The History of Eternity by James E. Winder

Author:James E. Winder [Winder, James E.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

XI. Arc of Promise

It is through the condition of being hostage that there can be in this world pity, compassion, pardon, and proximity – even the little there is, even the simple “After you, sir.”

– Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being:

Or Beyond Essence –

To be for a time that would be without me, for a time after my time, over and beyond the famous ‘being for death’, is not an ordinary thought which is extrapolating my own duration; it is the passage to the time of the Other. Should what makes such a passage possible be called eternity?

– Emmanuel Levinas, “Meaning and Sense” –

Are we entering a moment of history in which the good must be loved without promises? May we not be on the eve of a new form of faith, a faith without triumph, as if the only irrefutable value were saintliness, a time when the only right to a reward would be not to expect one?

The first and last manifestation of God would be to be without promises.

– Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence –

But infinite time is also the putting back into question of the truth it promises. The dream of a happy eternity, which subsists in man along with his happiness, is not a simple aberration. Truth requires both an infinite time and a time it will be able to seal, a completed time. The completion of time is not death, but messianic time, where the perpetual is converted into eternal. Messianic triumph is the pure triumph; it is secured against the revenge of evil whose return infinite time does not prohibit. Is this eternity a new structure of time, or an extreme vigilance of the messianic consciousness?

– Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity –

To know God is to know what must be done.

– Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom –

i

You would rather be someone and somewhere

Else. But you are here and now and nowhere.

Your true life is always absent but you

Live it nowhere, now here and forever.

You would be nothing if you were not a

Contradiction, an unsaying of the

Word, a word you’ve longed for, but cannot shake

Off, a word you’ve barely heard, as if you’re

A melody you hardly remember,

An ancient song that yearns to unlimber

Your character and undo your wrong. You’re

Free, it’s said, to be what you are, but there

Are limits to being free: if you are

What you are, you’re not what you ought to be.

ii

The conch shell roar of surging emptiness

Has no after, no before, only waves

Of silence that keep pounding the shore with

Their anonymous roar of unmeaning.

Do not be seduced by what you’ve reduced

To yourself. Apart from you, apart from

Everything, there is never nothingness

But always more, the infinity of

The Other who aims his shocking claim at

You. You begin with the anonymous

Night, and you end with endlessness, with what’s

Wholly other, with what keeps going on,

Keeps eluding your grasp, yet which intrudes

Itself into your now unsettled life.

iii

Sincerity’s your unbetrayable

Reply to the Other who insists that

You must not murder, that you must not lie,

For to lie is to murder

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.