Emmanuel Levinas

Lithuanian-born French philosopher (1906-1995). Author of Totality and Infinity (1961), Otherwise than Being (1974), and Existence and Existents (1947). In Knight's reading, Levinas is the principal counter-figure to Merleau-Ponty's elemental ontology: where Merleau-Ponty's originary is water (pre-horizonal withdrawal), Levinas's originary is Night (pure, shapeless, massive positivity without horizon). The "ostensibly slight variance" between these two conceptions of the elemental opens a chasm between two entire philosophical traditions.

Key Points

  • The il ya ("there is"): Levinas's concept of existence without existents — the anonymous murmur of being that remains when everything determinate has been subtracted. Not nothingness but pure, crushing, formless positivity — "the rustling of the there is... is horror" (Existence and Existents). It corresponds to the Orphic cosmogony: before the world-order, there is Night, fecund and shapeless
  • First phenomenologist to explicitly coin "the elemental" (l'elementaire): in Totality and Infinity, the elemental names what has no form, no back side, no hidden depth — the windiness of wind, the wetness of rain. Knight notes this priority but argues that Merleau-Ponty's element differs fundamentally: Levinas's elemental is enjoyment's medium, while Merleau-Ponty's element is being's self-generative ground (Ch. 4, section 3)
  • Merleau-Ponty died on May 3, 1961, a month before he was to serve as a jury member at Levinas's thesis defence of Totality and Infinity. This biographical near-miss is philosophically significant: the two thinkers never had the direct confrontation that their divergent elementals demand
  • Levinas on art: art uproots things from the world rather than making world a world (contra Heidegger). In "Reality and Its Shadow" (1948), Levinas argues that the image doubles reality without illuminating it — art is a descent into the il ya, a return to the elemental Night. This stands in sharp tension with Merleau-Ponty's fundamental-thought-in-art, which insists that art carries genuine ontological disclosure

Details

The Il Ya and the Night

The il ya is Levinas's earliest and most distinctive contribution to phenomenology. Developed in Existence and Existents (1947) and the essay "There is: Existence Without Existents" (1946), it names what remains when the phenomenological reduction has subtracted all particular beings: not the empty nothing of Heidegger's anxiety (Angst) but an impersonal, anonymous, inescapable presence. The il ya is modeled on insomnia — the impossibility of escaping consciousness, the relentless "there is" that persists even when the self has dissolved.

Knight maps this onto the Orphic cosmogonic tradition (Ch. 4, section 3): in the Orphic theogonies, the originary is Night (Nyx) — not the absence of light but a positive, fecund darkness from which all beings emerge. The Orphic Night does not withdraw to let beings appear (as Merleau-Ponty's water does); it overwhelms them. This is why the il ya is experienced as horror: it is being's excess over every form, every name, every identity.

The Chasm Between Two Traditions

Knight argues that the difference between the il ya and Merleau-Ponty's etre sauvage (wild being / barbarian-principle) is "the chasm between two traditions" (Ch. 4, section 3):

  • Levinas: The originary is radical alterity — the Other comes from outside the field of immanence, breaking in as the face that commands. The il ya is what we must escape (through the hypostasis of the subject, through the encounter with the Other). Being is a burden to be overcome.
  • Merleau-Ponty: The originary is primordial belonging-together — difference erupts from within the common flesh that joins self and world. The etre sauvage is not something to escape but something to inhabit more deeply. Being is a medium to be inhabited.

This difference ramifies across every philosophical register: ethics (Levinas) vs. ontology (Merleau-Ponty); transcendence (the Other from beyond) vs. immanence (the flesh's own depth); Night (overwhelming positivity) vs. Water (creative withdrawal).

Levinas and Art

In "Reality and Its Shadow" (1948), Levinas develops a strikingly anti-aesthetic position: art does not disclose truth (contra Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art") but freezes being in an image. The artwork doubles reality without adding meaning — it is an "idol," a doubling that obscures rather than reveals. Art returns us to the il ya, to the elemental Night before the world is structured by the ethical encounter with the Other.

This is diametrically opposed to Merleau-Ponty's thesis in fundamental-thought-in-art: for Merleau-Ponty, art is "philosophy entirely in action," a genuine form of ontological inquiry. The disagreement is rooted in their different cosmogonies: if the originary is Night (Levinas), then returning to it is horror; if the originary is water (Merleau-Ponty), then descending into it is creative retrieval.

The Theological Turn

Levinas's later development moves increasingly toward a theological register: the face of the Other is the trace of the Infinite, ethical responsibility is the "glory of the Infinite," the subject is a "hostage" to the Other's command. Knight notes that this theological turn stands in tension with nonphilosophy's project of renewing philosophy from within its own resources rather than from a transcendent elsewhere. Merleau-Ponty's radicalization — "true philosophy mocks philosophy, is a-philosophy" — seeks renewal in art, literature, and the pre-reflective, not in theological transcendence.

The Elemental in Totality and Infinity

In Totality and Infinity (1961), Levinas develops a concept of "the elemental" (l'elementaire) that predates and differs from Merleau-Ponty's use. For Levinas, the elemental is the medium of enjoyment (jouissance) — the windiness of wind, the warmth of sun, the wetness of rain. The elemental has no form, no back side, no hidden depth. It is what the subject bathes in before encountering discrete objects. Knight notes that this elemental is "enjoyed" rather than "perceived" — it is the medium of life, not the medium of knowledge (Ch. 4, section 3).

The critical difference: Levinas's elemental is the medium that the subject emerges from through the act of dwelling (demeure) and possession. The home provides shelter from the elemental; economy masters it; labor transforms it. For Merleau-Ponty, by contrast, the element is not something to be mastered or escaped but the permanent ground of all perception. The flesh does not emerge from the element — the flesh is the element.

The Biographical Near-Miss

The fact that Merleau-Ponty died on May 3, 1961 — a month before Levinas's thesis defence — is philosophically tantalizing. Had Merleau-Ponty survived, he would have served on the jury examining Totality and Infinity, and the two thinkers would have confronted each other directly on the question of the elemental, the Other, and the relationship between ontology and ethics. As it stands, the confrontation must be reconstructed from their respective texts — and Knight's three-cosmogonic-models framework is one such reconstruction.

Connections

  • his il ya is the primary counter-model to aquatic-ontology — Night (overwhelming positivity, absence of horizon) vs. Water (creative withdrawal, pre-horizonal depth); the two elementals define rival conceptions of the originary
  • contrasts with flesh-as-element — the il ya lacks the generative power of flesh because it does not withdraw; it overwhelms rather than enabling. Merleau-Ponty's flesh creates by self-negation; Levinas's il ya persists by sheer positivity
  • his theological turn stands in tension with nonphilosophy's renewal-from-within — Levinas seeks transcendence from outside the immanent field; Merleau-Ponty seeks depth within it
  • shares with edmund-husserl a Lithuanian-Jewish intellectual heritage and a commitment to phenomenological method, but breaks radically with Husserl's transcendental idealism
  • contrasts with martin-heidegger on art — Heidegger sees the artwork as truth-event; Levinas sees it as descent into the il ya; Merleau-Ponty mediates by finding ontological disclosure within the elemental
  • is the first to coin "the elemental" in a phenomenological context — but Merleau-Ponty's "element" differs in kind: it is self-negating and productive, not static and overwhelming

Open Questions

  • Would a direct Levinas-Merleau-Ponty confrontation have produced genuine convergence, or are their starting points irreconcilable? The difference between Night and Water may be the deepest divergence in 20th-century French phenomenology.
  • Can the il ya and the etre sauvage be understood as two aspects of a single phenomenon, or are they genuinely incompatible? Both name a pre-subjective dimension of being, but their modalities diverge radically.
  • Does Levinas's critique of art apply to the art Merleau-Ponty has in mind (Cezanne, Klee), or only to a specific kind of image-making? Levinas's target seems to be the static image, not the painterly gesture.
  • How does the Levinas-Merleau-Ponty divergence map onto the contemporary debate between ethics-first and ontology-first philosophies?
  • Is Levinas's elemental (the medium of enjoyment) compatible with Merleau-Ponty's element (the medium of perception), or are these fundamentally different concepts sharing a word?

Sources