Moati Raoul - Levinas and the Night of Being: A Guide to Totality and Infinity

LEVINAS AND THE NIGHT OF BEING

Levinas and the Night of Being

A GUIDE TO TOTALITY AND INFINITY

RAOUL MOATI

TRANSLATED BY DANIEL WYCHE

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York2017

Copyright 2017 Fordham University Press

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This book was first published in French as vnements nocturnes: Essai sur Totalit et infini, by Raoul Moati ditions Hermann, 2012.

This books publication was supported by a subvention from the University of Chicagos Visiting Committee to the Division of Humanities.

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First edition

CONTENTS

, by Jocelyn Benoist

Perhaps the only thing as difficult as translating the work of Emmanuel Levinas is translating a book about Levinas. It goes without saying that Levinass prose, choice of technical terms, and so on are very much his own. Indeed, over the course of this translation project, more than one of my conversations with Raoul Moati would end with a sentence of the form, Yes, it is very strange in French too. Despite those difficulties, one of the greatest strengths of Moatis reading of Totality and Infinity here is his markedly deep insight into, and therefore faithfulness to, Levinass own style and its necessity to the latters overall project. But it is in turn for that reason that the greatest challenges that arose for me in translating Moatis vnements nocturnes: Essai sur Totalit et infini (2012) were ultimately raised by Levinass text.

Alphonso Lingis, in his translation of Totality and Infinity, made an admirable attempt to remain faithful to Levinass voice, and in so doing he has set the standard for English translations of most of the technical vocabulary and important turns of phrase. But despite those efforts, Levinass style can still sound odd even to English ears that are used to it and remains all the more difficult for those who are not. It is here that Ive faced the most daunting task of this project: navigating between a drive toward lucid and properly English prose and the necessity of remaining faithful not just to the content of the original but to the carefully chosen technical terms that populate these texts, however strange or unintuitive they may seem at first. My goal then has been to make Moatis text as fruitful and rewarding as possible to those who choose to take it up, by rendering it in a way that retains both his voice and that of Levinas but minimizes unnecessary obscurity by translating, rather than transliterating, the grammar, style, and vocabulary into English without betraying any technical necessity. If I have even begun to approach such a balance, then I consider my work here a success.

We have had to make several important choices about how to represent a number of technical terms, including when and when not to depart from Lingiss standardizations. Such terms are thus noted when they occur for the first time, and the French is included in brackets when it is clear that it will help with a distinction that would not be apparent in English. It is worth highlighting some of the more important instances here, and it should be kept in mind that all these choices were made after long and in-depth discussion with Moati.

First, in the original, each of the two crucial French terms for the Other and other, autrui and autre, appear in both capitalized and lower case versions, depending on an entire range of criteria particular to Levinass thought. This distinction doesnt exist in English, and so Lingis addressed this problem by rendering autrui as Other, and autre as other, with the approval of Levinas himself. As he says in an early note on this point, With the authors permission, we are translating autrui (the personal Other, the you) by Other, and autre by other. In doing so, we regrettably sacrifice the possibility of reproducing the authors use of capital or small letters with both these terms in the French text..

We have also decided to follow Lingis in the use of dwelling for the term demeure, the place that the subject inhabits, the place where he or she lives or resides in the full sense explicated by Levinas and here by Moati. This choice has the added bonus of allowing an implicit emphasis on the continuity of this concept with the verb form demeurer, to dwell or reside, but also to remain, to stay, and so on. For the sake of making the distinction between the two concepts clear, the English home has been reserved for the French maison.

Le moi appears as the I in Lingis, but I have departed from his usage, and this term is translated here the self and the separated self, when it appears as le moi separ.

The numerous variations on the term tre also provided some difficulty in attempts to distinguish them in English, although all instances of the word tre itself are rendered here simply as being. The term tant proved more of a challenge, but we have followed Lingis in rendering it as existent in all cases. Part of the difficulty there, however, comes from Levinass, and thus Moatis, use of the term xistant, which we have simply transliterated as existant, with an a rather than an e, as it appears in the French. In all Finally, we have distinguished existence from lxister, by transliterating the former as simply existence, and rendering lxister with existing, or sometimes to exist, depending on context.

Along with these issues of technical vocabulary, it should be noted that many of the sources that Moati refers to in this text are not as yet translated into English. Moati has made ample, and excellent, use of the three extant volumes of the newly published Oeuvres compltes, in which many of Levinass early writings are collected for the first time. In particular, Moati draws heavily on three pieces, Pouvoirs et origines, Parole et silence, and Lcrit et loral, all found in Parole et silence, volume 2 of the Oeuvres compltes. All original translations from these texts are my own, as noted at their respective first appearances in this book.

Finally, over the course of this translation project, Raoul Moati has chosen to rewrite certain passages of his own work, vnements Nocturnes, for this English version. Readers comparing the texts will easily spot certain sentences, and even entire paragraphs, that depart completely from the original French. Any such case is the result of a total rewrite on Moatis part, integrated into the text according to his instruction.

I thank Raoul Moati for the privilege of working on this project, Arnold Davidson for making Levinas clear where he had been obscure, my family for their support over the course of this work, and finally the members, past and present, of the Contemporary European Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago.