Orange on Levinas

Donna Orange, in her visit on April 9, 2011 to the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, spent most of the day discussing her take on the philosophy of Emanuelis Levinas (a student of the Talmud and a contemporary constructivist and phenomenologist , he believed in a hermeneutics of lived experience) who wrote about the "wisdom of love" (as opposed to the ‘love of wisdom’). Levinas believed that ethical responsibility is integral to the encounter with the Other, [and consequently, to intersubjectivity], a responsibility that is constitutive to our own being and interiority, that is, that subjectivity is formed, in part, through the encounter with the other. In this privileged encounter with the other, one feels both the relatedness with and the alterity of the other. Unlike what Self Psychology would purport about the confrontation with otherness, Levinas wrote: "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."

In discussing Levinasian ethics, in particular Levinas’ idea of transcendence and the belief that one instantly recognizes the transcendence of the Other, Orange emphasized putting the other above oneself. As Orange’s form of intersubjectivity, like that of Stolorow’s/Atwood’s, with its influence from Self Psychology wherein the focus on the analyst's subjectivity is as a source of understanding, and where the need of the patient for the analyst as a selfobject is paramount, it came as no surprise that Orange would be enamored of this facet of Levinasian ethics. In fact, for me, her heavy emphasis was seen as a justification for empathic immersion and for the analyst to function predominantly as a selfobject experience for the patient.

While I agree that placing the suffering other above oneself (who would not open the door for someone struggling with crutches to get through it?) is, for those not so preoccupied with themselves as to be aware of their surroundings, a natural response, I think it is a hard philosophy to adopt when the other is not a suffering other. Orange, taking from Levinas his holding the other above self, even being responsible for the sins of others [here I am reminded both of Christ dying for the sinners’ sins and of the self blame of victims; Levinas, as a Lithuanian Jew, had survived the Holocaust but his family, sadly, did not] advocates a philosophy beyond ‘love thy neighbor as thy self’ to “love thy neighbor more than thy self.”

More than one audience member asked: how does one avoid masochism in this philosophy? Her advice to read Emmanuel Ghent’s 1990 paper on Masochism, Submission, Surrender did not suffice to further the dialogue (though his brilliant paper does). Had Orange made explicit the inference to the clinical applicability of Levinasian ethics, given that the patient is seen as the suffering other, then the attendees might have better embraced the philosophy Orange touted. Had clinical examples been supplied to illustrate the practical application of such ethics, then the audience would have been won over by her scholarly explication of Levinas’ ideas of transcendence.

Ghent, E. (1990). Masochism, Submission, Surrender—Masochism as a Perversion of Surrender. Contemp. Psychoanal., 26:108-136.

BOOK REVIEW: ON FRIENDSHIP II

Passages from Lorraine Smith Pangle’s book Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

In friendship, Plato and Aristotle both suggest, “we can best see the true character and extent of our desire to live with others when that desire is shorn of all considerations of necessity and utility. Likewise, Aristotle assumes neither the possibility nor the impossibility of what we would call altruism, but instead offers a sustained and sympathetic exploration of what is really at work in the human heart when an individual seems to disregard his own good to pursue the good of others.”

“Aristotle does not assume that the concern for a friend is necessarily tainted by partiality; he argues that friendship can be rooted on a true assessment of the friend’s worth as a person, and as such, friendship can give us the noblest expression of our sociability.”

The naturalness of friendship (that is, the tendency toward friendship as an essential dimension of human nature), the possibility of selflessness in friendship, and the relationship of friendship to justice, are the three central themes of all major philosophical studies of friendship.
Professor Smith Pangle articulates and proposes keen insights on friendship. She presents her insights first as questions, which she then answers in the affirmative with sustainable arguments throughout her book:

"What are the roots of friendship in human nature? How central to human
happiness is loving and being loved? To what extent is the desire for
affection and friendship reducible to other causes, to our defects and
vulnerabilities and needs for things in themselves altogether extraneous
to friendship, and to what extent is friendship itself a necessary or
central component of the happiness of the healthiest human beings?

"How truly can and do human beings care for others for their own sakes and
promote the good of others as an end in itself? Do they do this at all?
Do they do it when the good of the other conflicts with their own deepest
good? Or is every apparent selfless sacrifice in fact, in some complicated
or disguised way, a pursuit of a greater good for oneself?

"To what extent can friendship answer the longing for a just community with
others that political life invariably fails to answer perfectly? And what
light does an examination of the problems of justice within friendship
shed on the problem of justice as a whole?"

In psychoanalysis and psychotherapy we can benefit much from contributions such as this one from our colleagues in philosophy.
Ernesto Vasquez, MD

BOOK REVIEW: ON FRIENDSHIP I

Passages from Lorraine Smith Pangle’s book Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

“Friendship was a great subject of stories and of philosophical reflection in classical antiquity”---Unshakable loyalty and mutual trust made friendship a most impressive and most appealing classical virtue. Courage is another example of what the ancients considered a virtue. The “special charm and fascination of a great friendship seem to make it at once so noble and so delightfully desirable.”

The “richness and complexity of friendship, its ability to support but also at times to undercut virtue, and the promise it holds of bringing together in one happy union so much of what is highest and so much of what is sweet in life, formed a fruitful topic of philosophical inquiry for the ancients.”

Friendships were to be cultivated and “counted on as one of life's chief good”[s]. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote about friendship more extensively than about any other virtue. He also offered friendship as a “bridge between the virtues and the highest life of philosophy.” In classical Greek and Roman cultures, philosophy was not the study of abstract concepts - aesthetics, ethics, and logic. Rather, it was a form of practice, the practice of aesthetics, ethics, and logic, which fostered the most desirable way of being in the world, the most rewarding form of life, the good life. In that sense, friendship was the practice of, among other things, reciprocity, and it is here that friendship for a woman and a man can get tricky, challenging.

“The study of friendship in classical authors is in many ways a study of human love altogether”, since the Greek word for friendship “can cover all bonds of affection, from the closet erotic and familial ties, to political loyalties, humanitarian sympathies, business relationships, even love for inanimate things.” But the Greek word for friendship ”means first and foremost friendship, for it is precisely in friendships of mature and virtuous individuals that we do see human love not only at its most revealing, but at its richest and highest.”
Ernesto Vasquez, MD