I know this is far less private than an email, but nobody comes here anyway. I wasn’t trying to be offensive to anyone, but it’s probably better if I’m not “on the record” when I might be perceived as potentially offensive. I wrote something to the effect of:

I suppose that is necessary that mystery remain a mystery. However, God has this same requirement that for him to be infinite or beyond mankind in any way is to be unattainable in the full sense. Levinas is trying to be descriptive of something I think exists (the other) in a way I do not think is possible and he claims cannot be understood. He is saying something toward the understanding of something one cannot understand. For me to buy into the unexplainable whose defense is that we do not have to explain and we could not if we tried is a fool’s errand.

I had slept for 1 hour or less before class this morning (in the past 36-48 hours) so, I sometimes am not so clear. Plus, Professor K. rarely gets my meaning before he tries to defend, but given time or through writing he comes to understand my problem more clearly, and then can give me clarification or what may or may not be an offered response. Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, according to Prof. K., have no “answer” to my questions. But modern and analytic philosophy show that reason or logic demand answers to such questions. These continental philosophers, while interesting, make no arguments, and so people think they cannot be wrong.

The problem is that they are being descriptive (like what Professor K. and Elder M. discussed on WebCT), of something that is annulled through definition, and cannot be defined. To me, things like this may be interesting, but are not “real” or substantive. If I were to accept them without them having any reason for believing that “the other” calls on a level far sooner than any physical phenomena represents itself (which I’m still not clear is what is being claimed), then I might as well get baptized in all religions and accept them as true because what they present supersedes or exists outside our ability to ascertain.

The fact that Levinas is describing an event (the encounter with the face) in regards to sensory and cognitive beings, which happens outside or before sensory perception or cognitive recognition proceeded by cognitive reflection, is a descriptive of a case I have never seen. Then to say that when looking at the face of another you cannot look at their eyes for too long IS to speak of an encounter that does not preempt sensory perception, nor is any sensory perception or recognition of anything done without cognition or thought.

Professor K. believes that I just want to get to sleep, but my “lack of sleep” has nothing to do with the power of the face or struggle of responsibility. If I understood the matter of the face actually happening or able to happen as Levinas describes then I might have the problem of the insomniac. My lack of sleep as it is, is due to the fact that I am supposed to take something seriously which I cannot, unless I can make sense of it. I am not so sure that it can be made sense of in the way Levinas thinks it happens or should occur.

I do think the problem of the face arises from the point of sensory perception between two cognitive beings with intelligence to the point of a concept of personal identity. At that point there is a call from the other. This call to me, can exist, and perhaps is just as important. This is necessarily so, since existing situations are necessarily more important than non-existing situations, if I’m right.

Even at this point people like Elder M., wanting to make things jive with their religious views, and/or people who are “good natured” I guess, want to say, “we cannot live up to the absolute responsibility, so we do what we can.” Which I think is admirable. But I think someone is as justified to say, “If the responsibility is absolute, and infinite, then any amount of ‘doing what one can’ is no closer to the infinite than a ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ effort would be.”

Personally, since this deconstruction of metaphysics leads to the continental philosopher’s theory of Ethics, I personally start with another form of ethics, the one which I prefer, from the point at which, although as an “other” I call to “not kill me” I do not call to have them disregard my face. It is only in the presence of my face that I expect recognition, and that only when clear contact is made (I ask someone a question on the bus), but I acknowledge that it is not my right(power to enforce) to demand of others anything which I cannot likewise give. So, I do not give an absolute responsibility of recognition of my face in my call to other (even if they perceive that I do), since I cannot give that to one person or all people. To boot, I don’t have the right (power to enforce) that others not kill me literally. So, I hope they perceive the call to not kill me, and if they do not I may try to establish my right to not be killed by defending myself.

Harm is always done in the Heideggerian/Derridian sense, but biology teaches us that life exists and progresses in competition and correlation with all other life. Harm is beautiful. Economy is beautiful. The Gift is destructive. Anyway, two of my principle interests are in psychology and philosophy, but metaphysics is the section I dislike the most; it is far too masturbatory, and not all that productive. However, I do love the reading, but for me it is a mental thing. Professor K. thinks Levinas is not asking for mental activity here, but then he should be writing to a rock, not a conscious intelligent species. Also, any form of physiological (which is the part of psychology I mentioned today), biological, or hard science (rather than “pure science” like logic, reason, geometry), are shunned when mental masturbation is at play.

All phenomena exist, come into being or appear at some point which may be seen in the relationship of Sun and Earth, a revolution seen in rising, setting and rising again. This revolution is paramount also to the possibility of two no-things, time and gift, developing their relation to subjects who relate through objects in economy. These subjects may perhaps be differentiated as conscious objects. In the revolution of economy lies the principle of exchange and return, or possibly gift and counter-gift. The problem arises that the principle of the gift is that it is but one part of a circulating whole of economy: that the circle be broken in the changing, but not exchanging, of some measured thing. The gift therefore is the interruption, breaking up, and destruction of economic exchange, of economy itself.

Derrida raises the question, “Why desire the gift and why desire to interrupt the circulation of the circle [that is economy]?” Not only does this seem to show that before the existence of gift as a concept can even be formed as something partitioned from the whole of circulation, not only a piece of the process, yet altogether opposed to the process of circulation as it is the end of it, but also that there must be a desire to break this circle as well as a desire for the gift, or possibility of a gift. All economy is measured and takes place within time, so then must time be circular, as it follows and measures this circular path of economy. Therefore, when the gift exists phenomenally, not to say that this happens or can happen, but it can only be conceived of existing in the ending of a point of the circulation of economy, and where exchange is no longer measured by time, time is no longer circulating in measurement of economy. In a sense, economy and time cease to exist in the instant of the actuality of a gift coming to fruiting, in the giving of a gift. A gift, being the breaking point of the circulation, or movement and progression of time, can no longer happen within the circle of time, thus only outside of time.

This interruption of time and circulation of economy is a paradox in the phenomenological properties in the giving of a gift. While at the point of a gift happening is necessarily happening outside of time and therefore not “happening”, it is also the case that a gift, as a present, can no longer be in the present. It can no longer be present or happen in the now, because the circulation time would have been broken. Moreover, since a present could not be present presently, it could not be presented. In a hypothetical non temporal world a gift could exist, but not in phenomenon and perhaps more practically, if practicality comes into play, the gift could not be given.

Derrida does not want to complete his deconstruction of the gift merely at showing that it cannot exist, and cannot happen. Rather, he aims to show that it is “absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable!” The gift not only does not exist in time or being, it cannot exist conceptually or by its intended definition.

As shown above, there must be a desire to break this circle of economy, as well as a desire for the gift or possibility of a gift before one can conceive of giving the gift. Therefore all concepts of the gift, intended definitively as a one-sided exchange are born of desire or intent. Whether for some malicious or benevolent purpose may yet be analyzed, but the negation of the fulfillment of the concept of a gift lies in the desire to or intent to give. The gift becomes useless or nullified from its defined qualities in a practical sense as the desire to give is necessarily shown to be implied in the “giving” of a gift. In desiring to give one fulfills for himself, once delivered, this desire which acts as a service rendered or as an outside beneficial motivation for the gift. In this case, the gift is no longer a gift, but an exchange; the bestowing of the object to a subject merely de-faced the subject by using him as a means by which to fulfill the desire one had to give something to some one whether or not this was his conscious intent.

The gift born out of intent, whatever the intended consequence may be, or even though the gift exists as intent alone, not even an object; the gift is not a thing. It is not the object which one subject gives to another subject that can be called a gift; rather it is the intent on an object placed by the subject to bestow upon another subject. It is inescapable now that desire or intents, conscious or unconscious, result in intended or unintended consequences. If the intent is unfulfilled there is no gift; no intention behind an object, or intention alone will be expressed. The other option is that one’s intent to give may be fulfilled in “giving”, in other words, one side of an exchange, but not in giving a “gift” as fulfillment of intentions serves to reward the gift giving. Any reward or even recognition serves as a counter-gift. The presence of a counter-gift is merely a deceptive interpretation of the circle of economic exchange.

Derrida believes this recognition is so radically drastic that not only must the subject, or subject collectively speaking, who gives to another subject not intend to give as we have shown to be inescapable, but he must not recognize the gift as a gift. This concept is again paradoxical because we have seen that what constitutes a gift in the giving of an object is the intent of the gift. To not recognize the gift as a gift would mean to unintentionally intend.

The reason one must not recognize he is giving a gift is because as a conscious and unconscious being, we calculate and discern all things in a system of mental ordering. To intend to give to some “other” is to differentiate self from other either to determine one’s own unity or to display for recognition, one’s identity as different. In a sense this is an existential affirmation of self, and a claiming of property of that reflected identity perceived by another by the act of self through differentiation which one might hope to achieve through a gift. In this attempt to achieve identity or concept of self, one must always give to himself in order to give to some other. Here he is rewarded.

Secondly, no gift can be considered as such if a counter-gift is given. This too is radical to the extent that no burden must be placed on the recipient, either to return in some reciprocal manner, or to be ingratiated with the donor. Yet, in order to calculate and discern the intention that is the gift rather than that of a partition from the circular whole of exchange, it must be recognized as a gift. This recognition is a necessary annulment of the fulfillment of receipt of the intent of a gift, if it had not already been annulled by definition, or by being, and by definition by being not in time, paradoxical too because nothing is which is not considered temporal, as all thing which are measured in the relation between them through space and time (at least for us and conceivably for all consciousness).

Derrida presents what may be a pathetic attempt at a rebuttal to his argument, and this is a radical forgetting of the receipt of the gift and its value or intended value. In order for a gift to not be credited with any appreciation or as a service or beneficial receipt of intent, a person can only recognize it as a gift through differentiating its purpose as not being an exchange, but then must forget it altogether before appreciating it to any extent. This is far reaching enough that the memory of it holds enough sway to repay the donor, even if the recipient does not attempt by it some reciprocal gifting as a result.

Is a gift good or bad with regards to this argument? Derrida would hold that it is an offense to the economic circle by which we live to attempt to destroy it. The gift attempts to de-“face” others in using them as a means for recognition of self through attaining identity. The gift is a blow to another since it puts the other in an inescapable paradox if he considers it as a gift, and tries to let it constitute such, as he is either forced to be burdened by repayment if he does not recognize it for its intent, or is forced to try to totally delete it from memory. The whole process of trying to give a gift seems pretty convincing from Derrida’s perspective that it is evil, an affront to the beauty of our economic nature. It is backwards, destructive, selfish, and harmful. Before sifting through this elaborate schema I too thought that the gift, though perhaps not possible as one must always selfishly benefit from it or inspire reciprocity, was at least well intended and maintained some sort of utopian dream of function. Now I am not so sure, and it is clearer why I do not like favors done for me which I could easily do myself.