"On the brink of tears and laughter": joy and suffering in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

The idea of enjoyment (<em>jouissance</em>), of &quot;life as love of life,&quot; is a crucial preconditional aspect in Levinas's ethical thought. The self takes satisfaction in its own being by consuming the outside world through enjoyment, through making the Other into the Same. For Levinas, however, it is the face of the other person that interrupts my enjoyment and calls me to responsibility: &quot;one has to first enjoy one's bread, not in order to have the merit of giving it, but in order to give it with one's heart, to give oneself in giving it.&quot; My enjoyment thereby becomes meaningful in the other.<br />Levinas also attempts to &quot;envisage suffering . . . in the inter-human perspective - that is, as meaningful in me, useless in the Other.&quot; In the context of his philosophical project, this move is necessary, lest my suffering become an alibi for the suspension of my responsibility, and lest one see the Other's suffering as theodicy, as part of God's plan. Uke enjoyment, my suffering, &quot;at the limit of its 'usefulness,'&quot; is precisely that which &quot;does not fit in me.&quot; This idea of an outside that cannot be assimilated and that instead assimilates or changes me is the essence of revelation. Nevertheless, Levinas does not address the fact that personal, even expiatory, suffering may often have more problematic interpersonal dimensions.