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Our first intelligence
If
we begin with the stuff close at hand, we soon discover that others have different
conclusions about the very basic phenomena of life, such as growth, decay, birth
and death that surround them. We can accumulate all the phenomena we like as data
toward a conclusion but this is always only a limited aggregate of stuff, given
our finite reach, time and purview of all things. This is one quest for meaning
within all the variegated phenomena of life. Alternatively,
an ideological view nominates an idea or abstract concept through which to interpret
all phenomena. This too remains problematic, although it gives cohesion to seeming
limitless combinations and conclusions that could not be made merely by immersing
ourselves in phenomena in the hope of finding its meaning. Ultimately, humans
do work from some form of interpretive axiom in assimilating potentially limitless
and therefore unwieldy phenomena. The
concept of multiple intelligences is
an attempt to elevate the first possibility—exposure to a wide variety of phenomena,
against the tyranny of the second—a certain arbitrary concept that gives definition
to phenomena. Yet the first is always implicated in a tacit axiom ordering any
selection of phenomena. This is the perennial focus of epistemology—how
we know what we know—and the issue of first
intelligence, which is engaged from Plato to Augustine, Kant to Levinas. That
people have engaged the world through a variety of senses is no new thing. Sight,
sound and touch were as prominent in perceiving the nature of life before Plato’s
time as they are today. A Mozart opera exhibits a complex range of human capacities
for intelligence. These capacities are never singularly demarcated so that we
can see what pure musical intelligence or any other singular intelligence might
look like, except in instances of personality dysfunction, where for example,
the singular focus of genius displaces other areas of human capacity, such as
conscience or love. The same applies to any singular human capacity. Intelligence
is always part of a complex range of relational, social and reflective skills. Aware
of a range of capacities in human intelligence that can be deployed and to which
people respond, Levinas maintained that the vocative or personal address is the
first intelligence with which we engage
life. In this, he appealed to the pervasive vocative character of biblical testimony. v The
vocative gives our first intelligence because being addressed by another, not
by the world of things but by relationship(s), is primary to all other durable
intelligence about life. Information may be exchanged but an event occurs beyond
what is seen as tangible. The phenomenon of being addressed by another person
precedes any subsequent correlation of facts as to who or what status this person
is by reference to a context. In
the vocative, I am addressed by another as unique as myself. I may see this person
but beyond seeing is the inner event that goes unseen as heard—the event of address.
I am addressed by a particular person, however incidentally this occurs, who is
in proximity to my existence—not a hypothetical parent, partner, child, sibling,
friend or colleague, but this person
here at this time. I
exist as someone who is addressed among many others who likewise have as their
primary locale of meaningful existence the fact of being addressed by others.
No one is merely constituted as a bundle of facts and statistics. The vocative
establishes me as a person, which precedes any such data about my material existence
within phenomena. Being
addressed by another, I am also held to account by another, which occurs at various
levels of ethical response as responsibility, whether this responsibility is ultimately
appropriate and accepted or not. Whatever transacts in the acceptance or rejection
of responsibility occurs through the initial prism of vocative address or summons
by another and in turn, my volitional response. As
volitional, response to another human being is particular. It is a response to
the vocative, even if no words are uttered. By responding or ignoring, I answer
another who has addressed me. The vocative gives me a unique relationship to every
other, who is also unique beyond generic nomination—social, racial, economic—but
as addressed and summoned by another to some form of personal response. Vocative
address invokes hearing and response—an interpretive process in which deliberative
choice is called forth in the one addressed, unlike nomination, which relates
to collation and systemisation, and does not require a moral volitional decision
unless the vocative enters. The vocative requires a relational or social response,
which is therefore intrinsically ethical. Phenomena
may be correlated and ordered into data that is then applied to certain use. This
use in the context of others will involve interpretation that extends well beyond
the first procedure—collating and ordering—and ultimately involves the vocative.
Interpreted data in the social realm will become a question of: What is my response—acceptance,
rejection, obedience or refusal? It will be vocative. Just
so, in biblical testimony, God of time and interaction with human life encounters
human beings in the exigencies of their temporal identity and experience. A living,
eventful encounter is signified. It functions pervasively in the vocative register
of human experience. It is therefore always interpreted, volitional and significant
for existence. v Vocative
encounter precedes anything aesthetic based on appearances. Instead, it is already
volitional, relational and ethical, even if adorned with the aesthetic, which
is seen and appreciated for having heard in inheriting a social language of
aesthetic judgment. Language is always and already ahead of us in the vocative.
Because
any person is addressed in the specificity of existence by this partner, child, parent or sibling, we are always located within
a particular vocative constellation that is unique. I do not share the same parents
with my partner even if we share the same children but not the same experience
of their natality or the same gender with each child. This
context of human relationships is as
if arbitrarily given, yet I am completely responsible because every instance of
the arbitrary—this one and not another person before me, beside me, with me—calls
me to responsibility and therefore accountability. This arbitrary mystery of our
first intelligence is inherently relational
and ethical, preceding either phenomena or ideology, as a vocative encounter responding
to volitional factors in the midst of acting subjects. Our
first intelligence is invoked eventfully
through another word, which is a word otherwise
than our own, coming from beyond my powers to assimilate phenomena by aggregate
or ideal. This other word, even as it is articulated in familiar words, is intrinsic
to a form of knowing that is exposed
in vulnerability and trust to another as genuine other. The supreme expression of our experience of a word otherwise is triune, unaccounted for in human ideals or cultural phenomena, yet interpreting all ideals and phenomena within the first intelligence of the vocative Word who became flesh, to encounter us wholly in grace and truth. Method
sources: The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental
Phenomenology; Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence;
Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other. |
