Quantization of Alterity and Transcendence, A Case Study of Maurice Blanchot’s Thomas the Obscure: Levinas’s Diachronic Temporality vis-à-vis Heidegger’s Synchronic Temporalization

Abstract

n the Heideggerian conception of time, time's reality and authenticity originate from the self or the same and subsists independent of the Other. While Dasein and being-in-the-world are not excluded from the Other in Heidegger’s perspective, however, he endeavours to keep distance from the Other so as not to be entangled in its whirl and abyss. While Heidegger's synchronic temporality survives on Dasein’s understanding of the self and prioritizes its temporalization over that of the Other, Emmanuel Levinas conceives of synchronization as a springboard for his diachronic temporality. Diachrony in Levinas's view elates temporality to an authentic and transcendent moment in relation with the Other and its mystery on an ethical and responsible ground. Reviewing convergent and divergent viewpoints of Heidegger and Levinas in respect of the nature of the authentic time through a case study of the novel Thomas the Obscure by Maurice Blanchot, it is to reveal how Blanchot on the one hand, faithful to the Levinasian diachronic time and on the other hand, parallel to Hawking-Penrose spacetime singularities theorem in quantum theory, challenges conceptions such as independence, certainty, possibility, knowability, predictability, and finite time seeking for an authentic and transcendent time by prioritizing diachronic time over the synchronic temporalization. This novel excavates being in absence of being and mystery in absence of mystery under the auspicious of ethical and respectful relation with the Other in search of an authentic and transcendent time.