The listening eye: Nietzsche and Levinas

Nietzsche's recognition of existence as an ever-shifting play of surface ap pearances presages his 'revaluation of all values', his response to those w ho would stabilize becoming by metaphysically reifying it as being. Nietzsc he arguably provides Levinas with his deepest ethical challenge. Consequent ly, Levinas himself undertakes a similar revaluation of the ground of tradi tional values and of the subject. Both put forth heterodox notions of subje ctivity insofar as the subject is constituted by a radical exteriority that is paradoxically realized as such interiorly. However, Levinas repudiates the postmodern conception of the subject as an empty, fragmented phantasm ( a position often attributed to Nietzsche), the hollow legacy of a now debun ked and defunct modernist project, characterizing his ethical philosophy as a 'defense of subjectivity'. Nietzsche and Levinas simultaneously incert a nd intertwine the traditional hierarchical relation between seeing and hear ing. in doing so, they reveal essential dimensions of the ethical relations hip that would appear to be contradictory, self-negating, or at least incom patible. However, they also have their sights set on a similar site--that o f the 'eye that listens'. This essay interrogates the role that the metapho r of the 'listening eye' plays in determining their respective conception o f subjectivity and ethics. Both employ this provocative and necessarily amb iguous metaphor to emphasize the radical role that teaching plays in their philosophies.