Of Hospitality: From Ethics to Aesth-ethics

A distinction should be drawn between morality and ethics in the Levinasian sense. Morality is understood as a set of laws, whether originating in God or the subject. Ethics originates from the responsible response to the call emanating from the face of the other person, conceived as a trace of the radical alterity of the infinite God. Regarding Levinas’ ethics, the following questions are raised: (1) Is the other without violence? (2) Is the other’s face the site of the epiphany of radical alterity? (3) Is radical alterity without violence? An analysis of Derrida, Sartre, Freud, and Lacan shows that the other could be infused with violence, whether contingent or a priori. Moreover, the other’s face is not a site of epiphany, as it is always already covered by a veil of facial expressions. The ensuing conclusion is that the site of disclosure should be shifted from the face of the other to the work of art. What is disclosed in art is primordial violence as manifested in the myth of Babel. As such, it is identified with the Joycean expression “he war” and with the notion of the “rav,” a Hebrew term that acquires three consequent meanings: manifold (ribui), dispute (riv), and sovereignty (rav).