I NTRODUCING THE N EW INTO T HOUGHT

transcendence per definition cannot be pre-thought. The sense of the future that is opened by transcendence to the Other, is another instant rather than continuity of the same. A new instant is what allows for radical novelty.

However, as the absolutely new is the Other, it is not something which is graspable and victim of valuation. The new as the Other is ungraspable in nature, always questioning you, challenging you. In this way, Levinas’ ‘the new into thought’ can be used to explain the inspiration that some people are said to experience when working together in creative groups. To be more specific, this inspiration—or synergy—can be explained as the interruption of the Other and the ethical acknowledgement that opens me up to change and novelty. After all, change comes from a transformation of the known, and this is why the knower must be open to interruption.

Levinas hardly ever discusses knowledge directly. In one of the rare passages, however, where Levinas directly connects his thoughts on interruption to knowledge, he states that:

Knowing becomes knowing of a fact only if it is at the same time critical, if it puts itself into question, goes back beyond its origin—in an unnatural movement to seek higher than one’s own origin, a movement which evinces or describes a created freedom. This self-criticism can be understood as a discovery of one’s weakness or a discovery of one’s unworthiness. (Levinas, 1969: 82-83)

The central element of this quote is that if one is truly to obtain knowledge, one has to move beyond one’s origins, which brings us back to the encounter with the Other. The unnatural movement to seek higher is the ethical drawness to the Other’s face. That is, putting oneself into question and being open to interruption. Only in the sometimes dramatic, exhausting and even traumatic confrontation with otherness can we change our basic assumptions and allow for a transformation of our common sense. So it is in the notion of interruption that Levinas’ central imperative of openness to the Other’s otherness and exposure of one’s own self becomes important.

By taking a Levinasian ethical perspective on knowledge, I propose that we can move beyond a categorical and stable view on knowledge, and instead reach beyond to the interruption of knowledge. I this way, I don’t view knowledge as a stock, or a capability, or something that needs to be handled in order to foster superior performance. But instead as something, which needs to be put into question by the ethical encounter with the Other. “Critique or philosophy is the essence of knowing” (Levinas, 1969: 85), and ”this awakening comes from the Other” (Levinas, 1969: 86). Understanding change in a Levinasian perspective, however, is not only the transformation of knowledge, but also the transformation of the knower. After all, the encounter with the Other, and the interruption it implies, changes me as a knower, not only my knowledge. An ethical encounter with otherness not only changes my assumptions, but it changes my self, because the self is constantly changing in the encounters with otherness. That is, the self is constantly constructed—

becoming—in the interplay between interiority and exteriority. The encounter with radical exteriority, the Other, which per definition is always exterior to my comprehension, calls me into question and reveals and changes my interiority, my identity. That is, transforms me as a knower.

To link this more directly to business studies the distinction Levinas makes between labor and the immediate relation to the Other is of relevance. I intend to use this link to further support the argument of how a Levinasian ethics makes us reach a more profound level of novelty. As was established above, novelty is inevitably linked to the ungraspable future the ethical encounter with the Other brings. The uncertain future of the element, however, is suspended and calmed in the ”possessive grasp” of labor (Levinas, 1969: 158).

That is, the things produced from labor are possessed and stabilized. Stable possessions produced by labor are therefore to be distinguished from the

infinity of enjoyment created in the immediate relation with the Other, the ethical encounter. In fact, labor possesses being and suspends its element. This kind of possession neutralizes being; it “masters, suspends, postpones the unforeseeable future of the element—its independence, its being” (Levinas, 1969: 158). Labor, construed as this possessive acquisition, is a movement towards oneself, not towards the Other. However, the immediate relation with the Other is a possession without acquisition, where I possess without taking and keeping. “Possession is accomplished in taking-possession or labor, the destiny of the hand. The hand is the organ of grasping and taking, the first and blind grasping in the teaming mass: it relates” (Levinas, 1969: 159). Through labor the hand grasps and relates knowledge to needs. The immediate relation with the Other, on the contrary, is not related. This relation is as such immediate, carries infinity. As we saw above my newly found knowledge is not mine to keep, not to be possessed. It will continue to be put into question by encounters with otherness. Product innovation, which belongs to labor, to the production of possessions, therefore, differs from the ethical encounter with the Other, the creation of new relations. “Labor “defines” matter without recourse to the idea of infinity” (Levinas, 1969: 160). That is, labor stabilizes and produces possessions.

In this sense I find what Jones and Spicer (2006: 197) call a ‘general economy’ beneath the ‘productive economy’. They relate this general economy to thoughts on excess, exuberance and passion. I take it one step further and relate it to the ethical encounter with otherness; an encounter that in fact allows for and produces excess, exuberance and passion.

Commerce with the alterity of infinity does not offend like an opinion; it does not limit a mind in a way inadmissible to a philosopher. Limitation is produced only

within a totality, whereas the relation with the Other breaks the ceiling of totality.

(Levinas, 1969: 171)

In the immediate relation with the Other, in seeking the ethical responsibility in work, we can move beyond mere labor. I must know how to give what I possess. Only then can I situate myself absolutely above my engagement in labor, and engage in the Other. But for this I must encounter the indiscreet face of the Other that calls me into question. To allow for novelty and change, I must encounter the Other ethically, acknowledge the Other’s otherness in a response. I must let the Other’s otherness interrupt my thought, introduce the new into my thought, and allow for that novelty to change me as a knower.

Language, therefore exceeds labor, it is an action without action. It exceeds labor by its generosity of offering my world to the Other. Therefore, we should not only look at production, innovation, and outcomes, but go beyond innovation, beyond the product, beyond labor and seek novelty and change in new relations and identities. The very encounter with the Other, which puts the knower into question, and brings new into thought.

Knowledge is categorized, managed, utilized; that is, possessed through labor.

But to know ethically, to put knowledge into question, transforms knowledge, creates something. Therefore, the novelty of the future presupposes a relation with an Other that is not given to labor, but is ethically an acknowledgement of the infinite difference between me and the Other.

If philosophy consists in knowing critically, that is, in seeking a foundation for its freedom, in justifying it, it begins with conscience, to which the other is presented as the Other, and where the movement of thematization is inverted. But this inversion does not amount to ‘knowing oneself’ as a theme attended to by the Other, but rather in submitting oneself to an exigency, to a morality. (Levinas, 1969: 86)

Levinasian change is therefore not about gaining knowledge, using knowledge and possessing knowledge. It is not about knowing oneself and externalizing a potential. The identity of the knower itself is called into question, which allows for more than just producing new possessions. It creates new relations where the future itself is radically being called into question. In fact, it takes us beyond the foundation of knowledge, it questions this very foundation; ethics puts every foundation into question.