Gold Moshe - Of Levinas and Shakespeare: To see another thus

The great Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi famously wondered whether he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. It is helpful to remember this anecdote when thinking about Levinass suggestion that the whole of philosophy is only a meditation of Shakespeare. As several contributors to this volume point out, the genitive of (de in French) is ambiguous: was Levinas saying that philosophy is a meditation on Shakespeare, or that philosophy is a meditation by Shakespeare? Perhaps, like Zhuangzi, he was wondering whether he was a philosopher dreaming he was Shakespeare, or Shakespeare dreaming he was a philosopher.

Like so many philosophers, Levinas was fascinated by Shakespeare. One passage that especially fascinated him was the remark that Banquo makes immediately after the witches vanish in Act 1, scene 3 of Macbeth: The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, / And these are of them. (1.3.79-80) As Hilaire Kallendorf and Claire Katz point out in their essay, Levinas cites these words several times over the course of his career. In 1947 he compares beings insinuation in nothingness to bubbles of the earth (les bulles de terre) (Existence and Existents, 57), and in 1965 he uses the same phrase to describe the insinuation of the face into being. (Phenomenon and Enigma, in Collected Philosophical Papers, 70) Finally, in a Talmudic reading published in 1977, he characterizes the sacred (le sacr) as bubbles of Nothing in things. (Nine Talmudic Readings, 141)

What exactly are these bubbles of the earth, and how can they signify so many different things for Levinas? Let us briefly examine the series:

(1) insinuation of being in nothing

(2) insinuation of the face in being

(3) insinuation of nothing in being

At first glance, (1) and (3) appear to be diametrically opposed. According to (1), Banquos bubbles are bubbles of being: like the spawn of a spontaneous generation, they literally appear out of nowhere. According to (3), however, the bubbles are bubbles of nothing that flicker in and out of being. Perhaps we can resolve this apparent contradiction by considering Banquos comparison of bubbles of the earth to bubbles of the water. Bubbles of the water are made not of water but of air. Of what are bubbles of the earth made? Being? Nothing? Or something else?

Perhaps the correct answer is fire. This would be in keeping with the witches chant, Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble. (4.1.10-11) It would also round out the series of metaphysical elements:

(bubbles of the) water: air

(bubbles of the) earth: fire

For Heraclitus, fire was the most basic of the four elements. Fire was also a symbol or principle of becoming. Bubbles made of fire would be in a state of perpetual becoming. As such, they would involve both the insinuation of being in nothing and the insinuation of nothing in being. Far from contradicting each other, senses (1) and (3) would coincide.

Another way to explain the connection between senses (1) and (3) has to do with sense (2)the radically different notion that Banquos bubbles involve the insinuation of the face in being. Beyond the ontological categories of being, nothing, and becoming, a face signifies the transcendence of the good. Its appearance within beingits transcendence within immanenceis essentially evanescent. It is, as Levinas says, immediately reduced to nothing, breaking up like the bubbles of the earth. (Phenomenon and Enigma, 70)