Raising Cain: the problem of evil and the question of responsibility.

[E]vil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people
recognize it--the quality of temptation. Many Germans and many Nazis ...
must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their
neighbors go off to their doom, and not to become accomplices in all
these crimes by benefiting from them. But, God knows, they had learned
how to resist temptation.
--Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1)

[It is] through evil that suffering is understood.
--Emmanuel Levinas, "Useless Suffering" (2)

And Cain said to Abel ...
--Genesis

Evil--what makes people go wrong and more significantly how do we define what counts as evil? In this essay I explore the problem of evil by taking seriously Emmanuel Levinas's claim cited in the epigraph above. According to Levinas the role of rationality in the propagation of evil has been underestimated, and the Shoah has taken the otherworldly mystique out of evil. It infused the everyday with evil and transformed the 'temptation,' that which was forbidden, into the impulse to do good. Levinas's approach to the problem of evil is to discount the traditional view of theodicy which serves to 'justify' or rationalize the evil and suffering that are inflicted on others. Certainly we could agree that the wanton destruction of life is evil. But Levinas's work helps us to see evil in a different light. For Levinas, evil is not about the wanton destruction of life, though certainly he would not disregard these acts. For him the source of evil is rather the inability to be attuned to the other. This kind of evil, the capacity to be so detached from humanity that one cannot see one's own responsibility in the order of things is, one might say, the precondition of all other evil.

When Levinas claims that it is through evil that we understand suffering, his point is twofold. On the one hand, he seeks to invert the relationship between suffering and evil. Levinas rejects a conception of suffering where suffering is a necessary part of what it means to be human. On the other hand, he wants to claim that it is through evil, and hence through the suffering of the other, that we become attuned to the other. This is not to say that suffering and evil are necessary; only that the presence of evil and hence the presence of suffering should attune us to the other. Levinas's intention is to invert the relationship. Evil and the suffering that results from it can be useful to me, even if useless to the one suffering. Again, this is not to justify the suffering. Rather it is to point out precisely the opposite: we cannot justify the suffering that exists. There is a sense in which evil is that which both inflicts suffering on the other and ignores the suffering of the other.

My essay begins by looking at the story of Cain and Abel, with a particular focus on Levinas's portrayal of Cain as detached from humanity. Although the murder of Abel was horrific, what worries Levinas more than the actual murder is Cain's detached reply to G-d: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' This reply indicates that he is unable to assume responsibility for the death of his brother, but it also implies Cain's detachment from humanity in general. Cain has no attunement to an 'other,' or at least no attunement that he is able to access. From Levinas's point of view, Cain's lack of attunement, his 'sober coldness' as Levinas calls it, signals Cain's undeveloped subjectivity. He is not yet ready to respond to another, though his defensive response to God indicates a space for doing so.

I follow this discussion with Levinas's conception of maternity, which is offered as the antithesis to Cain's lack of subjectivity. Maternity, the epitome of an unmediated relationship characterized by a pre-reflective response is for Levinas the example par excellence of responsibility and response to the other. My essay thus moves from Cain, who exemplifies complete detachment to the other, to maternity, which exemplifies complete pre-reflective attunement to the other.

In closing, I will turn to a recent tragedy, one where a woman killed her five young children, in order to raise questions about the model of the ethical that Levinas provides. We can use Levinas's description of maternity to help us see how this relationship is understood and misunderstood. That is, we can use his description to see where we go wrong in simplistically and romantically defining the maternal relationship such that we are unable to admit of, and therefore try to prevent, the tragedies that result from maternal relations that do not conform to the ideal. In this essay I use the example of Cain's 'sober coldness' to illustrate the problem of evil as arising from a lack of attunement to others. I then link this problem to Levinas's conception of maternity, an example of that attunement par excellence. The failure of the maternal relation is, I argue, not merely a failure of the mother to be attuned to her child. Rather it is also a failure by those who surround the mother to be attuned to her and her children, and one that we need to place within the larger context of the society in which the mother lives.

I. Raising Cain

What was it that Cain said to Abel? (3) Many of the translations complete this phrase with "Let us go outside." It is in the 'outside' where there are no witnesses, where there is no covering or protection, that Cain kills Abel. Most of us, upon being asked the question, "Is Cain responsible for the killing of Abel?," would respond with a resounding "Yes!" And if we were asked why we think so, most of us would say, "Well, because he did it." The responsibility I am asking after, however, is not a causal one, but an ethical one. Is there anything in the story to indicate that Cain can be held morally accountable for the killing of his brother? A closer look at the text reveals the absence of any mention of moral education. Until this point, no one had physically died. Thus, even though the exile from Eden signaled the mortality of Adam and Eve, it is not clear that either of them knew what this mortality actually entailed, especially since God's threat was not carried out in any obvious way: no one had yet died. Prior to the death of Abel, neither Adam nor Eve, nor Cain, nor Abel had experienced death, or at least there is no mention of anyone's death. No human death had yet been recorded. We should not be surprised, then, that Cain has, at best, a limited sense of mortality. It is thus not clear that Cain could be expected to know what killing is, what death is, and why either is wrong or problematic.

This conclusion is supported by the Midrash in which the Rabbis speculate that Cain argued with G-d about his [Cain's] responsibility:

       'Where is Abel (4) your brother?,' He [God] questioned. He [God]
       expected Cain to answer, 'I did wrong in killing him and regret
       my deed.' But instead Cain brazenly replied, 'I was made guardian
       of field and vineyard. Am I my brother's keeper? Do I know where
       he went? You are the Guardian of all creatures, so why should you
       inquire of me as to his whereabouts?' Cain's reply also included
       a subtle reproach to Hashem Himself. His words intimated, 'You
       are the Guardian of the universe! Why then did you allow me to
       kill him?' (5) Cain continues, in this speculative dialogue, 'It
       was you who created me with a yaitzer hara [evil inclination].
       Then you aroused my jealousy by accepting my brother's sacrifice
       ... You did not prevent me from killing him. Why do You then
       blame me?'

According to the rabbis, God does not accept this argument and tells Cain that he, Cain, is responsible not only for his brother's blood but also for the blood of his unborn offspring. Genesis 4:10 reads, "What have you done? Hark, your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." (6) But in the Hebrew text, the word for blood is written in the plural: "bloods." So in addition to the victim, there is the matter of his possible progeny--those never to be born--to consider. The Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 tells us that this passage confirms the uniquely heinous nature of murder: "Whoever takes a single life destroys thereby an entire world." (7) As John Llewelyn reminds us, murder is profound precisely because "if the very expressing of that judgment [the judgment of God] is expressed through "Thou shalt not kill' that judgment owes some of its force to generations to come. For to kill the person facing me is to kill the multiple generations to which he or she might have given birth." (8)

The following questions, then, remain: Why did God allow Cain's murderous intentions to come to fruition? Why did God not protect Abel? Moreover, why does it appear that God did not condemn Cain to death, as would be the sentence for other murderers? The response given in Genesis Rabba 22:26 centers on Cain's ignorance of death itself. Cain, the Rabbis claim, could have had no way of knowing that his blow would extinguish his brother's life. As a result, the rabbis claim that Cain is guilty of homicide, not murder. (9) According to Rashi, Cain is guilty of murder, but his punishment is delayed seven generations. Responding to the event by which Lamech, a direct descendent of Cain, rises up and slays Cain, Rashi claims that the line that reads, "'Vengeance shall be taken sevenfold' should be understood to mean that God does not wish to take vengeance on Cain now. [Rather] at the end of seven generations [God] will execute [God's] punishment upon him, that Lamech, one of his descendants will arise and slay him ... Vengeance will be taken in the seventh generation." (10)

Notwithstanding the legal difference between homicide and murder, these rabbis affirm the role of personal responsibility. For the rabbis, the evil that took place between Cain and Abel is not a question of God's responsibility, but Cain's. That is, this story and the rabbi's responses to it reject the traditional view of theodicy and place the blame squarely on Cain's shoulders. That the killer is held accountable indicates the immediacy of the relation to the other and what that relation expresses is taken as given. Thus, even if Cain could not have known the full extent of his actions, he is expected to have known something. In the following passage, Levinas himself employs the biblical story and the rabbinic commentary on it to illustrate the depth of personal responsibility:

       The personal responsibility of man with regard to man is such
       that God cannot annul it. This is why in the dialogue between God
       and Cain--'Am I my brother's keeper?'--rabbinical commentary does
       not regard the question as a case of simple insolence. Instead it
       comes from someone who has not yet experienced human solidarity
       and who thinks (like many modern philosophers) that each exists
       for oneself and that everything is permitted. But God reveals to
       the murderer that his crime has disturbed the natural order, so
       the Bible puts a word of submission into the mouth of Cain: "My
       punishment is greater than I can bear." The rabbis pretend to
       read a new question to this response: "Is my punishment too great
       to bear? Is it too heavy for the Creator who supports the heavens
       and the earth." (DF 20/DL 36-7)

"Thou shalt not murder," as a codified command, comes later in the story of Genesis. But the story of Cain and Abel suggests that this first killing needed to take place before the profundity of "thou shalt not murder" could be realized. This story further reveals not only Cain's interminable responsibility, but also the responsibility that had no beginning. It is a responsibility he did not choose and which did not arise out of his freedom. Rather, it always already existed. For Levinas, whether or not Cain had been morally educated is not the issue. It is precisely because we still wish to hold Cain responsible, even though the codified commands do not come until much later, that interests Levinas. For Levinas, there is a notion of response that he names the ethical; and this response precedes what we have normally come to understand as the ethical: codified rules for behavior that imply knowledge of what is expected and the freedom to do otherwise. Levinas has changed the terms of the discussion, and it is imperative that we understand how those terms are different. For Levinas, response precedes any kind of moral education that one would receive. That we would still hold Cain responsible, even if he received no moral education, is an indication that something else is at work in our understanding of the ethical. There is something that precedes the traditional conception of the ethical; for Levinas, this is response. We are claimed by the other and we have no choice in this obligation. Cain's reply to God indicates that he knows something is wrong, but his reply also indicates he is unattached to the human community. His subjectivity is not yet developed, not because he does not know what is right, but because he is unable to respond in a manner that indicates responsibility to another. Levinas, influenced by the work of Franz Rosenzweig, sees Cain in comparison to Abraham, where the latter answers God's call with the Hebrew Hineni [Here I am]. Hineni indicates a willingness to respond, an openness to the other, a readiness to be for the other. This is what Cain lacks.

But the story of Cain and Abel also illustrates the unique way in which responsibility claims the individual subject. God cannot exonerate Cain. Only the perpetrator of the crime can put things right. In the case of murder this is impossible because the perpetrator cannot be forgiven. As Levinas says in the passage cited above, Cain's crime disturbed the natural order and only the perpetrator can put things right. Cain cannot be exonerated, for the only person who could possibly exonerate him no longer exists. This account of murder is not unlike the one related by Simon Wiesenthal in The Sunflower, (11) where a young Jew is summoned from a death camp to the bedside of a dying Nazi soldier.

The soldier tells the story of his participation in the burning alive of an entire village. No longer able to bear the burden of his guilt, and terrified of dying with it, he asks the Jew for absolution. The Jew turns and leaves the room without speaking. This story does not present us with any clear answers to questions of guilt and atonement; the collection of commentaries on the story does not make its moral any more obvious. (12) But from an explicitly Jewish perspective, we may note that the Jew would have overstepped certain moral boundaries had he absolved the Nazi of his crimes. Levinas rehearses the Jewish view of murder when he tells us that

       Jewish wisdom teaches that He Who has created and Who supports
       the whole universe cannot support or pardon the crime that man
       commits against man. "Is it possible? Did not the Eternal efface
       the sin of the golden calf?" This leads the master to reply: the
       fault committed with regard to God falls within the province of
       divine pardon, whereas the fault that offends man does not
       concern God. The text thus announces the value and the full
       autonomy of the human who is offended, as it affirms the
       responsibility incurred by whomsoever touches man. Evil is not a
       mystical principle that can be effaced by a ritual, it is an
       offence perpetrated on man by man. No one, not even God, can
       substitute himself for the victim. The world in which pardon is
       all-powerful becomes inhuman (DF 20/DL 37, emphasis added). (13)

In addition to conveying Levinas's view of murder, the above citation also conveys his view of evil. Evil consists of the "offence perpetrated on man by man." For Levinas, evil is not something to be blamed on G-d; nor is it something that one ought to try to justify in the 'grand scheme of things.' To do either is to trivialize the suffering of the other, to make it palatable. Levinas makes this point in his essay "Useless Suffering." (14) All suffering for Levinas is, in a sense, useless. It is "for nothing." To make it for something is to justify not only the suffering but also the evil that caused it, since the two are linked. Thus, even if we believe that suffering is necessary for the rehabilitation of the wicked, this political ideology does not have a place in the justification of suffering per se. To do so would be to make comprehensible the suffering of the other. But finally, the problem with this kind of theodicy is that it still places the question of evil within the context of God's responsibility rather than our own. The question of whether or not God is innocent, good, or benevolent, conceals the real nature of our own responsibility to the other. (15) For Levinas, the ethical reveals the trace of God in the other. In a sense, it is our relationship to the other marks our relationship to God; our relationship to the other is prior to our relationship to God.

In the biblical story of Cain and Abel we find much of the inspiration for Levinas's famous account of the "face to face" relation, which he treats as emblematic of the ethical. In other words, Levinas's conception of the ethical is not intended to give us a new set of rules or guidelines that would tell us what to do. He understands the ethical as a response that occurs at the pre-cognitive, pre-epistemic, pre-ontological level, rather than at the level of rational discourse, moral education, or abstract moral rules. In Levinas's words, the temptation to murder and the resistance of the face to be murdered--the trace is always present-constitute the very vision of the face: "To see a face is already to hear, 'You shall not kill,' and to hear 'You shall not kill' is to hear 'Social justice.' And everything I can hear [entendre] coming from God or going to God, Who is invisible, must have come to me via the one, unique voice. 'You shall not kill' is therefore not just a simple rule of conduct; it appears as the principle of discourse itself and of spiritual life ... Speech belongs to the order of morality before belonging to that of theory. Is it not therefore the condition for conscious thought?" (DF 8-9/DL 21). (16) As the citation indicates, you are ethically bound to the other even before you see an actual face.

There are many instances of fraternal discord in the Bible, including the stories of Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael, and, of course, Joseph and his brothers. While many of these stories reprise familiar tales of immorality, broken promises, and betrayal, the story of Cain and Abel is unique for drawing out both the significance of murder and the question of responsibility. Cain kills Abel before the bestowal of the Ten Commandments; that is, he kills Abel without our awareness that he has been taught any kind of moral values, and he kills him with what appears to be a will. My point here is not to suggest that moral education would have kept him from killing Abel. My point is that we hold Cain responsible even though he killed Abel prior to having any moral education. In our traditional conception of ethics, the methods we use to hold people responsible, either legally or morally, have their roots in a modern conception of the terms: responsibility entails freedom, knowledge, etc. That is, if we are going to hold someone responsible, it must be the case that he or she knew what he or she was doing and knew it was wrong. But here, knowing implies cognition, i.e., knowledge of a moral law, whereas freedom means the freedom to do otherwise, the freedom not to be obligated. According to Levinas, we are always already obligated, even before we have been given moral instruction. But Cain is held responsible even though his actions apparently took place independently of these criteria. For Levinas the issue of responsibility is not concerned with one's knowledge of a moral law; nor is it concerned with the freedom to make a choice with regard to that moral law. The issue for Levinas is one of response or the attunement to the other, to be in a relationship with the other as called to respond. The ethical as response is the pre-condition of any possibility of an ethical relation. This leads me to Levinas's conception of maternity as the ethical relation par excellence.

II. The Good Mother

In passing to the second part of the paper, we can chart an interesting movement from Cain, who lacks a developed response to an other, to the notion of maternity, which cannot but be ethical. From Levinas's standpoint, Cain's crime was twofold: the killing of Abel and his response to God with regard to that action. Levinas is most concerned with the latter. Cain's answer to God indicates that Cain is not part of the human community. His response, though it may indicate he is aware he has done something wrong, also indicates, for Levinas, an inability to see himself as responsible. This point is not to suggest that the murder of Abel is less horrifying than it is. Rather, Levinas wants us to be sure to focus on the perpetrator of the violence as someone who did not merely kill. Cain is not yet a fully developed ethical subject. For Levinas, the image of maternity exemplifies the ethical as that which is prior to choice and prior to cognition. There is a sense in which Levinas, drawing on strands of the Judaic tradition, portrays the maternal feminine as the antithesis of evil, as incapable of evil.

As in Totality and Infinity, the ethical appears in Otherwise Than Being (17) as that which interrupts one's enjoyment. (18) According to Levinas it is only as a being that eats that one can be for the other. It is not to say that only humans eat, but rather that one can only give food because one takes in food. The ethical only makes sense in light of one's activity. That is to say, it is only when something can be taken away, when one's meal can be interrupted, when one has something to offer, that one can be for the other. Thus, it is only when one can give the bread from one's mouth that one can be for the other. The bread from one's mouth signifies the giving over of one's very existence. It is not the openness only of one's pocketbook but of the doors of one's home, a "sharing of the bread with the famished, a welcoming of the wretched into your house (Isaiah 58)" (OTB 74/AE 120). (19)

But this responsibility for the other cannot be traced to a moment at which one remembers having contracted that responsibility, when one remembers having chosen it--for one did not choose it. This responsibility, which arrives in the form of sensibility, is vulnerability and contact; it is an unchosen exposedness to the other (OTB 75/AE 120-121). Levinas characterizes this responsibility as maternity, a "gestation of the other in the same" (OTB 75/AE 121). According to Levinas, maternity "bears even responsibility for the persecuting by the persecutor" (OTB 75/AE 121), for "rather than a nature, earlier than nature, immediacy is this vulnerability, this maternity, this pre-birth or pre-nature in which the sensibility belongs" (OTB 75-6/AE 121). (20)

One might say that the pregnant body, the swelling belly and stretched skin, actually reveals the ethical relationship one has to another. In pregnancy what else can a mother do but feed the child growing inside her? (21) Maternity is the ultimate experience of giving the bread from one's mouth, as Levinas recognizes when he writes, "... That is alterity in the same ... psyche in the form of the hand that gives even the bread taken from its own mouth ... Here the psyche is the maternal body" (OTB 67/AE 109). Thus, this act of "giving" is pre-cognitive, pre-volitional. Maternity then is added to the terms that signify the ethical: vulnerability, responsibility, proximity, contact. Maternity is an example of being claimed by another, a responsibility that is in place prior to choice. (22)

What then does this image of maternity mean for Levinas's conception of the feminine, and for his project as a whole? Throughout Isaiah we continually see the image of the womb, of the experience of birth, of the most intimate bond between mother and child. And yet, in Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah asks, "Can a woman forget her sucking child?" Just after that question, Isaiah, answers: "Yea, thee may forget, Yet will not I, God, forget thee." Although Isaiah's answer indicates that there is a bond stronger than the mother-child bond--the bond between God and God's people--Isaiah's question derives its force precisely from the image of the mother-child relation. This relation is presented as the strongest bond possible between two humans, a bond surpassed in strength only by a relationship with God. But in spite of Levinas's idealized vision of women and their relation to the ethical, we must contend with the reality that some women visit evil upon their children. Thus, on the one hand, Levinas's image of the maternal is not helpful to us; it essentializes women and portrays them in an idealized state that is, certainly in some instances, not accurate. On the other hand, however, we could also say that our horror at what women sometimes do to their children arises precisely because Levinas's portrayal has purchase. It is against this background that Levinas develops his notion of maternity as the ethical relation par excellence, for even though some woman do abandon their children, such an act never fails to jar our moral sensibilities.

If we keep in mind the image of maternity as an illustration of a dyadic relation, we can better understand Levinas's conception of the relation between the ethical and the political, as a relationship between response and the choices one makes in acting towards another. The maternal figure not only exemplifies the ethical relation but also illustrates the tension between the ethical and the political: how does one decide between competing needs and with finite resources? The mother-child relation signifies that dyadic relationship, wherein we can imagine with little problem the possibility of one, the mother, giving herself over completely, giving the bread out of her mouth, for the other, her child. But this relationship changes when placed within the context of the culture where competing needs pull the mother in different directions. What does this relationship look like when the reality of a third party complicates the simplicity of the mother-child dyad?

Descriptively rather than normatively, maternity exemplifies a conception of sacrifice, the giving of oneself to another, that Levinas thinks exemplifies a love that is "stronger than death." Levinas is not advocating the sacrifice of motherhood. His analysis indicates that he thinks sacrifice is a descriptive element of maternity, not a prescriptive one. Maternity signals the extreme on both the giving and receiving ends of the sacrifice. Within the context of the dyad, the mother gives herself over to the child. Thus, this extreme act, this final act of love, can become a person's worst nightmare, a life riddled with an unshakeable guilt that someone died in order for him/her to live. (23) Is maternity described in terms of sacrifice a model we want for ethics? (24) Is it a model that we want for women? (25) This model also raises questions about the role of sacrifices so much that her world is now a living hell, albeit a hell to which she cannot admit and for which she cannot ask for help. (26)

The feminine, now conceived as maternity, is quite the opposite of the pre-subjective position of Cain. The maternal figure is cast as the most developed case of subjectivity. The maternal figure cannot but say "here I am" to her child; she is, in fact, always already responding to her. Thus, on the one hand, Levinas's image is reasonable. The maternal bond appears sacred. But, on the other hand, there are countless examples of women who murder their children. How do we reconcile these acts with Levinas's conception of maternity? In other words, what does it mean that women who murder their children were once pregnant women who nurtured their children to term and brought them into this world? In what ways does Levinas's image of the maternal fail, not because the pregnant mother is not responsive, but because it provides no guarantees of a continued response to the other, of a real connection to the human community? At this point, I will turn to one recent example of such an action. I want to be clear, however, that I also think this example is unique in many ways. My motivation for looking at this particular case centers on what I see as a failure of responsibility not merely by the mother, but by others who were part of her life. It is a failure of the human community to see itself as such.

III: The Aberrant Mother and the 'Sober' Husband

"What made Andrea Yates snap?" So reads the cover headline of the July 2, 2001 issue of Newsweek magazine, following the horrifying murder of five children at the hands of their own mother. (27) What we find when we read the article is that this woman did not suddenly or unexpectedly 'snap.' The signs of her illness were already established. In fact, she was already on anti-psychotic drugs. (28) The article recounts a series of post-partum depressions, one of which turned into a depression that lasted well beyond the considered post-partum length. In addition to having five young children, one of whom was a five-month-old infant, Yates was also home-schooling the older four. And just prior to her 'snap' her father, who had Alzheimer's disease and for whom she had been caring, had died. In other words, in addition to suffering from depression, this woman did not have any kind of break from the children and the others for whom she was caring. No one cared for the caregiver.

Infanticide has been practiced since ancient times, yet women who kill their young are seen as aberrations of culture, unexplainable phenomena, and often as the most evil of all evil. To kill one's own child, in particular, for a mother to kill her own child, is commonly seen as the most unnatural of all acts. (29) I turn to this example not to say that Levinas is wrong in his analysis of maternity. Rather, his analysis of maternity helps us see why this act is so abhorrent. We understand the maternal bond as that which protects, nurtures, and loves the other. The child is dependent and vulnerable, and the parent, by definition, is the caretaker. Although this woman's actions were horrifying, they became partially understandable in light of the mental disorder from which she was suffering. What was truly shocking was her husband's detached attitude toward her and her actions. Her husband, who was not on medication for mental disorders, sounded cold and removed as he explained his reasons for continuing to reproduce with his wife, even though his wife was suffering from severe depression. (30) His lack of attunement to her, to her suffering, and to her potential danger to herself and others, is staggering. His response, his detachment, recalls Cain's response to God, though Cain had received no moral instruction. And even then, under Levinas's model, Cain is still responsible. Cain, at least, responded defensively. Rusty Yates could not even muster the semblance of an emotional response. For Levinas, it is Cain's detachment from the human community, his undeveloped subjectivity, that is most disturbing. The husband's own inability to see his responsibility in this tragedy is a form of evil in Levinas's sense of the term. No, he did not kill these children. It is his reply to the series of events, his own version of a 'sober coldness,' that is terrifying.

Initially it may seem clear to us that the act of killing is the act on which we should focus. However, if we do that at the expense of naming the others who may also be responsible, we risk not seeing the 'banality' of evil, the everydayness of evil; we risk not seeing those in a position of responsibility who fail to be attentive to the suffering of others and who fail to take responsibility for their own actions and inactions. (31) I do not mean to suggest that what this woman did was not horrifying, nor do I want to suggest that responsibility always needs to be spread so thin that we can no longer really identify who is responsible. (32) But there is a difference between a shared responsibility that diffuses the responsibility of those whom we should hold accountable, and identifying the subtle ways in which people who are responsible deny the roles they play in framing the actions of others.

This case presents us with an interesting series of problems. On the one hand, Andrea Yates was suffering from what appeared to be a severe post-partum depression that never healed. (33) We can ask why, in a woman's greatest time of need, our culture has decided on a definition of 'woman' that would make a woman feel inadequate, if not a complete failure, is she were to ask for help? But we can also ask after her husband's responsibility. Ironically, it is Andrea Yates who, after committing such a heinous act of killing her children, sees what she has done and takes responsibility for it. Though her husband wonders what he might have done differently, this curiosity is different from actively thinking that he may have played a role in her depression and the subsequent series of events. It is her husband who fails to see his own role in this dreadful incident. So we can also ask why her husband either did not notice her depression or did not take steps to prevent the tragedy. And if he had noticed, what was his connection to her suffering? Another account of this incident, reported in the September 17th issue of Newsweek, indicates that Rusty Yates was not attuned to his wife's illness and in fact seemed to ignore the warning signs. For example, he failed to bring his wife to the hospital for her scheduled therapy appointments. Newsweek also tells us that "when Andrea Yates was hospitalized in 1999 after two suicide attempts, therapists called Rusty Yates 'controlling' and expressed alarm that the couple, already the parents of four small children, planned to have more." (34) He seemed unaware, or unconcerned, about his wife's failing mental health and the role he played in preventing its escalation and/or contributing to its breakdown.

This case should compel us to think about the social context in which women live, the kinds of violent acts they commit, and their various motivations for doing so. Surely, in this case, we should think about the demands placed on women, and, in particular, mothers. Additionally, we should be sure to note that this woman was not working outside the home, and yet her stress level exceeded what she was capable of handling. Because we have deemed women to be 'natural' caretakers and mothers, we often fail to see how this role can be alienating, lonely, oppressive, and overwhelming. Our culture labels women in a certain way and then when they fail to live up to the standards imposed on them and they 'snap,' they are blamed and then punished.

Responsibility moves, then, between two extremes: Cain, who shows complete disregard for humanity, and the maternal. Cain's disregard demonstrates a complete lack of connectedness to humanity. He has not yet shown himself to be attuned to the suffering of an Other. The maternal, by contrast, is completely attuned to the other. The tragedy I cite above blurs the two. Moreover, it calls into question the description Levinas gives us of the maternal as the ethical par excellence. A mother commits an act that betrays a bond we normally think of as inviolable. This mother fulfilled Levinas's description--she was pregnant with and brought into the world five children--the gestation of the other in the same. But this 'attunement' did not prevent her from doing the unthinkable, from killing her children. And yet, she did not respond like Cain; she was not defensive, but rather confessed her actions. It is her husband who distanced himself from the day's events and from his wife's problems.

It is this act that brings into relief the failure of society and the individuals who surround her. If we say, "But she did it," or if we say, as Cain did, "Am I my brother's keeper?," where does that leave each of us individually? We are no better than Cain, a figure who fails to take responsibility for his actions. And it is this failure, this defensive response, that has meaning precisely because it is uttered against the backdrop of an ethical relation that is already in place, but to which they fail to respond. To focus on theodicy and the justification for suffering is to remove ourselves from the equation. Though suffering is useless in the other, it is meaningful in me. But to be clear, it is not meaningful as a justification for the evil or the suffering. Rather it is a call to us to attune ourselves to the other. (35) It should draw me to an inter-human perspective in which I see myself as part of the human community and to which I have a responsibility.

My point has been to emphasize the Levinasian line that evil should help us understand suffering. Evil should help us become more attuned, not less, to those who commit it, and to those who suffer from it. The evil that was committed by this woman should help us to understand the suffering of her children. But it should also help us think about what drove her to commit this action and it should compel us to think about who else should have been attuned to Andrea Yates. It is a fine line to negotiate between individual responsibility and the chain of others whom we might also hold accountable. Religion and the society at large place unusual demands on women, often with little support for them in these roles. If we fail to see how this works, then instead of expressing self-righteous horror at these tragedies we should only be surprised there are not more women who kill their children. (36) In this case, we should look closely at the sober coldness of Rusty Yates and learn something from it.

Notes

1. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jersualem, (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 150.

2. Emmanuel Levinas, "Useless Suffering," Entre Nous, translated by Michael Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

3. As Jill Robbins remarks in her essay, "Visage, Figure: Speech and Murder in Levinas's Totality and Infinity," the rest of this sentence is absent. The Hebrew word vayommer translates as "said unto" rather than "spoke to" or "told to" indicating that what was said is somehow significant. [See Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing, eds. Cathy Caruth and Deborah Esch (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), p. 292.]

4. The Hebrew for Abel is "Hevel"; for Cain, "Kayin"; and for Eve, "Havah."

5. One Rabbinic interpretation likens this point to "two athletes who wrestle before the king; had the king wished he could have separated them. But he did not so desire and one overcame the other and killed him, he [the victim] crying out [before he died], 'let my cause be pleased before the king!'" Midrash Rabbah, Genesis I, trans. Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman (New York: Soncino Press, 1983), p. 189. This interpretation is derived from God's own claim that Abel's blood cries out against him.

6. JPS Torah Commentary, Genesis, commentary by Nahum M. Sarna (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 34.

7. This line is also used to indicate the significance of being created from one human species. There is no hierarchy among humans since no one can claim a different ancestry, but further, to kill one human is as if one killed the entire world. See the JPS Torah Commentary, op. cit., p. 13.

8. John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics (London: Routledge: 1995), pp. 119-20.

9. The JPS Torah Commentary, commentary by Nahum Sarna (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 34.

10. Chumash and Rashi, Bereshit, tr. Rabbi A.M. Silberman (Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers, 1934), 19.

11. Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower (New York: Schocken, 1976). First published by Opera Mundi in Paris, 1969.

12. The symposium following the story includes a wide range of commentaries. The commentators range from Herbert Marcuse and Cynthia Ozick to Gabriel Marcel and Jacques Maritain.

13. Herein lies the basis of Levinas's claim that murder is ethically impossible. In Levinas's view "killing annihilates." Yet, in spite of this attempt at annihilation, the face resists annihilation. The resistance that Levinas sees is not real, but ethical. This is not to say that Levinas thinks that killing can never take place, for clearly it does. However, one cannot escape the ethical infinity of the other. See Totalite and infini: Essai sur l'exteriorite. Livre de Poche (The Hague: Martinus Nijohff, 1971; first edition 1961), p. 172. Translated by Alphonso Lingis under the title Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). p. 198. Hereafter cited as TI followed by the English and then the French page numbers. In Difficult Freedom [Difficile Liberte: Essais sur le judaisme (Livre de Poche; Paris: Albin Michel, 1963 and 1976). Translated by Sean Hand under the title Difficult Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Hereafter cited as DF and DL followed by their respective page numbers.], Levinas foreshadows his philosophical position found in Totality and Infinity. I say "foreshadows" only because the essays in Difficult Freedom were compiled in the years following the liberation of France after WW II and thus predate the appearance of Totality and Infinity, which was first published in 1961. Levinas writes:

       Only the vision of the face in which the "You shall not kill" is
       articulated does not allow itself to fall back into an ensuing
       complacency or become the experience of an insuperable obstacle,
       offering itself up to our power. For in reality, murder is
       possible, but it is possible only when one has not looked the
       Other in the face. The impossibility of killing is not real, but
       moral. The fact that the vision of the face is not an experience,
       but a moving out of oneself, a contact with another being and not
       simply a sensation of self, is attested to by the "purely moral"
       character of this impossibility. A moral view [regard] measures,
       in the face, the uncrossable infinite in which all murderous
       intent is immersed and submerged. This is precisely why it leads
       us away from any experience or view [regard]; it is not known,
       but is in society with us. The commerce with beings which begins
       with "You shall not kill" does not conform to the scheme of our
       normal relations with the words, in which the subject knows or
       absorbs its object like a nourishment, the satisfaction of a
       need. It does not return to its point of departure to become
       self-contentment, self-enjoyment, or self-knowledge. It
       inaugurates the spiritual journey of man. A religion, for us, can
       follow no other path (DF 10/DL 23).

14. "Useless Suffering," in Entre Nous, trans. by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 91-101.

15. This question seems most obvious to Levinas with regard to Auschwitz, where God is seen as silent. And yet, while this may be the case, to focus on the presence of God is to overlook the responsibility of the very real people who engaged in evil and who committed these atrocities, "men perpetrating offences on other men."

16. This theme is reminiscent of the Hebraic notion, "To do and to hear [understand]." Given the problem with the future tense in Hebrew, this expression is understood in English as "To do and then to hear." The point behind the expression is that one accepts the Torah without the experience of knowing what the Torah is. This expression recalls the earlier discussion on the previous chapter where Rashi recounts the fear and trembling in the receiving of the Torah. Levinas gives his own discussion of the receiving of the Torah and the expression "To do and to hear" in his essay. "The Temptation of Temptation." See Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 30-50. Originally published in French in Quatre lectures talmudiques (Paris: Minuit, 1968). Hereafter cited as NTR followed by the page number. For an interesting analysis of how this expression is intertwined into Levinas's analysis, that is the notion of ethics before cognition, see, Wyschogrod, "Doing before Hearing," in Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Francois Laruelle (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1980), pp. 179-202.

17. Autrement qu'etre ou au-dela de l'essence (Livre de Poche; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). Translated from the French by Alphonso Lingis under the title Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981). Hereafter cited as OTB/AE followed by the respective page numbers.

18. These next few pages are taken from my book, Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). For an extended discussion of Levinas's discussion of maternity see especially chapters 9 and 10.

19. Though it appears that to give bread from one's mouth looks like an act of volition or will, Levinas would want to distinguish this kind of "volition" from the choice to be obligated. There is no choice in the obligation to the other, and to give the bread from one's mouth is a rudimentary act insofar as someone is hungry, that person must be fed. Thus, Levinas uses the expression "to give the bread from one's mouth" not to indicate a rule that one must follow, but rather to indicate the basic level of response to another.

20. One wonders if Levinas's reference here to the skin as limit, and to the face of the other, is a reference to Moses seeing the back of God, and only the back of God. To put "skin" on God would be to thematize God, to define God, and therefore, to limit God. God would be "weighted down" with skin. By only seeing the back of God, God's alterity remains undisturbed. Regardless, one cannot help but notice, or be moved by, Levinas's references to and images of skin. If one thinks of skin as that which protects one from another, that which, ultimately, mediates between a self and another, Levinas's images subvert this understanding. Skin now serves as the image of the ethical, of that which exceeds the skin. Responsibility for the other penetrates the skin. Moreover, it is the subject who is held hostage, who is denuded, who is so vulnerable that he or she is exposed beyond his or skin. Substitution, responsibility par excellence, can be viewed as a "getting into" the skin of another.

21. We might even want to contrast the skin images here: the too tight skin could be maternity, the figure of a pregnant woman, while the skin that is too loose, the skin that is wrinkled, is that of someone in need. One cannot help but think of the concentration camp victims in WWII who were not much more than skin and bones.

22. I need to address the hyperbolic nature of Levinas's ethics, which is not intended to be an ethics of pacifism. Levinas's ethics is a response to the extreme violence he sees throughout the history of Western philosophy and which, he thinks, culminates in the Shoah. Hence, his ethics takes a strong position on what our responsibility is such that we cannot escape what it means to be ethical beings, humans in relationship with others. However, I do not see anywhere in his ethics the grounds to claim that Levinas thinks one ought not defend oneself if necessary; that a woman ought to go through with an unwanted pregnancy if raped or if her life is threatened, and life here is construed broadly to include physical or mental health, or even that a woman not defend herself against a rapist. Levinas is describing the ethical relation, not prescribing it.

23. I think Levinas is careful here not to make this notion of sacrifice normative. For him, it is descriptive and thus is differentiated from a theology that demands sacrifice for as its base.

24. In "The Hungry Jewish Mother" Erika Duncan relates the story of a woman who, "in her dying, turns away from all those she was forced to nurture in her life." This figure of the Jewish woman--"the all-engulfing nurturer who devours the very soul with every spoonful of hot chicken soup she gives"--is all too common among male Jewish writers. She contrasts this figure with another conception of woman that is often forgotten, the woman who gives until she is sucked dry, the woman who gives because it is her access to love. Duncan says, "In Jewish literature by women, mothers are the 'bread givers' who try to make feeding into a replenishing, ecstatic act. But the mothers are themselves starved in every way, sucked dry and withered from being asked almost from birth to give a nurturance they never receive. They are starved not only for the actual food they are forced to turn over to others, but for the stuff of self and soul, for love and song. The oldest daughter in Tell Me a Riddle cries, 'Pay me back, Mother, pay me back for all you took from me. Those others you crowded into your heart. The hands I needed to be for you, the heaviness, the responsibility.' But the dying grandmother, her mother, can only chant: 'One pound soup meant ... one soup bone ... Bread, day-old ... Plea in a wood box ... for kindling. I ask for stone; she gives me bread, day-old ... How can I give it, Clara, how can I give it if I don't have it'?" (Duncan, 28). Duncan continues, "The mother's starvation is, needless to say, scary for the child, who has no choice but to take." See On Being a Jewish Feminist, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Schocken, 1983), p. 28.

25. Ewa Ziarek addresses this point, along with the general limits of a Levinasian ethics for a feminist framework. By reading Levinas through Kristeva, however, Ziarek expands the possibilities of Levinas's work for women. See "Kristeva and Levinas: Mourning, Ethics, and the Feminine," Ethics, Politics and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing, ed. Kelly Oliver (New York: Routledge, 1993) pp. 62-78.

26. This view is also what motivates Carol Gilligan's work, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). Gilligan, responding directly to Lawrence Kolhberg's (given the influences on Kohlberg, one could say she is responding indirectly to the history of philosophy) claims that (1) the highest moral level is the universal and, in particular, the preservation of life, of anyone's life, and (2) women never achieve this level of morality. Gilligan's work borrows heavily from Nancy Chodorow's work in psychoanalytic theory. Chodorow develops a conception of gender identity that lies in the way boys and girls are parented by a dominant parent, typically, the mother. According to Chodorow, because girls are developing a gender that is similar to their mothers, they [little girls] have difficulty developing autonomously, whereas little boys have difficulty developing an identity that remembers it was once in relationship to other people, namely, the mother. See, for example, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). From this model, Gilligan claims that women's moral development is heavily influenced by an identity that is situated squarely within relationships with others. Thus, women's moral development always has as its concern the interests, pains, sufferings, etc. of the others who are affected by the individual's actions. Gilligan's research, and the analyses that resulted from it, have been criticized for a number of reasons, one of which is the lack of attention paid to the differences among women, differences that may indicate that not all women theorize, morally, or otherwise, in the same way. It is worth noting that while Gilligan and Levinas have different methods which motivate their work, each is responding, either directly, or indirectly, to the way the history of philosophy has conceived the ethical. Thus, it is should come as no surprise, in spite of their various differences, that Levinas and Gilligan would have a similar view of the feminine and the ethical. But in light of the criticisms fired against Gilligan, one must wonder if Levinas is also essentializing women through his portrait of maternity as the ethical relation par excellence.

27. In January 2005, the courts overturned the ruling that convicted Andrea Yates. The new ruling does recognize her as suffering from mental defect.

28. In a follow up to this story, again in Newsweek (September 17, 2001), we find an update to the information regarding this tragedy. Yates, it turns out, had been hospitalized for psychiatric care as recently as April. She had, in fact, on a previous occasion, filled the bathtub and when questioned why, she refused to answer. June 20th, when she killed her children, was a month after her second release from a hospital.

29. In 1922, England enacted the Infanticide Act, which created a separate offense that carried with it a lesser charge for women who killed their own children before the age of one (Newsweek, July 2, 2001, p. 23). This act implies a recognition that there is something about the stress of motherhood that does not excuse the violence a woman may do to her own child, but at least places it in a different category.

30. Elsewhere, I used Levinas's essay, "Loving the Torah more than God," to argue that Abraham's actions of putting the knife down, i.e., abandoning the planned sacrifice of his child, is the true test that he passed. In fact, even if his action was a defiance of God's commandment, to defy God and spare Isaac, is precisely to "love the Torah more than God," to love the ethical more than God. Might this not also apply in the instance of procreation? Might it not be the case that if child bearing is dangerous, either mentally or physically, to one of the partners, and most certainly to the woman, that God's commandment does not apply? Can we not say that in this case, where the husband has a responsibility to protect his wife rather than send her further into the dark abyss of depression, the husband failed to respond to his wife?

31. There is any number of instances where the responsibility fans out from the person who actually raises the weapon. The movie "The Accused" is based on a true account of a woman who was raped in a bar. Though the rape was itself horrific, what made this instance of rape particularly gruesome was that the people in the bar actually cheered on the first rapist and encouraged others to join in the activity. Similarly, in a recent tragedy in India, a young couple who had married across caste lines was taken in broad daylight from the town streets, dragged to the top of a building, and hung, while the community watched. In both situations, the public stood by and watched while innocent people were attacked before their very eyes.

32. We may all remember the "Twinkie defense" that was used when a man in San Francisco went into City Hall and shot a number of people.

33. In fact, Yates had a post-partum psychosis.

34. Newsweek, September 17, 2001, p. 6.

35. "Useless Suffering," p. 100.

36. For an insightful essay on this topic, see Anna Quindlen's opinion/editorial piece in the July 2, 2001 issue of Newsweek.