Book Review: "Andris Breitling, Chris Bremmers and Arthur Cools. Debating Levinas’ Legacy. Leiden: Brill, Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology series. Vol. 3. 2015. 316 p." Ethical Perspectives 23 (3): 545-548. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Volume 45, Issue 2, 2014, pp 107-117, 2014
Lévinas is the philosopher of the absolutely Other, the thinker of the primacy of the ethical relation, the poet of the face. Against the formalism of Kantian subjectivity, the totality of the Hegelian system, the monism of Husserlian phenomenology and the instrumentalism of Heideggerian ontology, Lévinas develops a phenomenological account of the ethical relation grounded in the idea of infinity, an idea which is concretely produced in the experience with the absolutely other, particularly, in their face. The face of the other, irreducible to any ontological structure of being or any epistemological intentionality of representation, reaches out from on high across the abyss of the isolated ego, commanding respect all the while granting the possibility of murder. This experience overflows the subjective capacity of the separated ego, forcing it “beyond being.” This anarchic relation with the Other is the groundless condition of possibility for ethical life, that is, truly human life. The structure of the ethical relation can then be determined in hindsight as the ground of meaning for what it is to be an I at all. This is a pretty uncontroversial reading of Lévinas' work, especially Totality and Infinity (TI). And yet, there is one small problem. If this is what Lévinas is doing, then why does the largest section of Totality and Infinity – section II, “Interiority and Economy” – have nothing to do with ethics, the other, or the face at all? Why is it devoted to an arduous analysis of what he calls separation, egoism, economy, enjoyment, labour, and possession? In other words, why does Lévinas spend so much energy on writing about the egoist at the heart of his magnum opus, which is supposedly a text devoted to the Other? And furthermore, why is this section one of the least discussed in the secondary literature on Lévinas? These questions motivate the present inquiry, which modestly seeks to understand what Lévinas is up to in this section. Once laying out the basic story, I will focus on the concepts of labour and possession, for I think these are the unrecognized pivots upon which the transition from ego to Other turns. I will also make some slight attempts to interpret Lévinas' direct or indirect comments on Plato, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. For although he distances himself from these giants, he stands on their shoulders as well.
Against "the European Notion of Man": Levinas, Freedom, and the Responsible Body
PhaenEx
Emmanuel Levinas’ early essay “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism” provides us with a clear description what Levinas’ conception of subjectivity as a lived, bodily experience rejects: “the European notion of man” (7). This paper traces the argument Levinas presents in “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism,” providing links between this early essay and Levinas’ later, major works: Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. The political interrogation of liberalism at the heart of Levinas’ depiction of the subject as creaturely and his discussion of subjectivity as substitution is revealed by orienting the later works towards “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism.” Levinas’ description of the ethical relation between myself and all the others locates both my freedom and my responsibility to the other in the inseparable unity of body and spirit. As creatures, and as subjects in substitution, we experience our own freedom as dependent upon our ...
Is the Other radically 'other'? A critical reconstruction of Levinas' ethics
Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2012
Many Levinasians are prone to merely assert or presuppose that the Other is 'radically Other', and that such Otherness is of patent ethical significance. But building ethics into the very concept of 'the Other' seems question-begging. What then, if not mere Otherness, might motivate Levinasian responsibility? In the following discussion I argue that this can best be answered by reading Levinas as a post-Holocaust thinker, preoccupied with how one's simply being-here constitutes a 'usurpation of spaces belonging to the other'. Then, drawing on Schutz's phenomenology, I explain how the resultant usurpatory bad conscience presupposes the embodied 'interchangeability' of self and Other. As such, one can be said to 'usurp' the Other's place only insofar as self and Other are not radically different.
Levinas and Marion on Law and Freedom: Toward a New Dialectical Theology of Justice
There is a perennial ambiguity within the relationship between law and human freedom. Does law inherently promote freedom or restrict it? Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) proposes that law – precisely Torah – is the gateway of freedom to the degree that law attests to the obligatory summons to responsibility for the other. In his 1964 Talmudic lecture entitled, 'The Temptation of Temptation', Levinas presents the paradoxical beginning of freedom in 'a non-freedom which, far from being slavery or childhood , is a beyond-freedom.. .overcoming the temptation of evil by avoiding the temptation of temptation'. However, Levinas's turn to Torah is not enough. His ethical phenomenology of proclamation must be paired with a contemplative phenomenology of manifestation so as not to engender action without considering what exactly gives itself to act upon. Enter Jean-Luc Marion (1946–). While Levinas's attention to the call of the other opens the ears to ethical exigency, Marion's attention to givenness opens the eyes to contemplative recognition of phenomena as they give themselves by themselves. An adequate assessment of the relationship between law and freedom requires a holistic phenomenology rooted in the polarity between ethics and givenness. The paradoxical relationship between law and freedom can be comprehended clearly only through a combined methodology which harnesses the fruitful tension between metaphysics and phenomenology. This article traces these dialectical relationships in method in order to account for the paradoxical relationship between law and freedom. Altogether, a move toward a new dialectical theology will be made that metes out justice to God, to humanity, and to the entire cosmos.
Prajna Vihara: Journal of Philosophy and Religion, 2023
Martin Heidegger’s philosophy is a form of an onto-theology that reduces the encounter with the other into a metaphysical abstraction. For this reason, his idea of Being is morally naïve and oblivious to the reality of suffering. Emmanuel Levinas develops a philosophy that challenges this where the relation between the human person and the other is asymmetrical. This not only challenges Heidegger’s ontology but also rectifies the egocentrism of Western philosophy in general. This paper argues that Levinas’ idea of “the other” is a manifestation of the Divine. Levinas is saying that without God, there can be no way out of the violence in human history. The traces of the Divine can be found in the unique experiences of transcendence such as unconditional love.
The contemplation of life, the act of philosophy, the quest, the love and obsession, for understanding has done just that: Under-stand. A positing beneath the I; whatever phenomenon appears to us, we automatically place into a category or an imperative that needs to become over-come, at best; and, at worst, simply nominally represented.