Levinas Emmanuel - Monks of Tibhirine

Precious photo Jan 1996

 Email from friend . . .

Dear Donald,  

I would like to thank you very much for your help.

The pages of the attachment are already very helpful.

They will become a part of the literature the students have to read.

. . .

Thanks for sending me the copy.

God bless you and your work.

Maarten

A Heritage Too Big
Volume 2
Scan of pages 91-95

per Fr. Donald, Nunraw Abbey

17. NOTE: Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas

in the Reading of Christian and Christophe

David Hodges, OCSO, Caldey

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), French philosopher, has exerted a considerable influence on a generation of continental philosophers and religious thinkers. Some of the concepts at the centre of his thought provided Fr. Christian and Fr. Christophe with a catalyst for the expression of their ideals and their understanding of the death at the hands of others which they felt to be approaching. Translations of Emmanuel Levinas and studies of his philosophy have become more widely available in the English speaking world in recent years. The following note indicates some of the references made to him in the writing of Christian and Christophe. (Ed.)

Dom Christian de Cherge, Superior of the monastery of Atlas in Algeria, who was martyred along with six other brothers of the community in 1996, wrote an extraordinary Testament before he died in which he envisaged meeting his death at the hand of a Muslim terrorist and forgave him in advance. He wrote of seeing God in the face of the other, even the assassin, drawing on the categories of the philosopher, Emmanuei Levinas, whom he had studied. He addresses his 'envisaged' assassin: "Qui, pour toi aussi je le veux ce merci et cet 'A-DIEU' en-visage de toi". "En-visage de toi", in whom I see the face of the Absolute Other, and in whom I go to God. God is seen in the face of the assassin, and death and the assassin are seen in the face of God. This could only be seen from the perspective of one who is himself a face of God's love for all. Here was a life totally given to God and to the other, - a vocation that can be seen with some assimilating of Levinas' categories and ideas, and christianising them: the face of the other; responsibility for the Other, even up to substitution and expiation for the other; responsibility for the actions of the other; a deep interiority allowing one to transcend self and to reach to exteriority; being-for-death as being-for-beyond-my death; death as but an opening to the Absolute other. Dom Christian goes further than seeing the face as an encounter with the Absolute other. He is bold enough to contemplate that after his death he will be able to: "immerse my gaze in that of the Father, and contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ."    

Levinas' category of the face needs some explanation:

"All great philosophers have one or more key intuitions around which they build a philosophy. One of the key intuitions of Levinas is "the face" (in French, le visage), the face of the other. Levinas wanted to build a philosophy which was not merely conceptual; the face escapes conceptualisation and appeals directly to the conscience. Access to the face is straightaway ethical. It escapes concept and essence. It enables me to escape from self. I do not dominate or absorb the other in this relationship. The face is naked, it is encountered in the total nudity of its eyes. It is not a potential threat but a stimulus to an encounter. It has an essential poverty. It is exposed as if inviting us to violence but at the same time the face is what forbids us to kill. It is not perception of features, it is signification without context; in this sense one can say that the face is not seen. It leads you beyond. It is in this that the signification of the face makes its escape from being, as a correlate of knowing. My relation to the face is straightaway ethical. The face is what one cannot kill, or it is that whose meaning consists in saying "thou shalt not kill." Of course murder is a banal fact, ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity, but this ethical peculiarity, the humanity of man, operates as a rupture of being (it breaks "the Totality"). It is significant even if being resumes and recovers itself. The face speaks inviting discourse, and response or responsibility is the authentic relationship with the other. This is its moral height over me. The first word of the face is "thou shalt not kill." There is a command in the appearance of the face. Starting from this ethical experience one can construct an ethics. Levinas' task is only to find its meaning ....

... One can see here Levinas' Jewish roots, even though he says that ethical truth is common. He is at home in the biblical language of Revelation and response. The encounter with the other in the face, reveals the Absolutely Other, it leads you beyond. Levinas says that the coming to mind of God is always linked in his analysis to the responsibility for the other person, and all religious affectivity signifies in its concreteness a relation to others." 38 

Others have attempted to adapt Levinas to their own theological project. For Christian 39 and Christophe part of his thinking illuminated their own lectio divina and their situation They shared his thought with the members of the Ribat inter-faith group. They saw that the philosophy of Levinas can act as a bridge between the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which all see God as relational and each person's primary relation with the other as ethical, imposing on each person an unavoidable and unconditional responsibility for the other. If we can utilise a common philosophy in our dialogue with one another this in a step towards unity and peace. "God is the ultimate manifestation of the other. I can only go towards God by being ethically concerned by and for the other person. The relationship with the other is a manifestation of the ultimate Other, the mystery of God. The Infinite does not' come to meet me but the idea of the Infinite is to be found in my responsibility to the other. 40 

Meetings of Ribat at Tibhirine gave occasion for the Frs. Christian and Christophe to give expression to their ideals and hopes as refined in the particular crucible of their situation. Their vision of God, the love of others (Muslim neighbours) and the threat of death. Speaking on the theme of, "0 God, you are my hope in the face of all living people ", starting from that sense of 'face' in the Bible (there are approx. 400 occurrences of the word), both Christian and Christophe, find in this Jewish writer the words to express their own deeper understanding,

Christophe was still speaking of Levin as' ideas in his last letters to Fr. Philippe at Tamie.

"Those who have studied the work of Emmanuel Levinas - and Christopher was still talking to me about it in his last letter - will have recognised there one of that philosopher's basic concepts: "The other person is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed." (Levinas, "Totalite et Infini" 41). "My relationship with God comes to me in the concrete form of my relationship with the other person, whose face, whose otherness, whose very strangeness speaks the commandment come from we know not where," (cf. "De Dieu qui vient à l'idee".) One is not, here, in the realm of representation but in that of revelation, and this very revelation obtains entirely, as if by chance, in the commandment of love - even of one's enemies." (Collectanea Cisterciensia, 58 - 1996, p.240).

In his conference at the Easter meeting of Ribat 1995 Christophe had said, "Yes, a future of Light awaits us and it is already given us to live: "Children of Light are we,"(c.f. Col. I, 23). Also: "I choose to keep myself on the threshold of your house,"(Psalm 83), it is a happiness which comes to me: "Happy the man who hopes in you! You', the sun, shield of light, of grace, of glory, my light and my salvation, I pray you: let your face - on the face of all who live -shine!"(psalm 118, 125), Myself ... and other people? Me and you, this face-to-face, if it does not receive an opening, a rupture, runs a strong risk of being only an illusion, or even a prison. I have not come out of myself and I have captured your glory and made it small, prostrating myself before the idol: "Me". To receive from you my being as a face - searching for your face- is freedom, an investiture which makes it impossible. for me to shy, away from my neighbour. (see ... E. Levinas!). In his face you look at me. Stranger, prisoner, naked, hungry, you call them to hope, it is up to me to put it to work. Hope, take heart! Take courage! Hope again, be strong!" It is a matter of life and death for your neighbour, wounded by the roadside. Let us go! ... 42 

... Jesus, himself, raised up on the cross? Yes, this humble servant, despised, stared at, he will become the light, and he will be fulfilled. Him, in whom God is revealed to us ...

There this just man justifies the multitudes ...

He interposes himself as a face both filial and fraternal. Vulnerable, facing his executioners, as he is to the love of his Father, he is the first-born of a multitude of faces, attracting us, drawing us to him in his prayer of intercession, of interposing, and already of grace. Indeed, we do not see it, it is necessary to wait with perseverance, we groan interiorly with all the cosmos in impatient waiting." 43 

Fr. Christian, on the very eve of his abduction, had presented some reflections referring to the views of Levinas to the members of the Ribat Meeting. The minutes of that Meeting, 25-28 March 1996 make a summary of his words continuing the theme, "O God, you are my hope in the face of all living people" :

"Fr. Christian prayed a little on this theme but it had never entered so deeply into his life. It is very concrete, it is the order of experience. Hope leads us towards that which cannot be seen. The face risks stopping anyone who sees it. Give thanks for the beauty of certain faces while going beyond them. The most unprepossessing faces, Hope transfigures. These are practical exercises in the human community and in the Communion of Saints. Job is the master of Hope, both in God and in Man, when all the ports are blocked.

He reflects on the reading from the Koran for Ramadan, gathering flowers, as it were, in these desert pages. He recalls the presence that Christmas night of the "Six Shepherds" who had led them in the arrangement of the first part of the liturgy in order to enter more fully into it, the same "shepherds" they welcomed at the guesthouse after the Eucharist. These six faces merge with the six faces of those others (terrorists) who had visited them on Christmas night two years earlier. ...

"One disarmed face can disarm another face. If one presents oneself disarmed and if one can believe that the other person can leave himself disarmed, that will happen and violence will then become improbable." (Levinas)

... The face is a mystery of daily poverty. The young people of the area were aware that the monks lived the same precarious existence as they did. The intention of straddling the future seems a false hope. In doing  so one

can violate life, violate experience. We are called to present a good face to the other person, even if he has the right not to respond. The face which reveals itself today is not all one has with which to welcome the other

   person."    
                .

And in his final Testament Christian's key concepts of the 'face of God' and 'a- Dieu' resonate directly with the amplified exposition of Levinas. Levina;" for example, writes, as did Christian, of a-Dieu, with a hyphen, to avoid the implication of adieu as a farewell. A-Dieu suggests movement towards God rather than termination, "Levinas frequently writes a-Dieu (to God) rather than Dieu in order to avoid the implication that the noun refers to a substance with a separate existence. Instead God is to be approached but never reached: the a of a-Dieu suggests movement towards God, whereas the more familiar word adieu suggests a farewell to God as an ontological category .... Whenever Levinas characterises God, he is obliged to exercise extreme caution with his language." 44 

18. NOTE: Louis Massignon Louis Massignon in the Reading of Christian de Che rge

Donald McGlynn OCSO

Louis Masstgnon (1883-1962), an outstanding Orientalist scholar, was a dominant presence in the field of Islamic studies. He made a special study of Islamic mysticism and Sufism. He contributed greatly to the understanding of Islam within the Catholic milieu. "He recognised in Islam a genuine heritage from the kindred and ancestral faith of Abraham. And on this foundation he built his lifelong campaign for better mutual relationships between Christians and Muslims. The fruit of his efforts is to be seen in the eirenic references in the Vatican 11 documents.” . 45 

While it may be true that Emmanuel Levinas was an important influence in biblical philosophy, it is well to note that Christian's search for a deeper inter­faith dialogue was influenced more specifically, in its Islamic orientation, by another scholar, Louis Massingnon. In a significant way the particular tension of life at Atlas monastery and the challenge to genuine understanding of their personal vocation and of their relationship with Islam resulted in a meeting point of three great faiths, Jewish, Christian and Islamic. In Levinas there was a clear encounter with a powerful and specifically Jewish background greatly influenced by the Hebrew Bible. The need was even· more urgent, in the

___________________
Notes:

38 David Hodges, 'The relevance of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to Christian thought', Hallel (22) 1997:1, pp. 50-53.

39 E.g., see above p. 24

40 ibid, p. 53

41 English translation, Alphonso Lingis, 'Totality and Infinity', Pittsburgh, Dusquesne University Press, 1969, p.79.

42 Sept vies pour Dieu et l'Algerie, ed. Bruno Chenu, Bayard Editions, Paris 1996, p.162. 43 ibid, p.165

43 ibid p.165

44 Colin Davis, Levinas, Polity Press. Cambridge, 1996. p. 98.

45 Sidney H. Griffith, 'Thomas Merton and Louis Massignon', Merton Annual, No .3, p.156.