Abstract

Levinas and the Wisdom of Love: Breaking Gyges' Secret is an essay on the ways in which wisdom can be used to make one invisible to the other. I also show how a wisdom of love, as Levinas describes it, can make one visible to the Other, and thereby more human. ;In analyzing Levinas' wisdom of love and how it is different from other types of wisdom, I focus on Levinas' saying that "philosophy is the wisdom of love at the service of love." This study examines, in turn, Levinas' understanding of love, which I defend as irreducibly distinct from self-love, but compatible with it. Unlike some other compatibilist interpretations of Levinas, I maintain that this view is consistent with a strongly asymmetrical view of neighbor love. This is possible since Levinas' asymmetry is not properly understood as the absence of return, but by the absence of speech which demands reciprocity. ;In asking what sort of priority love is to have over wisdom , I raise the possibilities of 'chronological priority,' 'logical priority,' and 'hierarchical priority,' while dismissing all but the last type. Then I argue that even the altering of hierarchical priority Levinas suggests is not a mere reversal where now the ethical relation---rather than ontology---has a dominating priority. Instead, I suggest a type of hierarchical inversion of priority which I call a 'pacific priority' and show how this priority seems impossible unless one recognizes the distinction between power and authority. ;After analyzing Levinas' understanding of love and priority, I turn to the question of wisdom and ask how Levinas' 'wisdom of love,'---understood as a real possibility and not just an impossible ideal---is any different than the types of wisdom he critiques. The central difference is how one traces the origin of wisdom, and this allows one to give a different answer to Gyges' veiling question of whether it is better to suffer or inflict injustice. I argue that this question lies at the heart of Levinas' project and suggest ways for becoming visible, which is, according to Levinas, to become human