Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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Saved by 3 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-12-21
- Annyfr on 2009-10-24 - Tags levinas
- Tsuomela on 2009-07-26 - Tags philosophy , reference , profile , continental , about(EmmanuelLevinas)
- Tonycurzonprice on 2009-07-02 - Tags enlightenment
Public Sticky notes
This
first philosophy is neither traditional logic nor metaphysics,
however.[1]
It is an interpretive, phenomenological description of the rise and
repetition of the face-to-face encounter, or the intersubjective
relation at its precognitive core; viz., being called by another and
responding to that other. If precognitive experience, that is, human
sensibility, can be characterized conceptually, then it must be
described in what is most characteristic to it: a continuum of
sensibility and affectivity, in other words, sentience and emotion in
their
interconnection.[2]
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sentience
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He proposes phenomenological description and a
hermeneutics of lived experience in the world.
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He lays bare levels of
experience described neither by Husserl nor by Heidegger. These layers
of experience concern the encounter with the world, with the human
other, and a reconstruction of a layered interiority characterized by
sensibility and affectivity.
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Levinas does not
want to propose laws or moral rules…it is a matter of [writing]
an ethics of
ethics.
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the exploration of conditions of
possibility of any interest in good actions or lives
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he is exploring the meaning of intersubjectivity and
lived immediacy in light of three themes: transcendence, existence,
and the human othe
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. That
encounter evinces a particular feature: the other impacts me unlike any
worldly object or force. I can constitute the other person cognitively,
on the basis of vision, as an alter ego. I can see that
another human being is “like me,” acts like me, appears to
be the master of her conscious life. That was Edmund Husserl's
basic phenomenological approach to constituting other people within a
shared social universe. But Husserl's constitution lacks, Levinas
argues, the core element of intersubjective life: the other person
addresses me, calls to me. He does not even have to utter words in
order for me to feel the summons implicit in his approach. It
is this encounter that Levinas describes and approaches from multiple
perspectives (e.g., internal and external).
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non-reciprocal relation of
responsibility
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The phenomenological descriptions of intersubjective responsibility are
built upon an analysis of living in the world
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Yet, no event is as affectively disruptive for a
consciousness holding sway in its world than the encounter with another
person. In this encounter (even if it later becomes competitive or
instrumental), the ‘I’ first experiences itself as called
and liable to account for itself
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The
command or summons is part of the intrinsic relationality. With the
response comes the beginning of language as dialogue. The origin of
language, for Levinas, is always response—a
responding-to-another, that is, to her summons. Dialogue arises
ultimately through that response. Herein lie the roots of
intersubjectivity as lived immediacy. Levinas has better terms for it:
responsibility is the affective, immediate experience of
“transcendence” and “fraternity.”
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Levinas's descriptions
show that ‘in the beginning was the human relation’. The
primacy of relation explains why it is that human beings are interested
in the questions of ethics at all.
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To situate first philosophy in the
face-to-face encounter is to choose to begin philosophy not with the
world, not with God, but with what will be argued to be the prime
condition for human communication
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For Levinas, intersubjective
experience, as it comes to light, proves ‘ethical’ in the
simple sense that an ‘I’ discovers its own particularity
when it is singled out by the gaze of the other. This gaze is
interrogative and imperative.
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first philosophy is responsibility that unfolds
into dialogical sociality.
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By
privileging the theme of intuition, Levinas established what German
speaking readers would have found in Husserl's Ideas
(published 1913): every human experience is open to phenomenological
description; every human experience is from the outset meaningful and
can be approached as a mode of
intentionality.[
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every human experience is open to phenomenological
description; every human experience is from the outset meaningful and
can be approached as a mode of
intentionality
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his
two principal teachers, Husserl and Heidegger
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He will reconceive transcendence as a
need for escape, and work out a new logic of lived time in that
project.
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He will reconceive transcendence as a
need for escape, and work out a new logic of lived time in that
project.
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His concern was to
approach Being differently, through the (human) being for which the
primary experiences of Being are of its embodied, but not
physiological, existence. Unlike Heidegger, Levinas's approach
gave priority to embodiment and its lived “moods,” as well
as to humans' failed attempts to get away from the being that we
ourselves are.
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His concern was to
approach Being differently, through the (human) being for which the
primary experiences of Being are of its embodied, but not
physiological, existence
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Unlike Heidegger, Levinas's approach
gave priority to embodiment and its lived “moods,” as well
as to humans' failed attempts to get away from the being that we
ourselves are.
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Levinas's early project approached transcendence in light of
humans' irreducible urge to get past the limits of their physical
and social situations.
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Levinas's early project approached transcendence in light of
humans' irreducible urge to get past the limits of their physical
and social situations.
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Important here are: (1) Levinas's argument that
Heidegger's conception of existence is historically specific. (2)
To be embodied is to struggle with the limits of one's facticity
and one's situation, and it is here that the question of
Being first arises.
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In
these possibilities, the corporeal self is posited, set down as a
substance, in its existence. Unlike Heidegger's Being, these
states are not abstract. Here begins Levinas's protracted
insistence that Being is continuous presence, not, as Heidegger insisted, an event of
disclosure and withdrawal.
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Here begins Levinas's protracted
insistence that Being is continuous presence, not, as Heidegger insisted, an event of
disclosure and withdrawal.
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He will therefore
concentrate on what it means for a human being to posit
itself, in an act that is not already abstracted from its
everyday life.
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He will therefore
concentrate on what it means for a human being to posit
itself, in an act that is not already abstracted from its
everyday life.
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If need, whether for sustenance
or diversion, cannot assure an enduring transcendence of everyday
existence, it nevertheless beckons and enriches us, even if it can
sometimes be experienced as oppressive.
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In this youthful work, Levinas
thus rethinks need in light of fullness rather than privation, as was
commonly done. In so doing, he opens a different understanding of
existence itself. Whether it is experienced by pleasure or suffering,
need is the ground of our existence. That means that transcendence, in
Levinas's understanding of it, is continually directed toward
“something other than ourselves” (OE, 58).
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In this youthful work, Levinas
thus rethinks need in light of fullness rather than privation, as was
commonly done. In so doing, he opens a different understanding of
existence itself. Whether it is experienced by pleasure or suffering,
need is the ground of our existence. That means that transcendence, in
Levinas's understanding of it, is continually directed toward
“something other than ourselves” (OE, 58). And it suggests
that the deep motivation of need is to get out of the being that we
ourselves are—our situation and our embodiment. In 1935,
Levinas's counter-ontology moves Heidegger's Being toward the unified
duality of sentient self and intentional ‘I’, here and
now, not projected toward its ultimate disappearance in death
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The priority of the
present, concentrated into an extended moment is opened up through
sensibility and affectivity. In pleasure as in pain, we need—not
out of lack—but in desire or in hope.
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Levinas's emphasis on the embodied present is a theme he
never
abandons
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Levinas's emphasis on the embodied present is a theme he
never
abandons.
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Levinas's early project is structured around the
reconceptualization of fundamental existential categories.
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In 1935, Levinas was convinced that through sensation and states of
mind, we discover both the need to escape ourselves and the futility of
getting out of existence. In the physical torment of nausea, we
experience Being in its simplest, most oppressive neutrality.
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through sensation and states of
mind, we discover both the need to escape ourselves and the futility of
getting out of existence
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Being is existence,
but it is our existence
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Being is existence,
but it is our existence
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The question remains: How
shall we conceptualize a sensuous need to transcend Being? Embodied
need is not an illusion; but is transcendence one?
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They inflect the notion of
transcendence, away from the partial transcendence of need and
pleasure, toward the promise of fecundity.
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In Existence and Existents (1947) and Time and the
Other (1947), existence has the surprising, dual aspect of
“light,” and of a dark indeterminacy.
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existence has the surprising, dual aspect of
“light,” and of a dark indeterminacy
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Levinas's embodied ego is neither preceded nor outstripped
by its world. The corporeal self, now called the
“hypostasis,” is its own explicit basis; we awaken out of
ourselves, into light. We fall asleep, curled about ourselves. To put
it succinctly, consciousness, with its moods and activity, begins and
ends with itself. It awakens, acts, and falls asleep.
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Levinas's embodied ego is neither preceded nor outstripped
by its world. The corporeal self, now called the
“hypostasis,” is its own explicit basis; we awaken out of
ourselves, into light. We fall asleep, curled about ourselves. To put
it succinctly, consciousness, with its moods and activity, begins and
ends with itself. It awakens, acts, and falls asleep.
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The open future of the
family responds to two significant limits imposed on human knowledge
and representation: death and the other person.
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The
other person is an event I can neither predict nor control.
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Levinas describes
labor phenomenologically as effort and
fatigue
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Levinas describes
labor phenomenologically as effort and
fatigue
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However, instead of adumbrating revelatory
moods, Levinas has recourse to bodily states like fatigue, indolence,
and insomnia, in which the gap between self and I is clearest. Themes
of joy and love of life appear in regard to the world, because the
world is now understood as light.
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However, instead of adumbrating revelatory
moods, Levinas has recourse to bodily states like fatigue, indolence,
and insomnia, in which the gap between self and I is clearest.
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“The antithesis of the a
priori and the a posteriori is overcome by light”
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Levinas sublates the distinction
phenomenologically; light functions, here, as a quasi-transcendental, a
condition of possibility that is nevertheless in and of the world and
its experience.
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Levinas will approach this indeterminacy not
as objectivity, but as something revealed through mood. Whether it is
the dark indeterminacy that besets the insomniac self, or whether it is
the rustling of nocturnal space, Being's dark aspect horrifies
us
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Why is there Being instead of
simply nothing? Nothing, as pure absence, may be thinkable, but it is
unimaginable. Indeterminate Being fills in all the gaps, all the
temporal intervals, while consciousness arises from it in an act of
self-originating concentration. This is the first sketch of Being as
totality. The self-‘I’ dyad becomes a limited transcendence
arising in the midst of the self's encompassing horror. It
hearkens to a call that comes not from neutral Being but from the
Other.
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Indeterminate Being fills in all the gaps, all the
temporal intervals, while consciousness arises from it in an act of
self-originating concentration. This is the first sketch of Being as
totality.
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For Levinas, to escape deontology and utility, ethics
must find its ground in an experience that cannot be integrated into
logics of control, prediction, or manipulation.
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The meaning of transcendence is refined to the temporal
transcendence promised by “fecundity,” or the birth of the
son.
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For Levinas, to escape deontology and utility, ethics
must find its ground in an experience that cannot be integrated into
logics of control, prediction, or manipulation.
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voluptuosity
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There is no formal bridge, for Levinas, between practical and
pure reason.
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Levinas
argues that we witness death only as the death of the other, but even
as such it escapes understanding as an absolute limit. Hence he will
qualify it as a radical alterity; the same sort of alterity as that
which the other human being presents me.
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Ethics is therefore either an
affair of inserting particulars into abstract scenarios, or ethics
itself speaks out of particularity about the first human
particularity: the face-to-face relationship.
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Ethics is therefore either an
affair of inserting particulars into abstract scenarios, or ethics
itself speaks out of particularity about the first human
particularity: the face-to-face relationship.
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The new framework of transcendence as human responsibility
involves an extensive exploration of the face-to-face relationship, and
it opens onto questions of social existence and justice.
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Levinas again reframes labor, less as mastery and humanization of
nature, and more as the creation of a store of goods with which an
other can be welcomed. Thanks to his joy in living and his creation of
a home, the human being is able to give and to receive the other into
his space.
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Themes
of joy and love of life appear in regard to the world, because the
world is now understood as light.
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Levinas again reframes labor, less as mastery and humanization of
nature, and more as the creation of a store of goods with which an
other can be welcomed. Thanks to his joy in living and his creation of
a home, the human being is able to give and to receive the other into
his space. On the basis of these descriptions, transcendence comes to
pass in several stages. First, the onset of the other, as the
expression of the face, causes freedom of will to falter and opens a
‘me’ to goodness. Second, in accounting for itself, the
subject approached by the other engages the first act of dialogue. Out
of this, discourse eventually arises. The unfolding of discourse
carries a trace of ethical investiture and self-accounting, and may
become conversation and teaching.
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First, the onset of the other, as the
expression of the face, causes freedom of will to falter and opens a
‘me’ to goodness. Second, in accounting for itself, the
subject approached by the other engages the first act of dialogue. Out
of this, discourse eventually arises. The unfolding of discourse
carries a trace of ethical investiture and self-accounting, and may
become conversation and teaching.
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attenuated
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Rather than pursuing
justice as it is refined through civil society into the State, Levinas
focuses on an ‘institution’, the family, which is common to
all of humanity. In the family, election by the father and service to
the brothers, set forth a justice more decisively conditioned by
face-to-face responsibility than the justice of the State could ever
be.
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Rather than pursuing
justice as it is refined through civil society into the State, Levinas
focuses on an ‘institution’, the family, which is common to
all of humanity. In the family, election by the father and service to
the brothers, set forth a justice more decisively conditioned by
face-to-face responsibility than the justice of the State could ever
be. The phenomenology of the family, entitled “beyond the
face,” crowns Levinas's first major work.
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For
Levinas, time will consist in two axes: (1) the flowing synthesis of
now moments, Husserl's structure of transcendental consciousness;
(2) and a peculiar kind of interruption that Levinas will call the
event of transcendence.
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Transcendence is, above all, relational: it is a human affair. It is
difficult to determine whether transcendence is an “event”
per se or not.
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That is, transcendence,
understood as the face-to-face relation, lives from our everyday
enjoyment and desire even as it precedes these. Human existence, as
sensibility, is full and creative, before it is instrumentalist or
utilitarian. From enjoying the elements to constructing a home, human
existence is never solipsistic. Our life with others is never a flight
from a more resolute stance toward our reason for being (our
mortality). We are always already in social relations; more
importantly, we have always already been impacted by the expression of
a living other. Because this impact is affective, because transcendence
is not conceptualizable, we forget the force the other's
expression has on us. We therefore carry on, in our respective worlds,
motivated by our desire for mastery and control.
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And there is a desire that comes to light in the failure of
our will to mastery. This failure of the will is experienced in the
face-to-face encounter. The other's face is not an object,
Levinas argues. It is pure expression; expression affects me before I
can begin to reflect on it. And the expression of the face is dual: it
is command and summons.
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Levinas speaks
of the face of the other who is “widow, orphan, or
stranger.” These figures are more than allegorical. Each
one lacks something essential to its existence: spouse, parents,
home.
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Freedom experiences
itself as imperial, unjustifiable; in thus coming out of itself, the
‘I’ accounts for itself. It gives an account to another,
who is experienced as “higher” than the ‘I’ in
two respects: (1) the passive resistance and ‘facing’
quality of the face holds the other outside of structures of force and
conflict; (2) the “demand” the face makes on me (described
phenomenologically as the ‘I’) is unavoidable, at least in
its coming to pass. Thus the ‘I’ is singled out by the
other, extracted from its context of interest
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It
“trans-ascends,” rising to the other in an affective
intentionality, which other philosophies may well have understood as
moral sentiments. Of course, Levinas's descriptions are presented
under phenomenological bracketing, so this is not a philosophy of moral
feeling or a psychology of empathy.
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For humans, the Good comes to pass, as if
trivially, in that responsibility and generosity are perceivable in
human affairs. Cruelty and competition are also readily discerned
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In that respect, the trace of the Good
is always present within Being, as a possibility that something other
than consumption or instrumentalization may take place.
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So far as Infinity has a positive sense, then it has
the affective qualities of desire for sociality, and of joy. Thus,
Infinity, before we interpret it as “God” or reify it as a
highest being, is a quotidian event that takes place at the
sensuous-affective level, and repeats. If it repeats without leaving a
clear memory of itself, then this is because it repeats pre-cognitively
and pre-intentionally—like a memory ‘of the flesh’,
as adumbrated by Merleau-Ponty and his fundamental
historicit
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And sensibility
consists of an indeterminate number of affectations, of which we become
conscious only by turning our attention to them. Levinas's
‘pre-conscious’ sensibility is thus the ongoing shadow or
double of the intentional ‘I’. Like the embodied self, who
suffocated within itself in 1935 (in nausea), the self of sensibility
is the locus of relationality and transcendence in 1961.
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here, the everyday facticity
of the face-to-face encounter destabilizes transcendental versus
pragmatic distinctions
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Transcendence is “anthropological,”
a human affair, or it is nothing. Any philosophical translation of
embodied concrete life must consider the human subject as it is
constituted through relations with others in a simultaneous occurrence
of particularization and loss of self.
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Thus, Being is not an event per se.
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Being carries on as continuous presence for Levinas. The face-to-face
encounter inflects it toward the possibility of responsibility and
hospitality. But an inflection does not mean a transformation
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However, in 1961, Levinas's inflection
is best seen in the family. How the responsibility and election
experienced by fathers, sons, and brothers, passes into a larger
history and public space remained a difficult question—probably
best addressed through critique, witnessing, perhaps even limited
demands for justice. Nevertheless, the constituent
‘moments’ of the family are universal.
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If
Derrida is right, and Totality and Infinity is a
“treatise on hospitality,” then the transcendence that
comes to pass in the face-to-face must have nothing to do with the
will. It must never be a matter of nature, even human nature. That
excludes from transcendence not only an intentional component (already
bracketed by Levinas's phenomenology), but also anything like
moral sentiments or innate capacities to be affected by the other. The
non-violent force of the face as expression can be reduced neither to
physical force nor to inertia. In such a case, there would be no
question of escaping the mechanistic order of Being.
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Moral
height is thus not expressed in thou-saying; it is a third person
relationship. Here lies the point at which a reading begins that
bridges the philosophical and the religious, particularly the Jewish
dimension of Levinas's thought. It is and must remain a question
too large for philosophy to know what explains the force of the
other's expression. Nothing explains it.
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penury
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whether the egalitarian and just State in which the
European is fulfilled—and which it is a matter…above all
of preserving—proceeds from a war of all against all—or
from the irreducible responsibility of the one for the
other.”
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