multiplicities

I include this passage from the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas w/o much context.  Sorry, but it's so good!

Midrash [Jewish tradition of commentary, storytelling, story retelling, filling in the gaps, etc.] as Levinas comments is:

A way of speaking that incorporates, and enlivens, that more confidential, closed and firm manner more closely linked to the bearers of meaning—bearers who will never be released from the duties of the signified…Such are the biblical verses, and even the terms used in their first, ancient deciphering by the sages of the Talmud. Tireless signifiers! But one day it is discovered that philosophy is also multiple, and that its truth is hidden, has levels and goes progressively deeper, that its texts contradict one another and that the systems are fraught with internal contradictions. Thus, it seems to me essential to consider the fact that the Jewish reading of the Scriptures is carried out in the anxiety, but also the hopeful expectation of midrash. (In the Time of the Nations, 169)