Soloveitchik and Levinas: pathways to the other - Biography

Judaism, Fall, 2002 by Seymour Kessler

For Adam II, communication and community are part of the gesture of redemption which requires surrender, retreat, and sacrifice in order to form a covenantal faith community. These gestures are announced in the narrative which is opened by the divine pronouncement, "It is not good for man to be alone." God thus causes Adam to fall asleep and to sacrifice a part of himself in order to obtain his mate. (41)

   [I]t is not good for man to be lonely (not alone) with emphasis
   placed upon "to be." Being at the level of the faith community does
   not lend itself to any equation. "To be" is not to be equated with
   "to work and produce goods." ... [It] is not identical with "to
   think" (as the classical tradition of philosophical rationalism
   throughout the ages culminating in Descartes and later in Kant tried
   to convince us). "To be" does not exhaust itself either in
   suffering ... or in enjoying the world of sense.... "To be" is a
   unique in-depth experience of which only Adam the second is aware and
   it is unrelated to any function or performance. "To be" means to be
   the only one, singular and different, and consequently lonely. For
   what causes man to be lonely and feel insecure if not the awareness
   of his uniqueness and exclusiveness.... [T]here is no one who exists
   like the "I" and because the modus existentiae of the "I" cannot be
   repeated, imitated, or experienced by others. (42)

Soloveitchik calls attention to the difference between "the natural work community" of Adam I and the covenantal faith community of Adam II. He interprets the Biblical statement, "It is not good for men to be alone" in "ontological terms." But if "to be" is neither the cogito nor the presence of being in "function or performance," this is no ordinary ontology. Soloveitchik speaks of being, but it approaches, in its formulation, Levinas's otherwise than being, a transcendence. Also, Soloveitchik emphasizes subjectivity in its epistemological awareness of an "in-depth experience" of loneliness. For him, subjectivity is associated with the solitude of loneliness, whereas for Levinas the meaning of subjectivity is in the relation with the other, and in the assumption of moral obligations.

Levinas interprets subjectivity as the subject already called to unique responsibility. To be "means to be the only one," singular, unable to shift my responsibility to other shoulders. Levinas takes the subject's subjectivity to irreplaceable obligation. (43) Read through Levinasian lenses, the subjectivity of Soloveitchik's Adam I rests on autonomy, whereas for Adam II it is based on heteronomy which signifies the "consciousness of responsibility" imposed, as Levinas points out, "in the accusative." Levinas argues further that subjectivity is "commanded from the outset." "It is 'ordered' and the word 'to order' is very good in French [in English as well]: when you become a priest, you are ordained, you take orders; but in reality, you receive powers. The word 'ordonne' in French means both having received orders and having been consecrated." (44)