EMMANUEL LEVINAS ON ONTO-THEO-LOGY: PARRICIDE AND ATHEISM

Emmanuel Levinas says that atheism is necessary for ethics. In his book, Totality and Infinity, he writes: 'The atheist separation is required by the idea of Infinity.' 1 In this essay, I shall investigate the philosophical logic from which this rather startling thesis is derived by situating his critique of Western philosophy as representational thinking, a critique presented in lectures on 'God and Onto-theo-logy' delivered at the Sorbonne during the academic year 1975–6 2 , within the context of his sustained engagement with the question of identity and difference inaugurated by Parmenides' thesis that 'thought and being are the same' 3. I shall begin with a summary of how his thinking about ethics leads Levinas to develop his critique of the kind of rationality inherent in Western philosophy, indicating that this leads him to seek the origin of the logical fallacy which, he argues, underlies conventional philosophical method. Levinas identifies the fateful twist in the thread of Western thinking to be due to its fidelity to Parmenides, a thinker who Levinas frequently refers to as the 'father of Western thinking' 4. I shall therefore, like Levinas, begin at the beginning of Western philosophy, with the fragments of Parmenides' epic poem, On the Way of Truth (Aletheia), and show that there is a distinction between what Parmenides says and how he was heard, and that it is this distinction which has locked thinking into its identification with finitude, obliterating the transcendent towards which thinking (and being) inclines. I shall demonstrate that it is the development of (logos) itself, which represents the way of Truth which had appeared in Parmenides' poem; that is to say, it is the very historicity of the history of philosophy which annihilates difference. My argument shall be made by reference to the methodo-logical differences between the fragments of Parmenides' myth and Plato's dialogue Parmenides. Levinas's thesis is that ontology demands metaphysics as a correlative but radically distinct diachronic and I shall conclude my paper by showing that the logic of this can be legitimised by a critique of onto-theology ; that is, by a critique of Western philosophy's misappropriation of Parmenides' ontology although it cannot be legitimised by a critique of Parmenides himself. LEVINAS'S QUESTION If philosophical investigation concerns the saying of Truth, Levinas's interest originates in the ethical question of whether I can truthfully claim to comprehend the other, com-prendre l'autre, without identifying him with me and so reducing him to the status of an object 'taken together with' me. Levinas sees a violence towards the integrity of the Other