“Ethical Encounters in Narratives:
In the Face of the Other, with
Gandhi and Levinas”
– Clara A.B. Joseph
• Two literary works and two philosophies, to
consider if narratives can help us negotiate, without
too much danger, the relationship of the self with
the other. The Road and the Acts of Thomas: what
these say about Somalia perhaps and pre-colonial
Christians of India; how the philosophy of Gandhi’s
talisman and Levinas’ ethics of the face, can help us
engage with these literary works and, through
literary criticism, with the other.
• I’ll first summarize and highlight passages of
the literary works, beginning with The Road.
Then I’ll briefly introduce aspects of the
philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Emmanuel
Levinas, which may help us in an ethical
understanding of these texts in the context of
political realities that we face today. Overall:
the question is how must the self address the
other?
•
The novel, The Road, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in
2006. Soon after, it was also made into a movie, under the same
title. Because of the high ratings that the book received, I decided
to read it. It was difficult to begin, but soon it was more difficult to
put it down. The plot is simple: a man and his son are on the road,
heading South, and the period is after most of the world they knew
had literally turned to ashes. Food is short. So too water. At night,
all that the father can do is hold his son who is “shivering against
him” as he “counted each frail breath in the blackness” (14). [] But
“he told the boy stories. Old stories of courage and justice as he
remembered them until the boy was asleep …” (41). “He
whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you” (54).
• In his article, “With the World at Heart: Reading Cormac
McCarthy's ‘The Road’ with Augustine and Heidegger,”
Thomas A. Carlson quotes this final line, this whisper of
the man, as the concluding evidence not of
possessiveness or despair but rather of Charity and
Being. Augustine’s caritas and Heidegger’s Dasein or
Being persist, according to Carlson, in the perseverance
of love and mutual presence, even when the father
eventually dies. Later on I will return to this quotation
from The Road to see if this is really the moment of
ethics or rather of its lack in the novel, this moment
when the father expresses his fundamental right and
relief: “He whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you”
(54).
• I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in
doubt, or when the self becomes too much with
you, apply the following test. Recall the face of
the poorest and the weakest man whom you may
have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you
contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will
he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a
control over his own life and destiny? In other
words, will it lead to swaraj [self-rule] for the
hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then
you will find your doubts and your self melt
away. -- Gandhi
• Gandhi’s definition of the other as the most oppressed and the
most marginalized is important. The French-Jewish
philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas defines the other as the “Face.”
The other is the one who is neither the self nor like the self, but
the totally other. The other is the Face whom I encounter. This
is the Face of the other who is the most vulnerable. What is
more, the face of the other begs me – not to kill. Levinas says
that in the face of the other I receive both a request and a
command: Thou shalt not kill. I am dominated by this
beseeching and this order so that, in this relationship between
the self and the other, the self becomes subservient to the other.
Further, the self will be grateful to the other for this, for it is the
result neither of the generosity or the free choice of the self.
Human bodies. Sprawled in every
attitude. Dried and shrunken in their
rotten clothes” (The Road47)
• [image]
“Who are they hiding from?
From each other” (The Road 185)
• [image]
“The essence of discourse is
prayer” – Levinas
• [image]
The Other . . . between me and my
God
• [image]
• [since most of the material is being drafted
for publication, I am unable to post any
more. My apologies!]