Cont Philos Rev (2012) 45:143151 DOI 10.

1007/s11007-011-9205-6 BOOK REVIEW

Difcult questions: singularity and particularity in Cohen and Levinas

Richard A. Cohen: Levinasian meditations: Ethics, philosophy, and religion. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburg, 2010, 379 pp, hardcover, $70 (paperback), $35, ISBN: 0820704334
Jack Marsh

Published online: 23 December 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Can we ever repay our debt to Richard Cohen? As North American readers of this review will be especially aware, Cohen has been a primary and sure guide for English-language forays into Levinas. And as sure: Our debt to Cohen exceeds the bounds of the North Atlantic. His impeccable translations, lucid introductions to Levinas primary texts, and comparative scholarship mark international Levinas studies. Thanks in part to Cohen, such a thing as international Levinas studies has come to be. Beyond institutional inuence or the dissemination of texts, perhaps Cohens greatest contribution has been his approach as an interpreter of Levinas. As we know, Levinas studies in the US and elsewhere has come to be dominated by the socalled ethical turn in deconstruction. Indeed, Derrida has achieved something of a canonical status in many continental philosophy circles. Levinas receives a prominent, though secondary, place of honor in this new regime; perhaps as the proverbial John the Baptist who heralded the now nal deconstructive messianicity. Cohen has always rejected this nonsense. He uninching reads Levinas ethically: not as a hyperbolic ethics that understands itself as an anthropological condescension from the true heights of an absolute and rance. Cohens Levinas is an ethical humanist, a partisan for determinative diffe universal justice, and a properly reconstituted social democratic. This is Cohens supreme gift. At the outset, I would like to underline the word partisan. Throughout this book, Cohens sometimes provocativeat times polemicalstyle raises questions for those of who read Levinas with and after Cohen. As we will see, he raises the very question of partisanship or position-taking within Levinas thought, and a series of cognate questions it generates.
J. Marsh (&) American University of Kuwait, Salmiya, Kuwait e-mail: jmarsh@auk.edu.kw

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We should note at the outset that this book is a collection of previously published essays dating from 2001. As such, there is a signicant diversity of themes, argumentative formulations, and concrete concerns animating its pages. But through this diversity, something of a general thread or an overall thrust emerges. Each essay comfortably ts under the thematic headings of the book. Given the philosophical orientation of Part I, Cohen spends considerable time treating the question of ethics, and hence the proper ground of justice. He substantially treats a plethora of philosophical topicsbeing, time, death, freedom, responsibility, etc.in a solid elucidation of Levinas nuanced position next to the likes of Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, and others. In Part II, Cohen offers a sustained argument for the universal ethical dimension of religion, and specically, Judaism. To those familiar with Cohens work, these essays will be unsurprising. With his Levinasian proposal on what constitutes normative Judaism, Cohen is at his best. For example, his interpretation of bris mila is incredibly fascinating. Moreover, it is in his treatment of universality that Cohen puts forth constructive proposals, seeking to think or relate ethical singularity and universality. For example, in Ch. 12 Cohen conducts a very interesting discussion of Aristotles poiesis, and suggests that this may offer a proper approach to universality that self-consciously (if this can be said) acknowledges the priority of ethics. His argument is suggestive, but raises a series of difcult questions. The theme of this chapter, Cohen writes, is the alleged universality of a moral agency which occurs as an election to a unique or nonsubstitutable responsibility for the other; a universalitybased on no identity (237). Clearly, universality without identity is a kind of philosophical koan. The very notion is self-contradictory: Universalityor the substitutability of individuals within the same class or subject to the same normis that which the exceptionthe non-substitutableis dened against, that which resists the same, or in other words: that which conditions or allows for the indication of the non-substitutable as nonsubstitutable. I guess everything depends on what Cohen means by identity here. He is clearly not an Aristotelian, and hence rejects realism. But clearly, some kind of formal identity comes into play in the transition from singularity to universality, a formal identity whose sense or concrete meaning presupposes the ethical. The paradox Cohen seeks to negotiate is also manifest in his use of the term moral agency above. With the transition to justice, the absolute passivity marking the subject necessarily becomes considered a relative passivity correlative of a relative activity, a relative agency that allows us to speak of moral agency in general, and hence, allows us to consider justice in its universality. When Cohen summons poiesis as an appropriate approach to the universal he isin truth introducing a very fecund innovation within Levinas thought. Cohens experiment hints that something like the transcendental imagination could be a mediating framework between the singularity of ethics and the universality of justice. Cohen might not accept my suggestion here. Indeed, it is not always clear to me how his poetic universal is constituted. For instance, he wants to distinguish between the universality proper to morality[and] the universality proper to knowledge or power, involving a subjectivityno longerconceived in terms of power or truth and without any surreptitious recourse to representation or to repression (237).

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The problem with all this, it seems, is that Cohen is already squarely within representation and repression, if by representation we mean the domain justicewhere truth and power acquire meaning, and if by repression we mean the necessary occlusion of proximity occasioned in the transition to justice. Indeed, how is it possible to speak of moral agency, as above, or of the truth that justice demands, or better: How do we speak of justice at all without recourse to representation, truth, and power? Levinas always admits, as Cohen himself underlines (14), that with justice, recourse to presence, representation, and power are inevitable. Recalling above the formal identity that becomes operative in the transition to justice, the very fecundity of Cohens treatment of poiesis lies in the suggestive notion that substitution involves considering distinct others said to share a like moral agency, an agency that may inherently involve a creative capacity. Of course, this universal dimension does not erase ethical singularity, since the relevant agency is constituted in a fundamental, singularizing passivity. Diachrony remains and recurs, or in other words, the alterity of the other and the oneself are not initially delineated by relative differences within the universal. But those relative differences are summoned, constituted, or become an issue with the responsibility that singles me out. Put simply: The universal summoned by singularity necessarily opens upon the question of particularity, or the relative differences justice empowers us to treat. With the question of particularity, the question of partisanship or positiontaking emerges. It is precisely here that both the best of Cohens aspirations, as well as the most severe problems with his position become manifest. In Chapter 13, Cohen lays out a strong case for the universal dimensions of Judaism. Cohen distinguishes between three forms of universality: exclusive, abstract, and concrete. According to Cohen, exclusive universality is dened by a logic of one for all, where the perspective of a parta partisanin its partiality, takes itself to be the whole (264). Here, the All = only, and is represented by Christian triumphalism. Abstract universality, by contrast, makes the opposite mistake. It is dened by a logic of all for one, where the all takes the place of the one (266). Here, the All = every, and is represented by the logical formalism of the Enlightenment and its partisans in Reformed Judaism. Finally, Cohen proposes his concrete universality. Against exclusive and abstract universals, concrete universality is dened by a logic of one and all, where the universal and particularmind and body, spirit and letterare inextricably bound to one another (268). Here, the All = each, and is represented by his own interpretation of normative Judaism. Cohens concrete universal presents the best of his aspirations: It seeks to do justice to particularity, neither valorizing it not erasing it in its commitment to universal justice. Hence, contra the Enlightenment and Reformed Judaism, Jewish tradition is not some arcane or screwy appendage to be angelically surpassed (268) in the pure concept, but one basis for a properly human universality. And contra Christian triumphalism, Judaism does not violently eliminat[e] alternative parts (ibid.), but, apparently, admits the legitimate particularity of other traditions. I say apparently, here, because other than Christianity, Cohen does not treat other traditions in this specic essay, though he does elsewhere in this book. Cohens generous and just humanism is especially manifest in Chapter 9, his interview with Chung-Hsiung Lai. In response to a question regarding the three pillars of Chinese

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culture, Cohen concretely practices the just generosity his concrete universal aims at: As for Buddhism, while I have not been drawn into its popular devotional forms, as a philosophy, which I believe was the Buddhas original intentof a fearless commitment to truth aligned to the greatest compassion to alleviate suffering: the Bodhisattva idealI have always felt an enormous kinship, and feel it speaks to the core truth and the core imperative of all the worlds religions (180). Here, Cohen exemplies the sort of justice his concrete universal stipulates: Buddhism has both its particularity and tradition as well its universal dimensions. Those who name the name of Buddha are a part of the one and all, an each in the all of the core truth and core imperative of all the worlds religions (ibid.). Yet as I hinted above, right in the midst of elaborating his concrete universal, some of the most pressing questions impose themselves, and its precisely the questions of position-taking and partisanship, or in a word: particularity. Early on, Cohen clearly and properly distinguishes particularity and singularity, for example: there is no question that everyone, every society, every culture, indeed everything that can be identied, is different like ngerprints, each having its unique set of spatialtemporal characteristics. Philosophers have called these differences particularities, unique nodes of universalitiesfrom the point of view of knowledge. What lies at the center of Levinas though, in contrast, is something else: singularity (194). Elsewhere, however, Cohen uses them interchangeably. For example, in defense of Jewish tradition, he speaks of the singularity of family, community, nation, and tradition (267). Or in two concurrent sentences: [Universality is] rooted in the particular just as the aspiration of the particular requires and demands universality. Such is Jewish singularity, the Jewish notion of election (259). My biggest problem with Cohens analysis is that when treating his own normative interpretation of Judaism, singularity and particularity are allowed to ambiguously slip into another. Whereas for the positions he is arguing against, particularity and singularity become properly distinguished. As above, The universal is thus found not outside the particular, or despite the particular, but precisely because of and in view of the particular (272). Here we must assume he means singularity, since he has already told us that [Particularity] is the outlookLevinas identies with idolatry and mythology (262). In short, particularity is both paganism (263) or mythology and the ground and source of universal humanity (260), or more probably: singularity identied with Cohens own normative interpretation of Judaism constitutes the latter, and all other particularities constitute the former. This interpretation seems warranted in light of Cohens sometimes dismissiveand at times violenttreatment of other traditions in other essays in this book. Elsewhere in this book Cohen explicitly contrasts Buddhist totality to the innity of Jerusalem[of] Levinas (108). JerusalemLevinasor in other words: Cohens normative interpretation of Judaism is said to

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demandan exceptional thinking, developments perhaps too troublesome, too disquieting, too risky, apparently, for the longed for composure and tranquility of a Greek or Persian or Indian cosmos (109). Clearly, this puts a bit of strain on Cohens concrete universal. Cohen clearly and in no uncertain terms rejects the Buddhas truth, even as he welcomes the Bodhisattva practice of compassion. The problem is, however, this suggests that the practice of Buddhist compassion is abstracted from the concrete particularity of the Buddhist tradition, i.e., Buddhist truthBuddhist totalityis excluded as mere myth, while compassion is admitted and allows Buddhism to count as an each in the one and all. I want to stress that in itself, this implication does not constitute a problem. Judaism and Buddhism make different and incommensurable truth claims, and hence, will inevitably have disagreements at the level of fundamental afrmations or in their global interpretations of life. Those truths are mutually exclusive, which obviously shouldnt mean that Jews and Buddhists necessarily deny each others humanity. Buddhist ethics and Jewish ethics converge in very basic ways. Cohen is Jewish, and it seems perfectly legitimate that he interpret the universal in a particular way and according to a Jewish perspective. Here, there is a good partisanship, a good positiontaking that sincerely recognizes those differences, and yet welcomes the other, the Buddhist in this case, into the concrete human universal. The problem is, Cohen seems to want to claim something more for his interpretation of Jewish particularity and its approach to the universal, a more he denies to other particularities. Nowhere is this more evident than in Cohens surprisingly violent treatment of Christianity. If, indeed, Cohens monotheismis without exclusivism, open to all others, who are welcome to join or not join, just as Judaism is open to the ongoing viability of other monotheisms in their independent integrity, (202) after actually reading his various treatments throughout this book, one might be pardoned for concluding otherwise. Throughout this book as a whole, Christianity is consistently summoned as a negative foil. Christianity, unlike Judaism, come(s) at the price of a turn to the irrational ( under the name of faith) (6). But also, Christianity, unlike Judaism, would faithfully follow the propositional logic of the intellect into and despite its bizarre and obvious divergences from the evidence of the senses (43). In other words: Christianity, apparently unlike Judaism, is both irrationalist and rationalist at once. Christianity, unlike Judaism, [d]espite the sound and furry of rhetorical subterfuge, has no answers adequate to its own pretensions to logos (199). But also, Christianity, unlike Judaism, either explain[s] away as if [suffering] were not truly suffering or threaten[s] the unfaithful and immoral with otherworldly hell and brimstone (322). When Christianity, apparently unlike Judaism, claims there are some questions that admit no easy or abstract answers, it is obscurantist and rhetorical. And simultaneously, when Christianity, apparently unlike Judaism, proposes answers to deep or perennial questions: It produces featherbrained, even immoral (322) rationalizations. One could go on (e.g., pgs. 100, 108, 200210, 264, 266, 296313, 314, etc.). If Cohens intent is to criticize Jerry Falwell or Opus Dei, he does a ne job indeed. But as is plain, his Christian antagonist is made of straw. Here he clearly

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practices a bad or unjust partisanship, and its precisely when Christianity takes center stagemoves from the background to the foregroundthat the question partisanship, and the relation between particularity and singularity, most decisively irrupts. In Chapter 16 Cohen enacts an encounter with Christianity. He immediately sets to classifying different meanings of the term theology as its used in Levinas corpus: (1) a loose sensesynonymous with religiosityas when we speak of rabbinic theology or Jewish theology, (2) a more specic sense of a persons or organized religions representations of God, whether as testimony, prescription, description, or dogma, and (3) to specically Christian dogmas and doctrines, that is to say, Christian representations articulating, expressing and, above all, performatively actualizing faith (297). His classication of senses singles out Christianity for special treatment, and a priori exempts Judaism. Next, Cohen stipulates: [t]heology in this narrower but still strict sense, and regardless of the degree of its intellectual sophisticationfrom the magisterial Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, to the emotionally charged outpourings of a simple American Southern Baptist, say, on the otheris both witness and apology, that is to say, performatively self-justied Christianity (2978). So moreover, the special attention Christianity will now receive treats Christianity in toto, Christianity as such. Cohens problem with Christianity comes down to two issues. First: Theology is apologetic (the committed defense of a particular religions vision of God), it is always a particular religions rational defense of God (304). Given what weve learned above, namely, that good or concrete universalismis tied to particularity, it is not clear then why Christian particularity and its interpretations of universality should be a problem per se. Second, Cohen more fully species his problems with theology by summoning the Saying/Said distinction. After accurately elaborating Levinas account of saying, he rightly insists: Theology, by reducing transcendence to a theme, even if via negativa, even if creedal witnessing, by its very nature as thematization occludes the genuine and prior transcendence which marks interhuman proximity that requires a going to the other, giving to the other, kindness (306). Of course, the problem with all this is that justice itselfthe very justice and truth summoned by ethicsoccasions this same occlusion, and hence his whole critique begs the question. Is one forced to choose between rational reection on the premises of a faith and practicing kindness? Apparently, since Cohens treatment of Christianity throughout this book can hardly be called kind, let alone just. In the sub-section entitled Christian Theology, Cohen opens with exactly three, entirely perfunctory nods to several positive aspects of Christianity [emphasis mine] (306). He then immediately mentions the most problematic and debated dimensions of its theological traditionsupersessionism and exclusivismfollowed by a quick mention of the Inquisition, the Crusades, and more recentlythe Holocaust (307). In the very next paragraph, we are told:

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The moral failures of Christianity has everything to do with theology, and the place of theology within Christian spirituality. Indeed, in the nal account, one can say that Christianity does not simply have a theology, but is a theology (308). Cohen is very specic here: the factsand only the damning factsof the complex history of Christianity constitute its ultimate meaning, or if you like, its essence. Given this identicationChristianity is theologywe are authorized to substitute the word Christianity for theology in other statements throughout this book: Christianity is traitorous to the very religious dimensions they claim to discursively enunciate (298). Christianity is a pernicious and dangerous temptation (ibid.). Christianity has no answers adequate to its own pretensions to logos (100). But what if the problem lies not with religion, not with the beliefs and practices of monotheists, but with [Christianity]? [my emphasis] (ibid.) As should be clear, Cohen is mired in performative contradiction in a deep and substantial way. Theological formulations eclipse rather than express true religion [my emphasis] (298). Can he precisely tell us the nature of true religion, since apparently such religion must remain inarticulate, must remain in an impossible state of perpetual immediacy, must exclude the Third Party in perpetuity, i.e., remain unthinking. Does ethics really prohibit any coherent utterance with respect to the Name(s) of G-d? Cohens argument becomes more troublesome when considering his appeal to Saying. As Cohen rightly elaborates, Saying involves the singularizing event of moral election. The me this event forms is said to constitute the possibility of disinterestedness, and, one assumes, the responsibility to practice it. Furthermore, the alterity in moral election is absolute. It surpasses universality of any sort, and hence also and especially particularity of any sort. The me of ethical election is not Christian, not Buddhist, not atheist, not Jewish, but ethical. If we take the precise logic of Cohens argument against theology seriously, then apparently every spiritual and intellectual tradition of every human civilization fails at true religion, (298) including Judaism, since every tradition has their truths, their logoi, and wrestles with the perennial, difcult, and ultimate questions that manifest in their philosophical, literary, and sacred texts. If, indeed, theology, by reducing transcendence to a theme, even if via negativa, by its very nature as thematization occludes the genuine and prior transcendence (306) then Maimonides is damned along with pseudo-Dionysius, Rosenzweig is damned along with Kierkegaard, Adorno is damned along with Marion; even as they all acknowledge the limits Cohen underlines. Perhaps not, since in this very context he entitles himself invalidly according to his own premisesto the following distinction: While the Jews are people or the Children of Israel, Christians are believers or the faithful (308). What are we to make, then, of those movements in Judaism that do not share Cohens own interpretation of normative Judaism? Unfaithful they must

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be. Though, of course: still Jews. Jews whether they like it or not, or in other words: elected, an election delineated by historically various and complex theologies of election, theologies that include the category of kinship. Cohens treatment of Judaism slides back and forth between his preferred meaningmoral singularity and the being or fact or particularity of historic Judaism, i.e., a long history of theological interpretation of empirical kinship. Other Jewsmythological, quasipagan, or atheistunfaithful to Cohens true meaning of JudaismultraOrthodox, Hasidic, Kabbalist, Reformed, and even the Rabbinic Judaism that traditionally afrms the existence Godremain Jews by appeal to an eminently empirical factkinshipand not by Cohens preferred meaning of Judaism. What about Levinas analysis of fecundity and paternity? Cohen cannot entitle himself to those analyses, since he has formulated his critique of theology by appeal to Saying. As we know, Saying is more basic and (in)determinative in the economy of Levinas ethics, it is pre-conscious and refers to the immemorial, and hence remains prior to the cross-generational self-identication involved in paternity. It is also something of a tacit admission that the consciousness, identity, and concept that emerge with justice are already operative at the level of analysis conducted in Totality and Innity. Finally, and this is the decisive point, the Saying/Said distinction manifestly cannot be transposed, cleanly and without further ado, from proximity to intercultural or inter-religious relations. Cultures and traditions are collective forms of life, in fact forms of collective self-making, and the encounter between traditions is not the encounter between the two singularities Levinas describes. How do we determine the uniqueness of traditions? Precisely in considering their truth-claims, their rituals and other social practices and the beliefs and understandings in which such practices are held. To holdimplicitly or explicitlyin a simple and straightforward way that one religion is of saying and another of the said is to claim for a historically determinate communitycommitments, logos, self-relation, interest, and allthe position of the absolute, i.e., the very thing Cohen criticizes theology for. Moreover, it implies that the impossible religion of pure saying has nothing to teach. Saying allows us to distinguish between fundamentalist and nonfundamentalist forms of religious logos, not between religions with and religions without a logos. Surely, we are not obligated to afrm or assent to any specic Christian or Buddhist or Jewish truth claim. But we are obligated to treat those traditions fairly, to judge with equity, to grant each tradition their right to speak. There is much to criticize in the Christian tradition, especially from a Jewish point of view. But Cohen seems to put the Christian in an impossible position: On the one hand, when he dismisses the irrationalism of faith, he implies that there is some unimpeachable rational criteria in which to adjudicate knowledge claims. On the other hand, by attacking logos he denies the very possibility of such criteria, not only to faith, but seemingly in general. Surely, justice demands empirical considerations, but would it not also recognize the non-emperical, i.e., the narrative and conceptual dimensions of particular and different human forms of life? For the Levinasian, the meanings here presuppose the ethical, but do they not also express and enact the goodness and beauty of life, a goodness and beauty we ght for and defend in the struggle for

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justice? The violence done to Judaism over the centuries was precisely in denying it a place in the universal, in asking it to check its tradition and its truth-claims at the door, in asking it to give upby conversion, assimilation, and worsewhat ought to be the indenite and pacic contest of debate and conversation between irreducibly different traditioned forms of life in the practice and maintenance of a just peace. For those attracted by such a vision, Cohen is a must read. His tenacious attention to universality exhibits a utopian or messianic elan, in the best senses of those terms. As is clear, his treatment of Christianity warrants criticism precisely because it fails to exhibit the positive justice he adamantly and unequivocally afrms. And clearly: The above equivocation on the question of particularity is not ultimately Cohens equivocation, but Levinas. Thus far, most Levinas scholarship assumes an unbroken continuity between his middle and late work. As my analysis above suggests, Totality and Innity should be reread in light of the philosophical position elaborated in Otherwise than Being, and evaluated in its light. And one cannot help but notice that Levinas late religious and political writings exhibit the very same tensions we witness in Cohens work. I hope my critical treatment of the problems in this book has not been overly ungenerous. I framed this review by seeking to contrast the best of Cohens sincere aspirations with the places he fails to fulll them. Despite this all-too-human dimension (and no doubt universal, none of us can claim perfection on this score), Cohens book is essential reading for those who read Levinas with Habermas, Rawls, and Marx, and not only Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. Cohen is perhaps the most tenacious partisan for the Levinas of universal justice, and for what weve come to call an emancipatory horizon, a horizon that must welcome all traditions. For this, we are ever in his debt.

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