The prospect of meetings provokes a variety of responses: dread, despondency, lethargy, scepticism, cynicism, and, occasionally, hope and the prospect of progress. Much of the natural aversion, it seems to me, centres on the inherent capacity of meetings to engender disagreement. Disagreement, however, so often ignores yet still rests upon a more fundamental agreement among participants, an agreement which very often only comes to the fore, discretely, when the air of the meeting clears and the assembly adjourns for lunch. By reflecting upon Emmanuel Lévinas and Thomas Reid, this paper argues that more attention, and attentiveness, needs to be given to the proto-agreement upon which any subsequent (dis)agreement rests.
Lévinas opens Totality and Infinity by simply stating in the Preface that ‘[e]veryone will readily agree... (on conviendra ais?ment...)' and then proceeds to argue the priority of ethics, with its thought of the infinite, over knowledge understood as a counterpart to ontology’s reductive comprehension of the other to the same. The problem, however, is that not everyone does readily agree with Lévinas, as is evident in Derrida’s criticism of the rationality of Lévinas’ position. In Violence and Metaphysics, Derrida draws attention to ‘the theoretical incoherence of the notions of pure infinity and absolute otherness, or exteriority.’ Like a ‘square circle,’ the concepts of an ‘absolutely other’ or an ‘otherwise than being’ are empty intuitions and are meaningless. Lévinas’ relation with absolute alterity is a thought which one cannot think, a logical contradiction inviting a sceptical response.