Time&Eternity

118 chapter 2
itself to be assimilated by experience; or to that which—of itself infinite—
would not allow itself to be com-prehended.” 416
This incomprehensibility of the absolute Other 417 is not the consequence
of human inability, but should rather be understood as an impossibility
in principle, since the relation appears as follows:
It is a relationship with the In-visible, where invisibility results not from some incapacity
of human knowledge, but from the inaptitude of knowledge as such—from
its in-adequation—to the Infinity of the absolutely other, and from the absurdity
that an event such as coincidence would have here. This impossibility of coinciding
and this inadequation are not simply negative notions, but have a meaning in the
phenomenon of noncoincidence given in the dia-chrony of time. Time signifies this
always of noncoincidence, but also the always of the relationship, an aspiration and
an awaiting .l.l. 418
In Lévinas, time therefore not only stands in relation to something else,
it is relation: “The situation of the face-to-face would be the very accomplishment
of time.” 419 Time is the very relationship of the subject with the
Other. 420 The absence of time is solitude. 421 Time—understood as relation—enables
a pluralistic existence, without merging everything into a single
unity. 422 The relationship that is conceived as a relation between two
subjects “does not ipso facto neutralize the alterity, but preserves it.” 423 One
is thus dealing with a relation that preserves the alterity of the Other, 424 and
therefore precisely that which I have just characterized as differentiation
with simultaneous relatedness.
Even if his motivation is somewhat different than mine (see pp. 109–16)
above, Lévinas also considers an analysis of death absolutely essential in the
context of a study of time. Without death, which is likewise understood as
an experience of passivity, as the moment when we are no longer capable of
doing anything, time as relation is no longer conceivable. 425 In his book
God, Death and Time, 426 death is not viewed simply as the end, however,
but is instead seen, in light of the desire for infinity, within the ethical context
of the responsibility for the Other. 427 In order to understand this, one
must explain how Lévinas opposes an identity-oriented way of thinking. Instead
of viewing time as the relation to the end (like Heidegger), he wishes
to conceive of time as the relation to the Other. Thus, he wants to abandon
a way of thinking that is oriented toward identity and, therefore, the stability
of the self, since such a way of thinking constantly tries to assimilate the
Other to this self. Moreover, it neutralizes “becoming” into “a stability, apt
to present itself and to be represented, apt to hold itself together in a presence,
and thereby to be taken in hand.” 428 The metaphor that corresponds
to this understanding of time, Lévinas says, is the flux, the trickling away of
something fluid, of a stream of time loaded with moments as atoms.