The Intrinsic Value of Committed Relationships

On Levinas, Marriage, and Education

Emmanuel Levinas claims that the Jewish tradition, in contrast to the philosophical tradition, understands the insight that the Other comes before Being, that Ethics precedes Ontology. Relationship enables but cannot be captured by systematic thought. I don’t agree with Levinas that our relationship to the Other can be characterized purely by submission and surrender, but I accept his larger point that intersubjectivity is constitutive of consciousness. The limits on my own will, rather than the unbridled expression of my pure, primitive will, make me who I am. I accept Levinas’s critique of the Cartesian tradition that we should begin methodologically not with the doubting solitary ego, but with God’s insight that “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Levinas’s writings are dense and his ethical standards demanding (if opaque), but rendered more basically they are helpful, perhaps even indispensable, for thinking about the good life.

Levinas’s core ideas help us appreciate the Biblical tradition and the Talmudic tradition with a particular emphasis on the fact that encountering those who don’t think or act like us may feel like an inconvenience or raise offense, but they are in fact the basis for revelation, discovery, and transformation. According to Levinas, ethics is not about rules for behavior, but is an orientation of service, a stance of self-sacrifice, and openness to learn from the other. In a culture of polarization and safe spaces, Levinas’s work enjoins us to stand in the breach and encounter words and ways of being that disturb and challenge us. I would just caveat Levinas with my own view that we do not have an obligation to suffer fools and trolls and bad faith actors. Rather, we have an obligation to grant the benefit of the doubt to those to whom we are committed to being in a relationship. Hillel and Shammai must work through their disagreements so as to maintain the relationship, but neither is required to do so when confronting the apostate or enemy. We don’t have an obligation to commit to everyone espousing any idea.

Jewish tradition teaches that the obligation to marry cannot be reduced to the obligation to procreate. I extrapolate a deeper point in this teaching that goes well beyond the topic of marriage. We’ll see soon that the teacher-student relationship follows a similar form. The purpose of teaching is not simply to transmit knowledge or “reproduce” tradition in the next generation. Rather, the teacher and the student need each other in much the same way that Adam and Eve need each other, in much the same way that God and humanity, or God and the Jewish people need one another. The very friction between these counterparts is a forcing function for growth and the paradoxical achievement of wholeness.

Venkatesh Rao writes in The Gervais Principle that in the same way that we can’t tickle ourselves, we can’t tickle our own brains. We need the other to help us access our own blindspots. Neurologically, we accomplish this through “mirror neurons.” The presence of others activates our empathy, enabling us to understand ourselves better through our own responses.

Genesis 2:18 says: “God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper for him.’” On this Rashi writes: A HELP MEET FOR HIM — (כנגדו literally, opposite, opposed to him) If he is worthy she shall be a help to him; if he is unworthy she shall be opposed to him, to fight him (Yevamot 63a).

Rashi notes that marriage can either be a source of opposition or help, but these are two ways of looking at conflict, two orientations to the same phenomenon. In one, disagreement leads to safetyism, in the other to a higher synthesis, a “disagreement for the sake of heaven.” Although Rashi frames relationship as either/or, his ontological insight is that antagonism is the irritation that produces the pearl of a dyad that is not reducible to the sum of its parts. Either conflict can be productive or conflict can be destructive. If we merit it, that is, if we accept and elevate conflict, it can be productive. If not, then we fall into a zero-sum battle of egos. The fundamental choice is whether to regard the Other as a barrier to myself or as a summons to self-transcendence.

The reason it is not good for man to be alone is that he lacks someone who can oppose him, who can challenge his will and constrain him. God decides that a solitary man suffers from the absence of conflict, the absence of altering. Narcissism can be defined as the inability to be opposed, a telling revelation about God’s own self-conception and motivation for creating humanity.

In Yevamot 63a, Rabbi Elazar said: “Any man who does not have a wife is not a man, as it is stated: “Male and female He created them…and called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2). If you look carefully, you’ll see that Adam is the name given not simply to the solitary Adam but to Adam and Eve as one. Thus the point is that neither Adam nor Eve are complete without their counter-part. Although the language of the commentary emphasizes Adam’s need for Eve, the verse in Genesis 5 suggests that the need is bi-directional. Both parties have an obligation to marry. Here, marriage cannot be understood as merely instrumental to pro-creation, which is its own separate commandment (“be fruitful and multiply”). Rather, the obligation that the law draws out is the need for self-completion by means of a productive challenger. In Levinasian terms, marriage is a commandment because it is the practice of “alterity.”

The Midrashic tradition offers a model of covenant between God and Israel in similar terms. God needs Israel and vice versa not simply to co-produce something, but because the relationship itself has intrinsic value. Israel is called to be a “light unto the nations,” which parallels the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply,” that is, to educate and spread good ideas and institutions by example. But Israel is “chosen” independent of whether it lives up to this task. Israel is chosen to be a nation that serves as God’s Other, God’s ezer k’negdo, while God serves as the supreme Other of Israel. In Levinas’s analysis, the Otherness of God and the Otherness of the human Other overlap. I come to understand God through the practice of overcoming my own ego in more banal social relations.

My critique of Levinas is that he applies the intimacy reserved for husband and wife to all social relations, thus stripping specific relationships of their specificity and sanctity. I owe fidelity to the person in front of me in the moment, irrespective of history and my obligations to other others not present. It’s as if Adam must treat all interactions as equally ethically demanding. But we can revise Levinas to say that the practice of ethical relationship in the context of special relationships can make us less egotistical generally, which in turn can make us more responsible in daily life with strangers and acquaintances. Another way to revise Levinas would be to say that when we make a commitment to another person, that person becomes our most pressing Other irrespective of physical proximity. Whether you think of marriage literally or more paradigmatically, the teaching is that committed relationships exist to challenge our default ego-ism. We will now find a similar idea in Ben Zoma’s teaching on teachers and students.

Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from every man, as it is said: “From all who taught me have I gained understanding” (Psalms 119:99). (Pirkei Avot 4:1)

On first blush, Ben Zoma is making the simple point that you have to be humble if you want to be a sage. Sages don’t just teach, they learn. Students may revere the sage and the sage alone, but sages look for the aspect of the sage in everyone. But Ben Zoma’s point is textured by the verse he cites to make his point:

I have gained more insight than all my teachers,
for Your decrees are my study.

I have gained more understanding than my elders,
for I observe Your precepts. (Psalms 119:99-100)

The psalmist’s words are complex. On the one hand, they are consistent with and illustrative of Ben Zoma’s teaching, because they contrast the wisdom of the striving student to the mere knowledge of subject matter experts (teachers and elders). On the other hand, Ben Zoma’s teaching can also be read as a subtle rebuke to the know-it-all who says “I have gained more insight than all my teachers.” Perhaps this very attitude blocks his ability to really learn, and thus to become a teacher and elder. The young buck may have more insight than his teachers, but not more wisdom! His intellect is sharper, but he lacks the maturity that comes from real relationship.

Irvin Yalom enjoins therapists not to share insights they have into their patients psyches unless doing so will be connecting. The aim for a good therapist isn’t to say the truth but to say the truth that will also be healing. Since it is his view that the relationship itself is the cause of healing, a truth that does not bring close is counter-productive. Similarly, the insight of the student, mobilized simply to demonstrate how smart the student is, fails to become wisdom. But the example of the teacher who learns from the students demonstrates wisdom. Just as it is not good for Adam to be alone, it is not good to learn alone. The teacher needs students precisely because their failures will improve the teacher’s understanding and expand the teacher. This is not to say that teachers should teach everyone, lower standards, and cast aside their ability to expel students for disturbing class or slowing others down. Teachers can and should still practice “classroom management.” But once a certain basic level of decorum is achieved, the teacher should not seek to control the class, but should allow the class or the relationship to create the intellectual version of “flesh of one flesh,” or “mind of one mind,” ironically a unity born of helpful agon.

The modern teacher-student relationship rarely follows the ancient model, where students felt so devoted to their teachers, over the course of a lifetime, that teachers created intellectual and spiritual dynasties and lineages for generations. This stands in contrast with the university model, where you may take one class with a professor, and then move on. So great is the honor for teachers in the rabbinic tradition, that students are obligated to mourn the death of their teachers as if having just lost a close relative. The contemporary sociology of teacher-student relations (and thought partners) doesn’t match the rabbinic first principles. Nonetheless, we can appreciate the Levinasian teaching at the heart of the rabbinic project. Separate from the content transmitted from teacher to student and student to teacher, the relationship of intellectual alterity was seen to be an end in its own right.

Marriage in the West has been on the decline, in part because individualistic society does not value the Levinasian ethic of self-transcendence. But arguably the teacher-student relationship has been in even greater decline. Regard for teachers is reduced to their instrumental value. Duolingo, if you will, is to education as Tindr is to marriage. Which is not to say there isn’t a place for curious exploration en route to commitment. But at some point being intermediate in 7 languages is worth less than being fluent in one. And by fluent I mean that you’ve reached a point where the language or the tradition or the life-world can become an ezer k’negdo, a helper against you.

The topics I’ve addressed are loaded and my aim here is not to tell you how to live your life in all its glorious specificity. Rather, my aim is to excavate the wisdom of the rabbinic tradition, guided by Levinas, in the hopes that we can see that there may be more to life than “following your bliss.”

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