but also tries to do justice to the other, forms the condition for authentic knowledge

of the other as other, in other words without the other being reduced to the same – to ‘myself’

–in the sense that what is interesting and exciting about the other would only be that which is

fitting to me.

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Applied to interreligious dialogue, this means that such an encounter can never be

ethically authentic when it is not based on a fundamental ethical respect for the irreducible

and unique alterity of the other that transcends all belonging to a ‘reducing genre’ or kind. It

is only on the basis of this fundamental ethical attitude that an open-minded interreligious

dialogue as a real learning can exist, without prejudices or hidden agendas. It is only on the

basis of the acknowledgement of the radical, irreducible alterity of the conversation partner

that the old and new demons of apologetic recuperation or exclusion and (terrorist)

persecution can be unmasked, and rendered harmless.

To discover respect, justice and acknowledgement as the ethical basis for an authentic

interreligious dialogue implies also that this dialogue cannot be based on an external

‘multireligious exploration’ by an objective and neutral observer. In other words, we must

make a clear distinction between a ‘multireligious’ and an ‘interreligious dialogue’. For a real

dialogue, partners are needed who are involved in their religion and who want to enter into

conversation with ‘insiders’ of other religions. In contrast with ‘religion from without’, we

can call this ‘religion from within’, just like ‘dialogue from within’. Then we are talking of

involved partners ‘from within’, meaning to say from their own religious conviction and

tradition. We cannot talk of true dialogue when people only talk about religions. On the

contrary, it is only when they do not talk about, but talk to, each other – from their identity

and alterity – that an authentic interreligious dialogue can be installed. And it is precisely

thanks to the fundamental ethical attitude of respect and acknowledgement, on the basis of

justice (‘doing justice to the other’), that interreligious dialogue as encounter and dialogue can

take place.

Since it is about a dialogue of irreducible and separated partners, such a dialogue can

only take place as a form of ‘learning’ from and through each other. This learning, in its turn,

presupposes an honest discussion: not only listening but also speaking, questioning and

answering. Because one wants to be ‘kind’ to the other as other or stranger, the risk exists that

no true dialogue is happening in the sense that the partners indulge each other or lapse into

general pronouncements of goodwill. In such a dialogue without debate, there is politeness

but no true acknowledgement of each other’s irreducible unicity. Then the dialogue is not

about differences of opinion, for instance regarding God and the gods (and idolatry), or

regarding the way in which religion deals with religious freedom and human rights. It is about

a ‘pussyfoot dialogue’, one that is more concerned about the dialogue in the dialogue itself.

One can thereby focus on the ‘common substantiation’ of projects of solidarity, thus

conveniently avoiding every attempt at substantive confrontation. Circumspection in

interreligious dialogue, however, is dangerous in the sense that the apparently innocent,

genteel and affable dialogue is more cruel and sarcastic than a serious debate. Religious wars

– and other wars – come about not so much because debates are too sharp but because they

are lacking. Hence the importance of direct interchange whereby one has the courage not only

to pose questions but also to question the other, and to allow oneself to be questioned by the

other, however embarrassing and perhaps even painful that confrontation may be. When

participants in interreligious dialogue discuss certain themes, they must not only present their

own views, but must also allow the other to critically question their views. For that purpose it

can be useful that one questions the other about how the other understands one’s own view,

what questions and resistances it evokes, what resonances are discovered, but also wherein

the deeper contradiction is found. A dialogue ‘to-and-fro’ can thereby come about that reflects

what Levinas perceives in Rabbinic discursiveness, namely an ‘unending commentary’ of a

commentary on the commentary, that again elicits a new commentary. Or as Rosenzweig

describes true dialogue: the one speaks, and the other answers differently – to which the one

then again answers differently....

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Such a conversation – or conversation-upon-conversation – happens best without too

much rhetoric, for instance without seeking for ‘beautiful arguments’ that give the impression

of ‘going along’ with the conversation partner, while those arguments in reality are intended

to lead the other via a detour to the ‘grand truth’ of one’s own cherished conviction and view

(on God, meaning, salvation, etc.). In line with what Levinas calls the ‘anti-rhetoric’ of

Rabbinical ‘direct discourse’ (SaS 154/181), Levinas warns repeatedly against the dangers of

rhetoric: “the art that is supposed to enable us to master language” (HS 203/135). This art of

‘beautiful speech’ or eloquence (HS 207/139) can corrupt the ‘face-to-face’ nature of true

dialogue. This applies especially to conversations that are involved with our search for

meaning through religion. Because the interreligious dialogue focuses on questions of sense

and their specific incarnations in religious forms, it becomes necessary to make much use of

metaphors – and thus of rhetoric – in order to convey the trans-empirical field of religious

meaning. The risk of this metaphorical rhetoric is that one tries to convince the interlocutor by

means of flattering and charming the other: rhetoric, thus, as a form of linguistic magic (HS

/207-208/138-139). And as in all rhetoric, one ends up in the temptation to approach the other

with a ruse – but that ruse is at the same time embellished in beautiful and elevated religious

language (DL 356/277). With Levinas we thus argue for the use of a sufficiently sober and

direct language in interreligious dialogue, avoiding in this way the misleading ideological use

of all to grandiloquent religious discourse. One is then no longer concerned about the art of

speaking and convincing but about the encounter with the other as other, inspired by a sincere

acknowledgement of and respect for the other.

Only thus does interreligious dialogue develop itself into a “relationship between

freedoms that neither limit nor deny one another, but reciprocally affirm one another” (EN

48/30). To show respect is to bow down before the other and to acknowledge the other as our

master. But it cannot mean to subject oneself to the other as a slave. Humiliation would take

from the interlocutors the very possibility of showing respect to the other, and making

themselves respected by the other. Acknowledgement by submission would annul the dignity

of the interlocutor, through which respect and acknowledgement have validity. Respect is a

relationship between equals in and through the asymmetric reciprocity of the dialogical

encounter (EN 48-49/30-31).

2.3. Temptation to dialogical violence

This critical approach of reciprocal acknowledgement in interreligious dialogue, and in every

dialogue and encounter, makes it clear that respect for and acknowledgement of the other are

not at all self-evident. On the contrary, at times it seems as if lack of respect and non-

acknowledgement of the other are easier and more ordinary. In any case they go hand in hand

with trial and error, and they are not guaranteed once and for all. That all has to do with the

ethical value of respect and acknowledgement: they are not based on a spontaneous

inclination towards questions but rather on a fundamental choice to attune oneself to the other

as other and not to lock oneself up in one’s own immanence, namely in the conversation with

oneself (the dialogue of immanence). The ethical recalcitrance of interhuman encounter and

dialogue, and thus also of interreligious dialogue, thus deserves our full attention.

Levinas qualifies the confrontation with the other as a ‘traumatic experience’. The

other breaks into my existence and identity as a stranger. I experience the other as the ‘extra-

ordinary’, as something that turns the order of my identity upside down. Entering into a

relationship with the other, or rather entering into an ethically qualitative relationship with the

other, is then not evident. By the fact that the other comes to me ‘from elsewhere’, I am not

prepared for it and I am not spontaneously inclined to let myself be involved with the other.

This resistance against reaching out to the other as other has everything to do with the fact

15

that the self as the same par excellence is marked by a natural, healthy selfishness: a being

concerned with its own being within its being (Heidegger). We already pointed this out in the

first part: the self is marked by the ‘conatus essendi’ (Spinoza) of an identity maintaining and

developing itself. It is precisely this naturally egocentric ‘I’ that, in spite of itself, without

asking for it nor desiring it, is affected by the face of the other. We always seem to rejoice at

entering into dialogue with the other, but do we actually desire this? Do we not also display a

strong resistance, which dissuades us from effectively becoming involved with the other? For

when we become involved with the other who ‘comes to us’, our identity, the calmness of our

own individuality – our difference – is, to put it simply, undermined. The appearance of the

other sows unrest into our existence, while we actually only desire to be happy and not to be

disturbed by anything or anyone. On the level of our relationships with other convictions and

religions, this means – if we are honest – that we spontaneously give preference to our own

tradition, culture and religion wherein we feel safe and at home. From our ‘attempt at being’

we defend spontaneously and primarily our own identity, namely ‘our own people first’, ‘our

own God first’, and ‘our own religion first’ – to say it in a rather rude way.

That is why Levinas speaks about the ‘temptation to violence’ that likewise marks

encounter and dialogue. We should not forget that the risk of violence also goes hand in hand

with our natural, healthy care for our own identity and thus with our distinct philosophical or

religious individuality. Confronted with the ‘disturbance of order’ brought about by the

epiphany of the other – and those who literally ‘think otherwise’ and ‘believe differently’ –

we discover in ourselves a double inclination, as expressions of the same ‘attempt at being’.

Either we desire to turn ourselves away from the other by means of excluding, rejecting,

persecuting or even destroying the other, or we attempt to reduce the other to our own

individuality, our own particular identity. It is thus possible that out of self-interest, or fear

and self-defence, or out of self-certainty regarding one’s own superiority and ‘ultimate value

and truth’, one rejects the dialogue with the religious other because one finds the other

superfluous, or because one finds the other too threatening (although one glosses over this

fear under the guise of the irrelevance of the dialogue). Or one may be prepared for such a

dialogue but only if it is to one’s own advantage. One is then prepared to learn from the other,

but this is not a learning as we have sketched above. It is rather a utilitarian learning: ‘What

can I learn from the other that is interesting for me’. It cannot be denied that interreligious

dialogue can also offer advantages to the conversation partners in the sense that they learn

about themselves in and through the conversation and can enrich themselves via the other.

But if this is the first and last goal of dialogue then it simply concerns a selfish dialogue that

reduces the other religion into a function and instrument of one’s own identity and religion.

Then there is no longer an acknowledgement of the irreducible alterity of the other. If a

religious other is only appreciated because the other serves to confirm and reinforce our

identity, then, according to Levinas, we end up in one or the other form of (philosophical-

ideological or religious) ethnocentrism and even racism. Then what remains is a recognition

of myself in the other, which is thus a reduction of the other to the same: a form of violence,

even though this violence is invisible precisely because is couched and veiled in ‘greedy

interested learning’. A similar selfish, reductive approach can also be found in the way in

which interreligious dialogue is sometimes seen as a survival strategy in the sense that in and

through that dialogue one attempts to safeguard one’s own threatened existence and survival,

certainly when one forms a ‘religious minority’ in a turbulent, threatening social and political

context. Even this motivation is understandable, but cannot be the ultimate ethically viable

motive and dynamism of interreligious dialogue.

2.4. Dialogical shivering

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This demonstrates that both interhuman and interreligious dialogue can only take place

humanely when both interlocutors go through a crisis, which in its turn displays two sides. On

the one hand, there is the tendency to run away from the other precisely because the other as

other disturbs our ‘immanent order’. On the other hand, in and through that temptation arises

the awareness that we should not be indifferent or try to escape or try to bring the other under

our control. This means that the fundamental ethical structure of a real (interreligious)

dialogue begins with the inclination or the temptation to exclude the other (which is called

exclusivism in the context of interreligious and interfaith dialogue) or to reduce the other to

ourselves (which is called inclusivism) and at the same time – from the same origin –

realizing that this exclusion or reduction is not allowed. With Levinas we can call this the

scrupulousness and the unease on the basis of dialogue. Dialogue does not begin with a great,

spontaneous magnanimity that is bestowed ‘with all pleasure’ unto the other. Dialogue, and

thus also interreligious encounter and dialogue, begins with an important unease, with a

‘gêne’, an embarrassment, precisely because one is brought to a quandary by the epiphany of

the other. The most original ethical moment of the conversation with a real ‘other’ does not

consist in doing something, but in not doing something, namely in withholding or holding

back (‘se retenir’) our natural ‘attempt at being’ and avoiding all drive and energy with regard

to the other. The ethical ‘fait primitif’ of the dialogue is neither magnanimity nor sympathy

nor empathy, but a dynamism of ‘restraint’ and ‘shivering’, namely utter cautiousness and

carefulness, fearful in all our advancing self-certainty of doing injustice to the other: “the

same prevented from coinciding with itself, at odds, torn up from its rest, between sleep and

insomnia, panting, shivering” (AE 86/68). The moment that interhuman and interreligious

dialogue ethically ‘founds’ consists in ‘something of nothing’, namely in the always

vulnerable ‘scruple’ that lodges itself in the spontaneous movement of the establishment,

defence and unfolding of one’s own identity or particularity, differing from other

particularities. An ethically qualitative dialogue begins with the suspension of all naturalness

with which we approach the other, the foreign partner in the dialogue, ‘smugly’ and self-

assuredly. An authentic dialogue does not begin with self-confident enthusiasm but with a

remarkable form of ‘hesitation’ whereby one suppresses and forces back oneself, out of fear

that in the dialogue one could inflict violence onto the other. Or put differently still, dialogue

begins with the decision ‘not to kill’ the other, thereby responding to the commandment that

is expressed as an appeal by the face of the other: ‘thou shall not kill’ – ‘thou shall not include

(assimilate) or exclude (reject, destroy) the other (killing has many forms and faces…).

Precisely this shivering (frémissement) is the beginning of the wisdom of love. The

initially negative ‘restraint’, with which the dialogue with the other commences and with

which one decides not to kill (lock up or assimilate, exclude or exterminate) the other,

develops itself into a positive dynamics of acknowledgement. And this acknowledgement of

the other as ‘work’, or better as ‘work in progress’, implies positively and progressively a

responsibility for the other, in the sense that out of my particularity the ‘I’ is faced with the

task of caring for the other so that the other can live out and substantiate its being-other. This

can even imply that we enter into the skin of the other in order to be able to discover – as seen

from the eyes of the other – how we are or have been, or always can be, so violent towards the

other, even in the actual – interpersonal and interreligious – dialogue and learning.

2.5. Dialogical proximity

Hence identity, or that which we called in the first part with Levinas ‘the tribal’, can never be

the endpoint. It is only a beginning, which moreover must be surpassed by the ethical

asymmetry of the acknowledgement of the other. That which is humane in the ethical sense of

the word only takes place when we reach ‘beyond the tribal’ – beyond our own identity – to

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discover in the stranger our brother: “the moment in which fraternity attains its full sense”

(VA 96/109). It only becomes problematic when this individuality, which is coupled with

difference, begins to count as the first and final word about value – the surplus or inferior

value – of persons, groups, cultures, religions and worldviews. According to Levinas, this

appreciation or depreciation of ‘characteristic difference’ is precisely the source of a racist

position. That which is ‘humane’ is the awareness that we must take a next step further than

the particular or the ‘tribal’: “apaiser le tribal: scandaleuse exigence” – “to appease the tribal,

scandalous exigency” (VA 96/109). We can only evade ethnocentrism and racism if we direct

ourselves ‘beyond the tribal’ (“au-delà du tribal”). The radical other is marked by a

foreignness that cannot be annulled. The other has tribal bonds with no one. Levinas even

depicts it even more strongly by stating: “I love not the same blood but the human alterity

which is beyond all parentage” (VA 100/112).

As an illustration, we must refer to the way in which Levinas explicitly interprets

‘Jewish identity’ – an expression of what he calls ‘the tribal’– as an ‘open identity’, meaning

to say as an identity that needs transcendence. In Israel’s history, the children of Israel are

presented as descendants of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This origin and history

likewise determine their identity. But according to the Jew, Levinas, it is a crucial moment in

the development of ethical consciousness when the Bible links the awareness of human

dignity with the understanding of being a ‘child of God’, and no longer with the notion of

being a ‘child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’. Levinas calls this the “filiality of

transcendence”, “a superior form of piety, above any tribal link” (VA 96/109). Levinas also

evokes how in the texts of Isaiah the Israelites call themselves ‘sons of God’ and how in their

liturgy the expression ‘our Father’ appears time and again. To be sure, the Bible is a book of a

people (level of identity) but also a book of a people for whom this ‘unity as a people’ does

not suffice (level of transcendence). It is not enough to only qualify oneself as ‘descendants of

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, for the absolutizing interpretation of such a qualification leads to

exclusivism and racism. Therefore, Levinas finds it necessary that the people of Israel

receives the Torah: “It does not suffice for this people merely to be descendants of Abraham,

Isaac, Jacob: it must be led to Sinai. The departure from Egypt is accomplished at Sinai” (VA

96/109). There, their election evolves into their mission, namely the task to uphold the Law.

In other words: there, the particularity of their election becomes the universality of their

responsibility, not only for their own people but also for all peoples. Here resounds the

promise God made at the very beginning of Israel, namely at the calling and sending of the

patriarch Abram: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12,2-3). And

that Abram becomes the ‘patriarch of humanity’ is even linked to his new name Abraham:

“No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you

the ancestor of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17,5). In this sense Abraham reveals the

‘universal brotherhood’ of humanity or ‘humankind’: “In this fraternity there is a relationship

of kinship outside of all biology, ‘against all logic’” (AE 109/87). “Human fraternity outside

of any pre-established system” (AE 123/97). “The other has a tribal link with no one:

ascension to the human in being, higher than all [biological] fraternity. The moment in which

fraternity attains its full sense is when, in the [natural] brother himself, the stranger [– the

other as other –] is recognized” (VA 96/109).

The conclusion that can be drawn from all this is not that the difference in being,

thinking, living or believing of the other becomes unimportant, but that no interreligious

encounter and dialogue (and learning) is possible without a fundamental ethical respect for

the irreducible and unique alterity of the other that transcends all belonging to a ‘reducing

genre’ or kind – be it individual, social, cultural or religious. It is only on the basis of this

fundamental ethical attitude of ‘dialogical hospitality’ that an inter-ideological and

interreligious dialogue can exist, which does not give in to the (obvious and recurrently

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appearing) temptations of inclusivism and exclusivism. It is only on the basis of the

acknowledgement of the radical, irreducible alterity of our conversation partners that we can

unmask the old and new demons of apologetic recuperation or exclusion and (terrorist)

persecution, and render them harmless. An interreligious dialogue, ethically inspired by and

rooted in a reciprocal asymmetric respect and responsibility is and remains a long, or better a

never-ending and difficult process because the interlocutors approach the other only step by

step – and moreover this approach always remains ‘an approximation’. The encounter with

the religious ‘foreign’ other, however, remains a real test that ushers along a dynamism of

catharsis through all difficulties and intransigence. Thus arises a proximity that is never

completed, but is nonetheless true and “without compromise or betrayal” (HN 101/163)

To conclude: Uncompromising Jewish-Christian proximity

Finally, I would like to illustrate the view we just developed on the phenomenological,

anthropological and ethical conditions of interreligious dialogue by looking at the way in

which Levinas interprets Jewish-Christian dialogue in his study ‘Beyond Dialogue’ (AT 97-

102/83-89) and how it poses a challenge to the Christian that I am. In such a dialogue, all

naive romanticism is out of the question. This applies in particular when the dialogue

concerns two religions that are as near each other as Judaism and Christianity. We should

never forget that their relationship is marked by a centuries-long history that is also the

memory of innumerable conflicts and injuries. It remains a ‘wound at the side’ of Christianity

that Hitlerism was possible in a Europe that was already Christian for centuries. The

pernicious impact of the theological thesis that Christianity as the ‘new’ testament replaces

the ‘old’ can never be relativized. Christians will constantly have to make an effort not to

reduce Judaism into a precursor of Christianity. Through this one risks denying the

independence and self-worth of (post-Christian) Judaism alongside Christianity – this would

be a form of utter anti-dialogue. The guilt-feeling (that is not always acknowledged but rather

hidden and suppressed) over past repudiations and subjugations of Judaism, however, should

neither lead Christians to an all too ‘cautious’ approach without the courage for confrontation

and critical questioning. The dialogue between Jews and Christians can only be authentic

when it expresses itself in a mutual approach without compromises. Out of his Jewish

perspective, Levinas even speaks of an “uncompromising intransigence” (AT 97/83). An open

and fair dialogue is not served by a rhetorical approach that sublimates and idealizes the other

– in order to ultimately glorify oneself. Just as Christianity is historically and theologically

not innocent or spotless, a (Christian or Jewish) view of Judaism as more innocent than the

rest of the world also perverts all dialogue in respect for each other’s alterity. All too often we

think of history as a harmonious process wherein all problems ultimately are solved, wherein

all conflicts and contradictions are reconciled and are ‘sublated’ into a universal reason

(Hegel). This ideological naiveté is disproved by real history. So we must dare to

acknowledge that notwithstanding all relatedness and proximity, irresolvable differences and

contradictions exist between Christianity and Judaism. Levinas says literally: “Judaism and

Christianity are part of the same drama, and are not different enough not to challenge one

another” (AT 99/86). Only a dialogue without compromises and without cheap concessions is

capable of preventing the violence that slumbers beneath the indissoluble alterity. In this way,

a proximity is realized beyond the ideas that people exchange with each other – a proximity

that does not rest on strategy or cunning, tact or diplomacy, but neither does it rest on formal

tolerance, nor even on sympathy and friendship. It concerns a proximity that rests on

vigilance and attention not only during acute moments but time and time again – perhaps not

even to sleep until the end of times. Christians and Jews remain present before each other, in

all the strength of each other’s irreplaceable and irreducible identity, in all the strength of their

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respectful responsibility for each other’s alterity. They acknowledge and name that which is

irreconcilable and unsolvable and prevent this from ending in forms of violence, denial,

domination: “the search for a proximity beyond the ideas exchanged, a proximity that lasts

even after dialogue has become impossible” (AT 100/87).

Is this not the core of all interreligious dialogue that is realized – and must be realized

– time and again by persons, namely by Christians and Jews (or Christians and Moslems,

Hindus, Buddhists...) who turn to each other in respect and acknowledgement? Is this not

mutual hospitality in the most ethical sense of the word? With Levinas, we dare call this

“mutual responsibility” (EN 49/31) a “new spirituality” (AT 101/88): “the presence of

persons in the full force of their irreplaceable identity, in the full force of their inevitable

responsibility. To recognize and name the insoluble substances and keep them from exploding

in violence, guile or politics, to keep watch where conflicts tend to break out, a new

religiosity and solidarity – is loving one’s neighbour anything other than this?” (AT 101/87-

88).

Pro manuscripto: Roger Burggraeve sdb (KU Leuven), Holy Spirit College,

Naamsestraat 40, B-3000 Leuven. Email: roger.burggraeve@kuleuven.be

SUGGESTION: R. BURGGRAEVE, “Alterity Makes the Difference. Ethical and Metaphysical

Conditions for an Authentic Interreligious Dialogue and Learning,” in: D. POLLEFEYT (ed.),

Interreligious Learning, Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA, University Press/Peeters, 2007, pp. 231-

256.