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The Ethical Meaning of Money in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Roger Burggraeve
In the view of the Franco-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas money has a multitude of anthropological and ethical meanings, not excluding contradictions2. For money functions on different levels, namely on that of the I and the effort of its being, that of the relation with the other and that of the third, that is to say on the socio-economical and judicial level. The Economy of Self-interest and Money To begin with, money functions on the level of the natural I in its spontaneous dynamic of existence as self-interested attempt to be (conatus essendi). As a finite and needy creature, man not only persists in his attempts to keep a tight hold on his being, but also draws the other to himself as a function and means for realizing his own project of existence, of which the own self is subject (source) as well as object (aim). He stands inexorably for himself (responsibility in the first person). Here responsibility becomes a synonym of freedom, that is to say as free self-development and self-unfolding which, so far as possible, tries to overcome each form of constraint and alienation, namely by disengaging itself from every form of totalizing participation, and that at the same time develops its own possibilities as much as it can in function of itself as ideal. This autonomy-based and directed responsibility includes an extension to and a making useful of its surrounding world, precisely in so far as man is a needy being who can not find in himself every source for his enduring in his being. His fullness as independent event is not fullness alone, but also finitude and lack. His natural existence then also executes itself as economy in the broad sense of the word, namely as reshaping of the world into nourishment, dwelling and means to be and to be ever better. In this

sense, economy always implies a self-interested connection between man and world. In this economy of self-interest money plays an eminent role, for it makes it possible to obtain the goods for the satisfaction of our needs and extension of our identity. Notice that nothing has yet been said about the specific status of money, namely its social ground structure, about which more will be said further. In the till now still simple (in fact, simplistic) explanation of money as a means (like other means) to the self-unfolding of an I which is already structurally autonomous and dynamically striving toward autonomy in the world, this social status is supposed. For to obtain supposes not only a direct grasp and a self-appropriation of the world, but also the mediation of others from whom I, thanks to money, buy goods. However, in our healthy drive toward selfunfolding we meet not only with the world, but also with other people. We need others, too, for our happiness. We therefore spontaneously extend our economic situation over against the world to the interhuman plane and we make the other subservient to our effort at being. It is frequently to this end that the riches and power that we have assembled around ourselves is instated. Above all, money can be used, or rather misused to bring the other to us, to manipulate, intimidate and buy him, in short to subdue him -without directly evoking the impression of brutal tyranny or slavery. In its extreme form, this lust for power runs all the way to a denial of the other, of which murder is only the physical incarnation. The Economy of Giving and Money According to Levinas, it is this very possibility of murder, that is to say this ethical evil, that constitutes the kernel of ethical experience. Confronted

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with the other, I come to the realization that my healthy self-interest, which I must unfold in order to live (and to live well), at the same time contains a fundamental threat to the other. I experience my self-interest as temptation to murder, to reduce the other to myself. For Levinas, this is also the kernel of the racism which admits to the Same and everything which is reducible to the proper, and therefore precisely rejects the other or the strange and tries to destroy it. In the attraction to violence, however, I realize that what can be the case in fact, in principle may not. Through the appearance of the naked and vulnerable other I feel myself shocked and placed in question as to my self-sufficiency and the endurance of my being. This is the kernel of the experience of the other as face, or as the command You shall not kill (to be understood as the wordless word that calls upon me as an unconditional categorical imperative). Hence is it evident that man is irreducible to the self-interested dynamic of his existence. He is more than his own effort at being, or better he is otherwise than being (autrement qutre), since he is sensible to what overflows that effort and places it in question. This being-by-and-for-the-other we must designate as the absolute novelty of man on earth, as le miracle de lhumain, according to Levinas striking formulation. You shall not kill means that we are responsible for the other, not on the grounds of our own preference or choice, but because the other by the nudity of his face has a right to our attention and mercy (responsibility in the second person). When we stand eye-to-eye with the other, it is our calling (the categorical imperative understood as appl) not to leave the other to his fate. This aid can come only in a concrete worldly manner, through the act of giving. My hunger is selfish, but the hunger of the other is sacred. In this respect, the answer to the face which appeals to me can only be an economic one, which implies an ethical revision of our understanding of economy. And money, as a rational modality

of economic existence, then also receives a fundamental meaning on the level of the being-byand-for-the-other. However, since it receives an ethical meaning, it can just as well become a means to immorality, to murder in the sense set out above. In the ethical rejection of the other money can, precisely in virtue of its so-called objectivity and neutrality, of which more will be said below, be easily used or, rather, misused to cancel out the others alterity and thus in one or another manner kill him by instrumentalizing him and functionalizing him, by buying and selling him as nothing more than a means. The Thirds in Space and Time and Social Justice But responsibility for the other does not stop with the unique you with whom I stand eye-to-eye. It is not only us two in the world, but there are many. Moreover, there are not only those close by but also many far away (as we learned directly from our confrontation with the so-called third world), not only present but also future others (through whom ecology and, among other things, the consequences of nuclear energy for a thousand generations remote confront us in a dramatic way). In short, there is the third, who also falls under my responsibility and through which responsibility in the second person extends itself infinitely (responsibility in the third person). We must take account not only of this unique other, but of everyone: the second and the third. It is therefore necessary for us to judge, make distinctions, calculate and weigh on the basis of priorities and urgency, and so create a just coexistence, or society. With the entrance of the third, responsibility must become justice. There is still more. Since we can not take adequately into account those who are distant or in the future while we remain here and now, we must realize justice via mediation. It is possible to concretize our care for others only by inserting intermediaries between ourselves and the absent

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thirds. Through them we are able to take indirect but nonetheless real account of those thirds. These intermediaries are of all sorts of social, economical, juridical and political structures, institutions, organizations, instances and systems, infra-national as well as national, international and worldwide. Economic Justice and Money Economic mediation proceeds concretely through works, that is to say the goods and services that we produce and that we can barter, exchange buy and sell, in short deal in (economy in the strict sense of the word). Well then, money is what makes this dealing possible on the level of the third. Only through setting a price on goods and services payable in money can we make available the products of our labor, not only to the individuals nearby, but also and above all to the countless many who are far away or absent. Money fulfills an intermediary function, or better, as middle term it is mediation par excellence. Here, we only touch on the specific meaning of money that was already presupposed in its functioning on the level of the effort at being and the other. Strictly speaking, money emerges only on the level of the third, and only then can it be tied into the economy of selfishness or giving. The most important part of this approach to the problem is, however, that money has primarily and fundamentally a positive ethical meaning. It is an essential modality of an economic justice in a humane socio-political society which tries as much on the micro- and meso- plane as on the macro- to do justice to everyone, the near and the far, the present and the future other. Money as means of greed and corruption is than also merely a perversion of its original ethical meaning. Economic and Monetary Stalinism Yet money as means of an economic and sociopolitical system of justice can never have the last

word. An economic order of justice can never be a definitive regime, since it always realizes justice in a deficient and provisional manner. Options, priorities and balanced accounts always create new injustices. For this reason there will always be a need for improved economic justice. The duty to justice for everyone here and away, today and tomorrow, requires that we build up a flexible economic and monetary system, one that will dare to question and correct itself, to put itself radically in question, to ascertain whether it still fulfills its fundamental duty to justice. When an economic-monetary system raises itself up into a definitive regime, it falls into the same mistakes as the political Stalinism whose historical end we seem to have lived to see. Then it presents itself as an all-encompassing and comprehensive order, to which extent it exhibits a Stalinist tendency, although -in our democratic system -it does everything it can to obscure this totalitarian character. But howsoever soft and disguised (a wolf in sheeps clothing), still it remains a terrible and menacing form of Stalinism worthy of horror. Jurisdiction and Money: An Ambiguous Relation The need for an ever improved justice on the socio-political and economic plane is evident in still another way. Use of the ethical terms justice and improved justice equally implies precisely because they rest on ethical or desirable possibilities -the factual possibilities of evil, namely injustice and perverted or inferior justice. Moreover, these possibilities are directly connected to the natural style of existence of the effort of being, which, in confrontation with the face of the other and the commandment you shall not kill can become a fundamental ethical choice for immoral self-interest. In building up socio-political and economic justice, one must thus be realistic and reckon with the charm of ethical evil and the allure of mischief, that is to say with the absolutizing desire for self-indulgence, power and wealth -all being expressions of

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nature, of the healthy but not yet ethically qualified striving to be of the I. Concretely, this ethical realism implies that one must try to prevent or channel the possibility of real evil as much as he can. He must limit it and correct it without thereby annulling ethics itself, that is to say without annulling human freedom by falling into an ethical totalitarianism which bypasses human responsibility in its willingness to root out evil by any means. From the thirds today and tomorrow, and from the categorical imperative to a just socioeconomic and political order which tries to do as much justice as possible to everyone, it is unacceptable that anyone be oppressed, abused, molested or persecuted -in short, treated unjustly or intimidated. This is, according to Levinas, why sanctions against criminals, whether individuals, groups or states, are justified. It is violence against the other and the third that justifies retribution, or that requires society to judge and oppose violence and evil. Notice that retribution here means none of the personal vengeance which includes so much ambiguous satisfaction and passion. On the contrary, it must be understood as a law functioning only on the social level and in a legal system. Only a judge may adjudicate or condemn, in which case retribution is in its strictest sense a law of retribution. Where violence calls for more violence, this chain reaction must be brought to an end. This is precisely what jurisdiction aims at, trying to retain grievous offence within the disputations of civil order. At the same time, the judge takes seriously the evil that has been done, which is precisely the purpose of the sanction pronounced as repayment. By condemning evil and pronouncing punishment, it becomes impossible for man to take lightly human affairs and evil. To rob anyone of life can not be taken seriously enough. In a society where only tenderness, love and forgiveness rule, people run the risk of excessive meekness before evil. Therefore Levinas sees -in line with the Jewish jus talionis (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) -the principle of proportion

as the basis for criminal law. Often it is only when we are paid with the same coin or when we feel the evil that is done with our own flesh that the seriousness of what we do onto others sinks in on us. In this sense the principle of proportion takes most seriously the evil that abides between people. Still, proportionality is not without problems. Equal repayment, for example the death penalty for homicide, introduces a new form of violence. Thus does society have the urgent task of making jurisdiction and in particular criminal law humane. Proportional retribution can never be a definitive judicial regime: humanizing punishment is an ethical necessity, which for example means doing away with the death penalty. One very concrete manner of carrying out this humanization is to calculate the wrong that has been done so that one can arrange repayment in the form of compensation. We have need not only of a justice without passion, an objective and impartial jurisdiction, but also a judicial system without an executioner -one that tries to restore damages by transposing them into economic value. The damage caused by a crime can be measured, as for example the loss of wages or income, the loss of health and even the loss of honor or beauty. Though Marx considered calculation of the economic value of humans to be in principle unacceptable, still this economic calculability of man does offer a positive opportunity for humanizing the inexorable harshness of retribution and punishment. It is clear that in such a humanizing calculus, which must lead to a non-violent, or rather less violent form of reparation and exchange, money comes once again to the forefront as the eminent means of damage compensation. One must nevertheless stay clear of misunderstanding and not lose sight of the fundamental ambiguity of money. Indeed, Marx was right when he maintained that, notwithstanding the wages by which the worker receives some recognition, the calculation of his economic worth includes an objectivization which is thus in fact

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non-recognition of the worth of a human being and thus a scandal. Man is not reducible to his economic worth! This holds as well for the evil committed. A murder remains a murder, and no amount of money in the world can set it right or undo it. It is and remains a scandal that the other forms of evil occurring between people are also translated into economic quantities and measurability. Financial reimbursement for a crime is not only a form of humanizing jurisdiction, it is also a form of literal un-concern with the injustice committed. Even if something is made good with money, it is still not wiped away. According to Levinas, it is in this respect that proportionality must be retained in principle, even though in application, which is to say in jurisprudence, it must be nuanced, if one is to avoid making light of injustice and wrongdoing. And there is another reason why material compensation via money can not be the ultimate principle of jurisdiction. The fundamental replacement of the principle of proportion by money would lead directly to an economic perversion of justice itself, which we have in fact often seen occur in our society. Whoever has much money can easily pay the penalty that is imposed. And this would imply that the rich can go unpunished for criminality with respect to the other and the third much more easily than can the poor or those with less means. When money is or becomes the basic principle of damage compensation, punishment loses its inhibiting force over the economically well-off, and its ethical significance. Eventually, people would also stop taking seriously the evil that they can do to one another. In short, if money were to take the place of requital and compensation, there would result a class justice, which would not only introduce an unjust division between poor and rich, but would also provide the rich with an easy conscience. Such ambiguous functioning of money in jurisdiction then also implies that the objective calculation and transposition of evil into money can not suffice as a definitive order of justice,

since its inherent injustice must in turn be extended toward an ever better justice, that is to say toward an ever better judicial system that is ever more just and thus also ever less unjust. Small Kindnesses and Money Moreover, there is not only need for an ever better socio-political, economical and monetary justice. The iron-clad determinism of generalized universality and distantiated objectivity in the economic-monetary system, or for that matter in every social, juridical and political system, is marked by an inherent structural violence. As a system, it fails to take into consideration the unicity of the other. There are tears that can not be seen by any economic administration or monetary institution -these are the tears of the unique other. For this reason, the responsibility of each for every other remains indispensable. But individual consciences are also necessary in a just economic-monetary system, for they alone can detect the violence that follows from the proper functioning of even economic-monetary rationality. Only the singular, responsible I is capable of vigilance for the secret tears of the unique other which are brought about the good working of economic-monetary institutions, organizations and structures as such. This is the necessity of the small kindnesses (la petite bont) that wield money as a possibility for doing the unique other unconditional justice. Only the small kindness of unreserved gratuity can save the economic-monetary structure from the violence that adheres to its own forms of justice. Conclusion It will have become clear that Levinas philosophical approach to money not only offers a phenomenological description, but also expressly formulates an ethical and thus normative dimension. It not only tries to understand what is (the factual), but also opens up perspectives on what

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should be (the desirable). It is thus not a neutral, disengaged analysis, but literally a pro-vocative or calling-forth approach that thereby calls the factual praxis of money critically into question regarding its ethical quality, or its humanity. This ethical approach lays bare not only the different sense but also the ambivalences and contradictions of money. In this respect, money is

never a self-evident good about which a naive sort of metaphysics or entrenched doctrine of being could be developed, but a literally ambivalent middle term that not only can enter the service of evil but, precisely through its so-called neutral objectivity, can bring to this same evil the seductive and misleading charm of the good.

Notes
This article was translated from Dutch by Jeff Bloechl. E. LEVINAS, Socialit et argent, 25 annes groupement Belge des Banques dEpargne: 1961-1986. Allocutions Sance Acadmique - 25 jaren Belgische Spaarbankenvereniging: 1961-1986. Toespraken Academische Zitting, (Brussels, Belgische Spaarbankenvereniging/Groupement Belge des Banques dEpargne: 1987) p. 13-19. Reprinted in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 50(1988), p. 415-421; J. HALPERIN, G. LEVITTE (eds.), LArgent. Donnes et dbats (Actes du Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue franaise). Paris, Ed. Denol, 1989, p. 215-222; C. CHALIER, M. ABENSOUR (eds.), Emmanuel Lvinas. Paris, Ed. de lHerne, 1991, p. 134-138. See also R. BURGGRAEVE, Largent et une justice toujours meilleure. Le point de vue dEmmanuel Levinas, A. VAN PUT (ed.), Les Banques dEpargne Belges. Histoire, Droit, Fonction Economique et Institutions. Tielt, Lannoo, 1986, p. 23-44. For a further study in depth, see R. BURGGRAEVE, Levinas over vrede en mensenrechten. Leuven, Acco, 1990, p. 103-172.
1. 2.

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