Emmanuel Levinas
"My
effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an immanence, and
that there is no rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge; and on
the other hand, that in communication of knowledge one is found beside
the Other, not confronted with him, not in the rectitude of the in-front-of-him.
But being in direct relation with the Other is not to thematize the Other
and consider him in the same manner as one considers a known object, nor
to communicate a knowledge to him. In reality, the fact of being is what
is most private; existence is the sole thing I cannot communicate; I can
tell about it, but I cannot share my existence. Solitude thus appears as
the isolation which marks the very event of being. The social is beyond
ontology."
"...I am responsible for the Other
without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his
affair. It is precisely insofar as the relation between the Other and me
is not reciporcal that I am subjection to the Other; and I am "subject"
essentially in this sense. It is I who support all...The I always has one
responsibility more than all the others."
Emmanuel Levinas
(1906-1995)
Levinas, the French
philosopher, was born in Kaunas, Lithuania to Jewish parents. He moved
to France in 1923, and, between the years of 1928 and 1929, resided in
Germany where he studied under Husserl
and Heidegger. Levinas
published his first book, Theorie de l'intuition dans la phenomenologie
de Husserl, in 1930, and became influential in France for his translations
of Husserl and Heidegger into French. In the late 1950's and early 1960's,
Levinas began to formulate his own philosophy which became increasingly
critical of Heidegger's philosophy, and, with his critique of prior phenomenological
thinkers and Western philosophy in general, Levinas began to assert the
primacy of the ethical relationship with the Other.
Levinas' scholarship
directly influenced the movement of existential-phenomenology in France.
His translations and secondary texts influenced thinkers such as Sartre
and Merleau-Ponty.
In the last several decades, Levinas has become increasingly influential
in continental philosophy, and his influence is evident in Jacques
Derrida's more recent writings, where he has increasingly emphasized
a Levinasian ethics as being at the heart of deconstruction. Derrida, a
close colleague of Levinas, influenced Levinas' attempt in his book, Otherwise
than Being (1998), to go beyond the still too ontological language
of his Totality
and Infinity (1969).
Levinas' philosophy
is directly related to his experiences during World War II. His family
died in the Holocaust, and, as a French citizen and soldier, Levinas himself
became a prisoner of war in Germany. While Levinas was forced to perform
labor as a prisoner of war, his wife and daughter were kept hidden in a
French monastary until his return. This experience, coupled with Heidegger's
affiliation to National Socialism during the war, clearly and understandably
led to a profound crisis in Levinas' enthusiasm for Heidegger. "One can
forgive many Germans," Levinas once wrote, "but there are some Germans
it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."
At the same time, Levinas felt that Heidegger could not simply be forgotten,
but most be gotten beyond. If Heidegger is concerned with Being, Levinas
is concerned with ethics, and ethics, for Levinas, is beyond being--Otherwise
than Being.
Levinas' work, particularly
beginning with his Totality
and Infinity (1969), is a critique of Heidegger and Husserl, not to
mention all of Western philsophy, in the service of ethics. Levinas
is concerned that Western philosophy has been preoccupied with Being, the
totality, at the expense of what is otherwise than Being, what lies outside
the totality of Being as transcendent, exterior, infinite, alterior, the
Other. Levinas wants to distinguish ethics from ontology. Levinas'
ethics is situated in an "encounter" with the Other which cannot be reduced
to a symmetrical "relationship." That is, it cannot be localized historically
or temporally. "Ethics," in Levinas' sense, does not mean what is
typically referred to as "morality," or a code of conduct about how one
should act. For Levinas (1969), "ethics" is a calling into question
of the "Same":
"A calling into question
of the Same--which cannot occur within the egoistic spontaneity of the
Same--is brought about by the Other. We name this calling into question
of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics. The strangeness
of the Other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions,
is precisely accomplishmed as a calling into question of my spontaneity
as ethics. Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the Other
by the Same, of the Other by Me, is concretely produced as the calling
into question of the Same by the Other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes
the critical essence of knowledge." (Totality
and Infinity, p. 33)
Levinas adopts a style
of writing that is fluid and includes self-effacing double-movements.
Ethics cannot be reduced to a set of propositions--cannot be reduced to
the Same (or, thinking in terms of Lacan,
to the One of the Symbolic)--and so Levinas must repeatedly unfold and
then withdraw his propositions. Even as he uses the language of ontology,
his style of writing endeavor's to resist ontology's totalizing grasp.
"Western philosophy," writes Levinas (1969), "has most often been an ontology:
a reduction of the Other to the Same by interposition of a middle and neutral
terms that ensures the comprehension of being" (pp. 33-34).
As ontology, philosophy is narcissistic, seeking pleasure by incorporating
the other into the Same. Philosophy, in this sense, is an "egology"
whenever it asserts the primacy of the self, the Same, the subject or Being.
Ontology as totality admits to no outside. Thus, if Levinas is to
preserve the Other, the Other cannot become an object of knowledge or experience
within the totality of an egology. In the enjoyment (jouissance)
of egology, the I is the "living from" which uses up the other in order
to fulfill its own needs and desires. The "transmutation of the other
into the same," writes Levinas (1969), is "the essence of enjoyment" (p.
113). The other, in this sense, however, is not the Other.
Only the other, not the Other, can become a source of enjoyment.
The transcendence of the other is not a threat to the self, but rather
a source of satisfaction and happiness:
"The I is, to be sure,
happiness, presence at home with itself. But, as sufficiency in its
non-sufficiency, it remains in the non-I; it is enjoyment of ‘something
else,' never of itself. Autochthonous, that is, rooted in what it
is not, it is nevertheless, wtihin this enrootedness independent and separated."
(Levinas, Totality
and Infinity, 1969, p. 152)
The relation with the
Other, however, is a "relation without relation" (p. 79). The
Other is never reduced to the Same, thus remaining unknowable, outside
of the totality of the Same. The encounter with the Other calls egology
into question. The "I" can no longer live in the fantasy of a unique
possession of the world. The power and freedom of the Same are called
into question. The Other cannot be possessed, resists enjoyment, and, as
the I encounters this Otherr, it is called back to the meaning of its freedom--a
freedom which is founded by the Other and which, in this encounter, is
called to responsibility and obligation towards the Other as genuine freedom.
As responsible
for the infinite Other, I am called to guard her against the systematic
determination of any moral law. "For Levinas, the God that provides
sanctity for the Other can never be reduced to a set of commandments because
the Other calls me only as herself" (Cornell, 1998, p. 140). To reduce
the Other who calls me as a unique self in the face-to-face to a set of
a priori moral principles is a violence to her alterity. And since
my responsibility to the Other is to the Other in her uniqueness and alterity,
my responsibility is infinite. "It is precisely because the Good
is the good of the Other that it cannot be fully actualized" (Cornell,
1998, p. 141).
Links
Emmanuel
Levinas Web Page by Peter Atterton
Levinas
at the EP Page
Levinas
Page (in English and Japanese) by Gen Nakayama.
Levinas
at Thinking's Legacy and the Evolution of Experience
About
Emmanuel Levinas by Lois Shawver
Summary
of Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur Discussion (Real Audio) by Andrew Carpenter
Emmanuel
Levinas page with art and text by Dr. D. Tiemersma
About
Levinas by Peter Steinfels
Levinas
bibliography by Nakayama
Levinas
bibliography by Peter Atterton
"Martin
Heidegger and Ontology" by Emmanual Levinas
Excerpt
from "Adieu" by Jacques Derrida, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and
Michael Naas
"Introducing
Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers" by Anthony F. Beavers
"Putting
Ourselves Out of Business: Implications of Levinas for Psychology" by Brent
Dean Robbins
"Reflections
on Being a Psychotherapist" by Brent Dean Robbins
"Levinas:
The Unconscious and the Reason of Obligation" by James Faulconer
"Three
Positions on Reason and Faith: A Draft of a Sketch" by James Faulconer
"Moses
and Israel: Community and the Name" by James Faulconer
"Deconstruction"
by James Faulconer
"An
Ethics of Hesitant Learning: The Caring Justice of Levinas and Derrida"
by J. Edgoose
"Levinas
beyond the Horizons of Cartesianism: Introduction" by Anthony F. Beavers
"Emmanuel
Levinas and the Prophetic Voice of Postmodernity" by Anthony F. Beavers
"Kant
and the Problem of Ethical Metaphysics" by Anthony F. Beavers
"Descartes
beyond Transcendental Phenomenology" by Anthony F. Beavers
"Sylvia
Plath, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Aesthetics of Pathos" by Scott DeShong
"'Junk'
and the Other: Burroughs and Levinas on Drugs" by Jeffrey T. Nealon
"Animus:
Sacrificing the Text: The Philosopher/Poet at Mount Moriah" by Dorota Glowacka
"The
Ethical Self in the Play of Affect and Voice" by Philip Lewin
"On
Cultural Crossing" by E. T. Gendlin
"Community
and Individuality" by Patricia Werhane
"'What
ish My Nation?': Towards a Negative Definition of Identity" by Eugene O'Brien
"Three
Gestures on Otherness: (Re)joining with Edgoose Through Derrida's Khora"
by Lynda Stone
"Die
Wissenschaft denkt nicht" by Jean-Michel Salanskis
"In
Defence of a Dialectical Ethic Beyond Postmodern Morality" by Mark Mason
"Beyond
Moral Stories" by Betty A. Sichel
"Living
On (Happily) Ever After: Derrida, Philosophy and the Comic" by Robert S.
Gall
"Philosophers
with Microscopes, Children with Kaleidoscopes..." by Zelia Gregoriou
"Beyond
Deconstruction" by Kenneth Kierans
"Postmodern
Doubt and Philosophy of Education" by Nicholas C. Burbules
"Ethics
and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral Philosophy" by Lawrence
J. Hatab
"Era
and Epoch, Epoch and Era: Christian Intellectuals in the Postmodern Turn"
by Scott H. Moore
"Reflections
on the Threefold Lotus Sutra" by Dr. John R.A. Mayer
"Emmanuel
Levinas: Where Philosophy and Jewish Ethics Meet" by Tam K. Parker
Research
Tools for Emmanuel Levinas by John Drabinski
Textual
Reasoning
Levinas
obituary
Recommended Books
Alterity
and Transcendence (European Perspectives)
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Michael B. Smith (Translator)
Our Price: $29.50
Difficult
Freedom : Essays on Judaism
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Sean Hand (Translator), Emmanual Levinas
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Discovering
Existence With Husserl (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Richard A. Cohen (Translator), Michael B. Smith (Translator)
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Emmanuel
Levinas : Basic Philosophical Writings (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Adriaan T. Peperzak (Editor), Simon Critchley (Editor), Robert Bernasconi
(Editor)
Our Price: $11.96
Entre
Nous : On Thinking-Of-The-Other (European Perspectives)
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Michael B. Smith (Translator), Barbara Harshav (Translator)
Our Price: $35.00
Ethics
and Infinity : Conversations With Philippe Nemo
by Emmanuel Levinas,
R. Cohen (Translator)
Our Price: $14.95
The
Levinas Reader (Blackwell Readers)
by Sean Hand (Editor)
Our Price: $29.95
Nine
Talmudic Readings
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Annette Aronowicz (Translator)
Our Price: $31.95
Of
God Who Comes to Mind
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Bettina Bergo (Translator)
Our Price: $15.16
Otherwise
Than Being : Or Beyond Essence
by Emmanuel Levinas
Our Price: $22.50
Proper
Names (Meridian-Crossing Aesthetics)
by Emmanuel Levinas,
Michael B. Smith (Translator)
Our Price: $14.36
Totality
and Infinity
by Emmanuel Levinas
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Adieu
to Emmanuel Levinas
by Jacques Derrida,
Michael Naas (Translator), Pascale-Anne Brault (Translator)
Our Price: $11.96
Altered
Reading : Levinas and Literature
by Jill Robbins
Our Price: $16.00
Beyond
: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy)
by Adriaan Theodoor
Peperzak
Our Price: $22.50
To
the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
by Adriaan Theodoor
Peperzak
Our Price: $19.95
Death
and Responsibility : The 'Work' of Levinas
by Dennis King Keenan
Our Price: $19.95
Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity
: Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought
by Simon Critchley
Our Price: $16.00
Fragments
of Redemption : Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem,
and Levinas
by Susan A. Handelman
Our Price: $19.95
The
Paradox of Power and Weakness : Levinas and an Alternative Paradigm for
Psychology
by George Kunz
Our Price: $19.95
Radical
Passivity : Levinas, Blanchot and Agamben
by Thomas Carl Wall,
William Flesch
Our Price: $19.95
Re-Reading
Levinas (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Robert Bernasconi
(Editor), Simon Critchley (Editor)
Our Price: $15.95
Reading
Levinas/Reading Talmud : An Introduction
by Ira F. Stone
Our Price: $24.47
Reconsidering
Difference : Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze
by Todd May
Our Price: $19.95
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