What is a city’s ethical obligation toward the stranger? Despite several theoretical excursions I undertook in Paris, London, Dublin, and Moscow, I never converged upon anything resembling an elaborate ethical theory of encounter. My main purpose in exploring such questions occurred between 2016 and 2018 – a period during which I was challenged by the Bulgarian philosophers P. Makariev and M. Dimitrova to explore the phenomenology of ethical responsibility in the postmodern European metropolis. These mentors rightly determined that I had confounded or outright misunderstood the principal positions in Continental Phenomenology since the heady days of Martin Heidegger. They challenged me to explore the perspectives of exactly two prominent 20th-century thinkers – Hans Georg Gadamer and Emmanuel Levinas – and see what insights I could extract from comparison of their work. The resulting articles later became the content of the 2023 series in Dublin News. I chose Dublin because of the recent memories of Protestant-Catholic conflict and the hope that my work might furnish a lens by which to more comprehensively explore secular theories of communicative engagement.
My inquiry very quickly demanded that I dispense of the sacred-secular distinction and explore the degree to which non-Christian theological leitmotifs had emerged in Continental Phenomenology since 1920. In particular, I found that Levinas and Gadamer should be taken to diverge significantly in their views concerning intersubjectivity, objectivity, and the primacy of ethical obligation. In my estimation, Levinas places utmost emphasis upon the primordial, ethical connection of every individual with the “Other” whose very presence – pre-conditionally – beckons response. Drawing from Buber’s ‘I-Thou’ Phenomenology and Kabbalistic epistemology, Levinas demands that the face-to-face interaction is ineluctably ethical. The stranger may appear naked, poor, dejected, and helpless; He may also appear, by degrees, vain and deceitful, prideful and unabashedly self-promoting. In every case, he must be embraced and treated with a dignity proper to his specific personhood – not the dignities afforded by social contractarianism, enlightenment rationalism, or abstract Kantian duty. In addition to Kabbalistic mysticism, the prominence of Greco-Levantine ethics of “Xenia” is evident in the Levinasian perspective: One is to feed the stranger before teaching him, and one is to acknowledge him gratefully before attempting to interrogate him. In Levisasian terms, the encounter with the Other has the potential to disrupt our fragile subjectivity and prompt us to embrace a precognitive ethical responsibility – the welcoming of the other “face to face.” Consequently, whenever we engage in any purposive interaction with others, we must challenge our self-centered perspectives in light of the Other’s inherent vulnerability in presenting himself before us.
In 2018, discussions with the philosophical faculty of the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) determined that I needed to set my understanding of Gadamer’s hermeneutics right in light of what I had wrestled – with much effort – from Levinas. My preliminary verdict on Gadamer as an ethicist has not changed substantially since the discussions with Sofia five years ago. As in Dublin News, I argued that Gadamer places greater emphasis than Levinas on the dialogical processes of interpersonal interpretation and understanding. However they are conceived abstractly, both interpretation and understanding necessitate the recognition of the interpreter’s preconceived notions, biases, and subconscious historical-political influences. In my estimation, Gadamer emphasizes the continuous dialogue between individuals as a means to the construction of mutual understanding. As in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Gadamer discerns the primacy of historical context in the ethical encounter with alterity. There is no isolated, ahistorical meeting that is granted apart from the dialectic of language and culture. Rather, the process of meeting is necessarily transformative for the parties involved. In Gadamer’s position neither self (nor the Other) are fixed, reified entities: Gadamer emphasizes the “fusion” of horizons between the interpreter and the individual, text or tradition being interpreted – all the while rejecting the theoretical possibility of extricating the individual from conditioning by time, symbolism, society, and culture. As in Heidegger’s corpus, understanding (verstand) involves a continual dialogue among parties, interpreters and texts. Shared meaning (mutual ontological and ethical recognition) emerges via this extant dialogue rather than being imposed by a pre-existing ethics of meeting grounded in the Other’s inscrutability.
I believe that Levinas’ and Gadamer’s theories of presence can be applied to the American metropolis as well as the European. New York is, in particular, a city in which the voices of radicals tend to drown out the still, small voices of those who, compelled by decency or simple fraternal affection, seek to understand the Other rather than dismiss, incarcerate, or deport him. Levinas teaches us that the politics of immigration, intercultural communication, healthcare equity, and income inequality cannot be reduced to abstract matters of economic or racial justice. The Other has a face, a name, and an ethical presence that commands forthright, respectful dialogue. As I perhaps artlessly attempted to convey in Dublin News, Gadamer does not refute Levinas in this regard. Rather, Gadamer warns that each person in the city is ineluctably changed by whomever he meets and with whomever he converses. Gadamer beckons the cosmopolitan, the radical, and the apathetic spectator alike to understand that one cannot remain who he is in the presence of the Other. For Sartre, Hell is other people, and all the devils are with them. For Gadamer, Hell is the delusion that one can be unchanged by another. As in physics, one may never observe a system without changing it; and as of particles, so also of cities and men.
Dr. Jonathan Kenigson, FRSA
