Introduction

Levinas and the Problem of Human Longing

-Levi as’ Phe o e ology of Metaphysical Desire:

It is the aim of philosophy in general, and the special province of phenomenology as I

understand it, to come to the aid of human experience by enlightening and informing through

rigorous study and tireless pursuit those phenomena which constitutes its experience and

nature. Considered in light of this charge, the work of Emmanuel Levinas stands out as one of

the most fecund examples of philosophical and phenomenological investigation conducted in

the 20th century. Though often decried by its detractors as more prescriptive than descriptive,

Le i as ork, he u derstood properl , pro es to e o posed of a u er of ri h

phenomenological analyses of some of the most basic and moving aspects of human life such as

shame, birth and death. Thus far his work on these phenomenon, not to mention the

phenomenon themselves, have all been, to greater and lesser degrees, understood and
recognized. After all, we are all somehow immediately familiar with the nature of shame, birth

and death. They are phenomena which we have all had to contend at some point in our life. As

a result, though Le i as a al sis of the a at ti es tur our u dersta di g of these

phenomena on its head, or may reveal to us a hidden ethical or metaphysical significance to

their manifestation, and though we may at times struggle to understand the meaning or nature

of his analyses, we all immediately recognize what is referred to in them. This is not always the

case, however, with another such phenomenon identified and described by Levinas, a

phenomenon which, moreover, appears to be for him one of the most poignant ways in which

the subject feels the call of the Other and recognizes the hold of the good upon his or her life.

This phenomenon is the experience of a kind of desire which, by his account, is more enduring

that any other quotidian desire, such as hunger or thirst – a desire which seems to operate in

an entirely different register than such desires as lust or greed – a desire which Levinas

nominates a metaphysical desire.

Le i as a al sis of etaph si al desire, though o e of the ost i porta t a d

constitutive elements in his phenomenology of the ethical account of the subject – a version of

it appearing nearly every one of his major philosophic works – is also one of the least

immediately accessible of his concepts. One is hard pressed to identify his or her own

experience of desire with Levinas descriptions of the nature and operation of metaphysical

desire. Indeed it seems to zig where our desires would zag, always appearing opposite to our

commonly held assumptions concerning the nature of desire. Thus whereas desires are

traditionally understood as arising out of some lack or privation within our being, as hunger

results from the absence of nutritive beneficence, metaphysical desire according to Levinas, is
not the symptom of some lack within us, but the manifestation of some superlative presence

within us. Similarly, whereas we traditionally hold desires to seek some determinate aim or

end which, it is presumed, once attained will fill the absence within us and result in a form of

satisfaction, metaphysical desire, claims Levinas, if fundamentally indeterminate and insatiable,

pursuing no specific end nor aim and resulting in nor eventual satisfaction.

U a le to re og ize a thi g of o e s o e perie e of desire i Le i as des riptio s,

most readers are inclined to disregard his analysis of metaphysical desire as a bit of excess.

Indeed, it is the result of such inabilities than many are led to conclude, as was intimated

a o e, that Le i as des riptio s eer i to the pres ripti e i stead of re ai i g fir l

entrenched in the phenomenological or descriptive. Thus has resulted in many concluding that

at least in regards to his descriptions of metaphysical desire, Levinas appears to be less

concerned with what one does experience than with what one could or should experience were

desire freed from the constraints of self interest and bound to the ethical summons of the

other. What is at stake i Le i as a al sis of etaph si al desire, the thi k, is ot su h u h

a picture of the way in which desire actually functions, but instead the way in which it ideally

functions – that Le i as a ou t of etaph si al desire is a esse tiall a hagiograph of desire,

an account of desire purified of being and sanctified in the other.

This isu dersta di g of the role a d ature of Le i as a ou t of etaph si al desire

is in part the result of his tendency towards abstraction, a tendency oft noted in the secondary

literature; but it is even more the result of the reader failing to recognize what is truly at stake

i this a ou t. For it is ot Le i as goal i his a alysis of metaphysical desire to identify and

describe the nature of all desires. Levinas himself forthrightly contrasts the nature of
metaphysical desire from such desires as hunger and need. What is at stake in Levinas

descriptions of metaphysical desire ertai l is t a phe o e olog of desire as su h, i luded

therein such desires as lust and greed. Instead, it is his goal to identify an entirely different kind

of desire – hat e all i E glish a lo gi g. This is hat is at stake i Le i as a al sis of

metaphysical desire a phenomenology of human longing.

-Defining Longing:

There are few experience more poignant or enduring, more enduring or influential for the

way in which we think about ourselves and the nature of our existence than the experience of a

deep longing. Longings are in many ways the hidden core of our identity, that which informs

our hopes and dreams, and rouses us to action. We experience them as value them as somehow

secret and precious to us, worth more than any amount of lucre or gain. And, even though they

can inspire feelings of dissatisfaction, melancholy and pining, very few among us would be

willing to trade the feeling our longings arouse for any determinate ease or satisfaction. Indeed,

it seems that there is a sense in which our longings are more precious to us than any object we

could hope to attain through them. And yet regardless of how much we may identify with our

longings or how much we may feel that they are an integral and profound part of who we are,

there is something about them which perpetually evades us – something about them which feels

somehow larger than us, something which cannot fit within the bounds of our finitude or

reasoning. This is so much to say that even in the throes of a deep longing we are at pains to

name how it is precisely we feel or what it is that we are longing for. As such they manifest as a
profoundly curious phenomenon, one which seemingly defies our modern understanding of

ourselves.

In his work “The Buried Life” i English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold referred to the

nature of human longing as a kind of “unspeakable desire,” which pursues the “deep”

“unregarded river of our life.” For Arnold, this buried desire – this unspeakable desire – is the

power which drives us through our days informing and giving potency to all the more concrete

objects or goals towards which we endeavor. Ernest Hemmingway in A Moveable Feast named

human longing a strange kind of hunger that cannot be satisfied by anything as simple as a good

meal or sexual gratification and in fact troubles such simple pleasures, keeping one awake at

night and gazing off into the distance.ii Echoing the sentiments of both Arnold and

Hemmingway C.S. Lewis describes longing in his autobiography Surprised by Joy as a kind of

“passionate, silent gazing at things a long way off,”iii that is about things “longer ago, further

away or still ‘about to be,’”iv and could never be satisfied by something as simple as sexual

gratification. Indeed, according to Lewis one “might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who

is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of.”v In recognition of the

“unspeakable” nature of Longing Lewis writes that “[i]t is difficult to find words strong enough

for the sensation [of longing]. Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient

meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It [is] a sensation, of course, of desire; but

desire for what?”vi Shakespeare too recognized the power and insatiability of human longing as

somehow insatiable and disturbing of one’s complacency. In Anthony and Cleopatra (Act 5,

Scene II, ln. 281-282) Shakespeare has Cleopatra rise from her bed and declare “Give me my

robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me.”vii Cleopatra’s longings are so great,

Shakespeare seems to suggest, that they not only rise her from her repose and force her into
action, but they are also somehow exceed her, extending beyond her own mortality into the

realm of the immortal and infinite. But how are we to understand the nature and operation of

these longings? Our first hint comes through an analysis of the historical definition of the word.

Longing is a very unusual word with a rich semantic history. A noun stemming from the

intransitive verb to long, longing connotes a kind of earnest or ardent, heartfelt desire

espe iall , as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language puts it, for

so ethi g e o d rea h. viii As su h, it e presses a ki d of prolo ged u fulfilled desire or

eed, ix what the Oxford English Dictionary refers to as a ear i g desire. x Etymologically, in

its original verb form, to long is derived from the Old English word langian which comes from

the Middle Dutch langen, ea i g to e or see lo g; to thi k lo g , desire; to e te d, hold

out, offer; a d fro the Old High Ger a langên and Middle High German langen, to rea h,

e te d, suffi e. xi All of these roots stress the passive nature of longing, the fact that it is not

something which is done by someone, but is rather something which happens to someone. It is

something which is aroused, extended, and held out to someone. Perhaps the oldest ancestor

to the modern form of the word which caries the closest resemblance to its contemporary

meaning is the Old Norse langa, a i perso al er ea i g to desire. xii

These myriad old meanings are retained in the modern English form of the word giving

rise to a constellation of contemporary usages all orbiting the same basic idea. As a result, the

Oxford English Dictionary has more than four different entries for the word long, the second of

which, and the one that is of most pertinence to the investigation at hand, has eight different

permutations. Firstly to long is defi ed as to gro lo ger; to le gthe ; se o dl , to

le gthe , prolo g; thirdl , to put far a a ; fourthl , to ause to pass o er a ertai

dista e; a d fifth a d si thl , to ha e a ear i g desire; to ish ear estl , or to e restless

or i patie t. xiii The Oxford English Dictionary consults us in its seventh permutation of the

ord that it a e used as a ad er o l ith a er of otio i plied, as i the phrase, to

o e lo gi gl . Fi all , to long a ea to gro ear . xiv This experience of growing

weary through our longings is most commonly compared to the experience of growing sick with

desire. Indeed, in the attempt to place a limit upon, or explain the genesis of our longings we

will very often identify them as a kind of lovesickness or homesickness. When one declares him

or her self to feel homesick or lovesick one attempts to give a name for the experience of

having been overwhelmed and almost infected, as it were, with a deep longing that cannot be

satisfied and which drives one into weariness.xv

This reference to the sickness felt in the experience of human longing has been drawn

upo e te si el i the literar e plo e t of the ord lo gi g. A se tio e titled Lo gi g

i George Her ert s ele rated poe The Te ple egi s, With si k a d fa isht e es, / With

doubling knees and weary bones, / To Thee my cries, / To Thee my grones, / To thee my sighs,

tears as e d: No e d? xvi Notice how Herbert simultaneously recognizes the protracted

nature of longing, that it has no end, and the weary sickness associated with it. His poem is

littered ith su h o pariso s et ee lo gi g a d si k ess referri g to ho his soul is

hoarse as a throat a e ith ough, a d ho i it he is o ed to ards death. He e e

a es this lo gi g a urse at o e poi t, re og izi g only at the end of his poem that his hope

for cure and healing is held out beyond death through reunion with his God.

Shakespeare too drew upon the inexorable connection between sickness and longing in

his famous 147th sonnet. There he writes:

 My love is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease; / Feeding
on that which doth preserve the ill, / The uncertain sickly appetite to please. / My
reason, the physician to my love, / Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, / Hath left
me, and I desperate now approve, / Desire his death, which physic did expect / Past cure
I am, now reason is past care, / And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; / My thoughts
a d dis ourse as ad e s are, / At ra do fro the truth ai l e press d / For I
have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright / Who art as black as hell, as dark as
night.xvii

Notice how for Shakespeare longing is not merely a sickness which affects the heart, it is one

which invades the mind, driving reason out and resulting in a kind of madness and mania, but

more on this later. The connection between longing and sickness continues to this day. Even

C.“. Le is, ho e e tio ed efore, des ri es his o lo gi gs as a desire ith al ost

sickening i te sit . xviii

It is interesting to note that the allusion to sickness present in the term longing is not

exclusive to the English language. It is also maintained in the contemporary German translation

of longing, namely Sehnsucht. The Wildhagen/Héraucourt German-English dictionary rightly

translates Sehnsucht as a i te se lo gi g, arde t desire, a d ear i g. xix Growing from

the verb root sehnen hi h is losest to the E glish to lo g a d is tra slated as to lo g, a he,

hu ger, la guish xx and the noun Sucht tra slated first as disease, or epileps , falli g-

si k ess, a d se o dl as a ia, passio , rage or addi tio . xxi This idea is supported by

the Grimm brothers in their famous dictionary. There Sehnsucht is translated as a

schmachtendes verlangen, as a ki d of krankheit des schmerzlichen verlangens,

liebeskrankheit, liebesbegierde. xxii Not only is the notion of disease or sickness the same there,

even the reference to lovesickness is matched. To support this definition, the Grimm brothers
go on to cite numerous uses and earlier definitions of the word, one of which is of particular

note. By their citation, Johann Leonhard Frisch in his German lexicography the Deutsch-

Lateinisches Wörterbuch (1741) defines Sehnsucht, dividing in into its two roots, sehn-sucht, as

a desiderium quo quis quasi morbo laborat. xxiii Hence the Grimm translation of Sucht as

morbus, passio, cupiditas. xxiv Again, note the reference to morbidity, sickness and disease,

and to labor (laborat) and exhaustion.

While more contemporary Germans immediately associate the word Sucht with

addiction, as in drug addiction, this is a more recent permutation in the meaning of the word

resulting, perhaps, from its homonymous relationship to the verb sucht ea i g u h sought

after. xxv Originally, however, the Sucht present in Sehnsucht was derived from the verb

siechen, to e aili g, si kl , [or] i ad health, to la guish, to pi e a a , or, to refere e the

E glish ited a o e, to gro ear . xxvi

Sehnsucht is not all sickness and morbidity, of course. First and foremost, as a desire, it

expresses a potency within human life to act and to move, specifically to move upwards as it

were, out beyond the immediate and towards that which seems to lie beyond our lives, in the

i ortalit pro ised o the other side of life. He e lo gi g s lose asso iatio ith the

concept of the holy. This is perfectly expressed i Goethe s poe “elige “eh su ht.

Sag es niemand, nur den Weisen, / Weil die Menge gleich verhöhnet: / Das Lebendge will
ich preisen, / Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet. / In der Liebesnächte Kühlung, / Die dich
zeugte, wo du zeugtest, / Überfällt dich fremde Fühlung, / Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
/ Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen / In der Finsternis Beschattung, / Und dich reisset neu
Verlangen / Auf zu höherer Begattung. / Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig, / Kommst
geflogen und gebannt, / Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig, / Bist du Schmetterling
 verbrannt. / Und so lang du das nicht hast, / Dieses: Stirb und Werde! / Bist du nur ein
trüber Gast / Auf der dunklen Erde.xxvii

For Goethe Sehnsucht seems to be a kind of impatience (begierig) for something amorphous

and yet clearly beyond us shining like a light of a flame. Like the flame of candle, Goethe

suggests, Sehnsucht calls us upwards away from the earth and the terrestrial and towards our

death and that which lies beyond so that we may become (Werde) something other than we

are here. Clearl Goethe s thi ki g o the su je t is fraught ith etaph si al sig ifi a e, the

likes of which we can only imagine. But whatever its metaphysical meaning might be, his use of

the word Sehnsucht to name this poem certainly works to confirm what we have already seen

in the definition of the word; namely, that the kind of desire identified in Sehnsucht is one that

see s to stret h to ards so e e o d. To o ti ue Goethe s a alog , Sehnsucht seems to

rise upwards within us carrying us beyond ourselves. And yet even here we see again the

return of a sort of morbidity, the link between longing and sickness and death. For, according

to Goethe, to attain this beyond one must pass through death.

-The Unusual Grammar of Longing:

To Long is not only an interesting verb semantically and etymologically, but also

grammatically. In the English language a verb can be conjugated in the present tense in four

different ways according to two intersecting possibilities: its relation to time and its mode, that

is, the way in which it functions. In relation to time, a verb can be conjugated in the present

tense either straightforwardly (I write) or perfectly (I have written); and, in relation to function,

it can be conjugated either simply (see above) or progressively (I am writing, I have been
writing, respectively). In regards to the first permutation the distinction is rather clear: when a

verb is used in to express something about the present in terms of the past, or to carry a past

action into the present, it is placed in the present perfect. This indicates that though an action

may have been completed at some time in the past, and is therefore perfect in the old/Latin

sense (completed, fulfilled), it still caries a present significance. To recognize this we place the

active verb in its past participle form along side the verb to have conjugated in the present

for , as i the phrase I have written a u er of pages. Whe , o the other ha d, a er

participates solely in the present and bears no relation to the past it is conjugated in the

straightfor ard prese t. This is relati el lear. The disti tio et ee a er s o jugatio

as either simple or progressive, however, is much more difficult.

Essentially this distinction concerns the way the verb functions within its designated

time; if it refers to an action which is being actively engaged in at the moment, as it were, –

taken up by a subject – then it is placed in the present progressive. This conjugation is formed

by placing the subject of the sentence alongside the copula to be conjugated accordingly and by

attaching the suffix ing to the active verb. Thus the verb to write is conjugated progressively in

the first perso as I am writing . This for i di ates that o , a ti el , I am engaged in the

act of writing. The copula ties the action of the sentence to the being of the subject, implying

a i te tio alit i the su je t s a tio .

The present simple, on the other hand, does not invoke the copula. Used to express

actions that are true of the subject in general, the present simple does more than merely

connote those actions which are happening now. Instead it indicates those actions which

generally happen in and around the life of the subject. In this way the present simple does not
relate so much what a subject is doing, but who the subject is, what actions generally

disti guish or ide tif the su je t, hat his or her ha its are. Thus he I sa I rite, I jog,

or I read, I a ot telli g ou hat it is that I a doi g now, but what it is that I do in general,

those actions which make up my identity, which express how or who it is that I am. Thus there

is o eed to i oke the opula here, as it is alread i plied i the a tio . I rite, re a es i

a ore spe ifi a ei g, ho I am i the orld.

This is all well and good and generally understood by those who have studied English

in any formal way. But there is something unusual worth noting here. In English there are

certain words which are not normally conjugated in the progressive tense; and, when they are,

their function in the sentence usually changes from that of a verb, to that of a noun gerund,

nominating is some way the subject or his or her actions. Some of these verbs are to believe, to

love, to know, to belong, to remember, and alternatively to forget and, not least among them to

long. There is something which unites all of these verbs in that they express actions which, in a

sense, can only be true in general. None of these actions can actively be taken up by a subject

and engaged in the same way that a more simple action like writing can. They express

something not about what the subject is concretely doing at any given time. Belief and love are

not actions someone does, but are rather states in which someone can be. They thus define

who a subject is, what actions designate the way in which a particular subject is. Thus, these

sorts of actions are usually barred from conjugation in the present progressive. One would

e er sa , for e a ple I a forgetti g. The se te e does ot ake se se. One does not, or

a ot, a ti el forget, despite Nietzs he s e tortio s to just su h a a tio . xxviii Forgetting is an

action which comes over the subject. It is an action that a subject cannot have a volitional
relation to. In this way these verbs resemble the non-volitional verbs of other languages such

as Tibetan and Teonaht, though they are not named such by English linguists. There is

something about the meaning of these verbs which prohibits them from expressing an action

actively engaged in or taken up by a subject. They seem to belong essentially and more directly

to the realm of being. They need not and cannot be mediated by the copula as words

conjugated into the progressive are. There is something special about these verbs which

restrict them to that mode of conjugation which serves to rename the copula. Thus, these

kinds of verbs appear to be tied in some special way to the being of a subject such that they

cannot be split from it and placed along side it as a specific action happening now, as it were.

Whenever they are spoken or written, then, they must remain in being, conjugated simply in

such a way that they rename and give shape to that being. The inexorable link between these

words and being, then, seems to reveal something about what it means to be for subjects.

Since the verb under investigation here, to long, is counted among the ranks of this type

of special verb, we should perhaps endeavor to pause momentarily and reflect on the

significance of this fact. There seems to be something about the nature of longing which is tied

intrinsically to our being so much that perhaps part of what it means to be is to long. Its non-

volitional relation to our being is supported by what we saw above of its old meaning. There

we observed that the myriad etymological roots of the word to long somehow implied the

passivity of the subject in relation to longing. Longing was an extension of the subject, in and

through the subject, not the su je t s e te sion of itself. It seems to be in keeping with this old

meaning that the contemporary word to long is grammatically restricted to conjugation in the

simple.
-Pursui g Levi as’ A alysis of Hu a Lo gi g:

It is Levinas aim to provide a phenomenological analysis of the remarkably rich and

uncanny experience of human longing. In coming to understand this fact one is already half

way in forging an understanding of the nature and significance of his account of metaphysical

desire. The second half of this journey, however, is much more exhausting and difficult to

follow and is the aim of the rest of this text.

Part of the o fusio o er i g Le i as a al sis of etaph si al desire is the result of

a failure within contemporary scholarship to recognize those authors within the cannon with

whom Levinas interacts in the formation of his own thought. Indeed, there is a strange

te de ithi Le i asia s holarship to e a i e ore losel Le i as depe de e upo the

non-canonical texts than his interaction with the great thinkers of the western tradition. Scores

of te ts ha e ee ritte o Le i as relia e upo the Torah a d Tal ud for i spiratio , a d

especially the early Cabalistic readings of those texts, his interest in the work of German thinker

Franz Rosenzweig has equally been explored, as has the influence French poetry upon his work,

especially that of Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarme, and Paul Celan. In comparison

relati el little has ee ritte o Le i as dialogue ith the a o i al thi kers of western

philosophy, though it is largely in response to an extensive study of their work that his own

positions emerged. This is in part the fault of Levinas himself who only rarely mentions his

philosophical influences by name. It is also perhaps due to the fact that Levinas posits his work

as a kind of critique of and attempt to escape from the excesses and missteps made within the
history of western philosophic history. Indeed, Levinas forthrightly declares that the ethical

account of the subject and the otherwise which grounds it cannot fit within the traditional

boundaries and interest expressed throughout the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, it is

ithi this histor that Le i as ork is grou ded a d fu tio s, a d it is ith this histor that

his work more often than not refers, lending credence to the claim that while Levinas does

indeed seek to diverge from some of the tendencies established within the history of western

philosophy, his work does not veer so far from that tradition as to be categorized outside of it.

In the end, though revolutionary in man a s, Le i as ork ust still e u derstood as a part

of that traditio . It is therefore esse tial to the stud of Le i as thought that his ork e

understood in relation to those thinkers from which it draws and against which it is directed.

This is a difficult task, however, as Levinas rarely identifies by name those within the tradition

with whom he takes particular interest or issue. Nevertheless, a good portion of his work is

dedicated to refuting and/or expanding the ideas of a few key thinkers within the tradition,

chief amongst them Plato, Joahnn Fichte, Freidrich Schelling, G.W. Hegel, Rudolf Otto and

Martin Heidegger. While at first this may appear a motley assemblage of thinkers from an

e le ti arra of periods a d s ste s of thought, he o sidered i relatio to Le i as orpus

a relatively closed hermeneutical web emerges. For, all of these thinkers are either mentioned

explicitly by Levinas or their work is covertly, though obviously, referenced. If it is in dialogue

ith these thi kers that Le i as o thought de elops, the it ust e through a resurre tio

and exposition of this dialogue that his thought must be explored and interpreted. This, then, is

the main task of this text – to follo the ofte o s ured trail of Le i as thought o the ature
of human longing and the surrounding phenomena by revealing and reconstructing his equally

occulted interaction with the history of philosophy.

In a sense, what follows will take the form of a kind of philosophic detective story then,

follo i g the lues left Le i as o er i g his o erge e ith a d di erge e fro other

thinkers all in the hopes of finding out the mystery surrounding his understanding and our

experience of human longing. In order to follow these clues sincerely and to their end means

that at times we may feel as if we are being led down a blind alley, or pulling Levinas along

where he is unaccustomed to going, but it is only by following these seemingly twisted routes

that we will ultimately arrive at our end. Thus though at times in this process we may glimpse a

visage of Levinas we do not immediately recognize, as if reflected through a window darkly (our

thinkers serving as such reflective surfaces), we must not fret but instead trust that it is only by

seeing him askance in this way, will we ultimately be able to turn back in the end and truly

confront his thought on the nature of longing face to face.

i
Arnold, Matthew. “The Buried Life,” The Poems of Matthew Arnold 1984-1867. Ed. A.T. Quiller-Couch. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1909 (italics mine).
ii
Hemmingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1964. p. 56-57.
iii
Ibid., p. 73 (italics mine).
iv
Ibid., p. 78 (italics mine).
v
Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. San Diego: Harcourt, INC., 1955. p. 176.
vi
Lewis, C.S. p. 16.
vii
Shakespeare, William. “Anthony and Cleopatra,” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Ed. W.J. Craig,
M.A. London: Oxford University Press, 1943.
viii
“Long,” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2000.
ix
WordNet ® 2.0, Princeton University, 2003.
x
“Longing,” The Oxford English Dictionary: Vol. VIII Interval-Looie, Second Edition. Prepared by J.A. Simpson
and E.S.C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 1131.
xi
Ibid., “Long,” p. 1131.
xii
Ibid.
xiii
Ibid.
xiv
Ibid.
xv
This reference to the infectious genesis of longing and its manifestation as a sickness will be developed in more
detail later, especially in chapters one, four and five.
xvi
Herbert, George. “The Temple,” George Herbert: The Complete English Poems. London: Penguin Classics,
2005, (old English spellings maintained).
xvii
Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 147,” William Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems. Ed. Colin
Burrow. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
xviii
Lewis, C.S. p. 17 (italics mine).
xix
“Sehnsucht,” Wildhagen and Héraucourt German-English dictionary. Weisbaden: Brandstetter Verlag. 2nd
edition, 1972. p. 1106.
xx
Ibid.
xxi
“Sucht,” Wildhagen and Héraucourt German-English dictionary. Weisbaden: Brandstetter Verlag. 2nd edition,
1972. p. 1175.
xxii
“Sehnsucht,” Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel,
1905. p. 157.
xxiii
Ibid.: “An intense desire which labors almost to sickness.”
xxiv
Ibid.
xxv
“sucht,” Wildhagen and Héraucourt German-English dictionary. Weisbaden: Brandstetter Verlag. 2nd edition.
1972. p. 1175.
xxvi
“siechen,” Wildhagen and Héraucourt German-English dictionary. Weisbaden: Brandstetter Verlag. 2nd
edition. 1972. p. 1116. As we shall see later, this etymology is also noted by Heidegger in his treatment of it.
xxvii
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. “Selige Sehnsucht,” Selected Verse: Dual Language Edition with Plain Language
Translations of Each Poem. London: Penguin Classics, 1964. p. 240: “Tell a wise person or else keep silent / For
the masses will mock it right away / I praise what is truly alive / And what longs to be burned to death. / In the calm
waters of the love nights / Where you were begotten, / Where you have begotten, / A strange feeling comes over you
/ When you see the silent candle burning. / Now you are no longer caught in this obsession with darkness / And a
desire for higher lovemaking sweeps you upward. / Distance does not make you falter. / And now, arriving in magic,
flying / and finally, insane for the light / You are the butterfly. / And you are gone. / And so long as you haven’t
experienced this, / To die and so to grow, / You are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.”
xxviii
Nietzsche, Friedrich "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life." Untimely Meditations. Trans. R.J.
Hollingdale. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983 (cf. p. 61).