Then We Have Tea.

As often is the case when I read philosophical texts, I wonder if I understand them. Presently I am reading “Time and the Other” by Emanuel Levinas.

What he grapples with is not complicated to me; it deals with coming into existence, of time and of being. There is a sense of a fleeting description of what is, or coming into being, and this – to me, at least, - counters the efforts to all-encompassing systems of thought, like the ones introduced by Hegel, for instance. 

I know we cannot know all things; and we always live with a sense of eternity, both in space and time. I am, and I am blissfully limited, but because I take that as a point of departure, I have no need to order my world into neat categories, no need to capture the totality of things. I have a God-given eternity perspective, and that is something I cannot control. Perhaps the naturalistic mindset produces the need for complete comprehension and systems which will necessarily be fully coherent in interdependence, since all there is is in the material world.

Levinas talks about a moment when something comes into existence, becomes an existant. And this moment he names a ‘hypostasis’. He mentions that time comes into existence at the time when someone or something also enters this hypostasis. He has God in the picture, but we are not at this point talking about the creation by God’s hands. That is a different matter; but he is talking about something and someone having a real being in this world, and this being there is fully justified.

I thought to myself: Levinas shared these thoughts first in a lecture series in Paris in 1946/47; how are his expressions reflecting the aftermath of the Holocaust? And then I wondered about the sense of existence in time, and coming into existence in time, which is a fleeting moment, as a form of reaction to the large and complex systems of German thinkers. For life is more. Our being in this world extends to eternity. We cannot fathom life and meaning in limited categories.

Whether I understand what Emanuel Levinas wants to say or not, may not be the only value of reading his works. He makes me ponder, think, read some, fall asleep while reading, rereading the same paragraph time and again. In addition, he sets some of my own thought processes afloat. He makes me ponder my own existence and worth.

And I ponder God, who is not far from any of us, and always available in Christ Jesus.

Then we have tea.

come, join