Benso wants to lay the groundwork for a new environmental ethic. That involves replacing the ideas of self and non-human nature that permitted Auschwitz and now permits environmental destruction. Benso looks to Levinas and Heidegger who stress human "wholeness" rather than autonomy. The problem, not solved, is that both embed a radical distinction between humans and nature in their theories of the self.

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America. _Entre Nous_ (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, (...) it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness. Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death. Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. _Entre Nous_ is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives. (shrink)

This paper examines two claims currently made of Heidegger and Lévinas: (1) that Heidegger, work and man, had no adequate ethics; and (2) that Lévinas draws attention to this both in his own work and in the ground for ethics that he sought to give through the assertion of an explicitly Platonic ethics of transcendence to the ‘Good beyond Being’. The paper takes as a statement of Lévinas ethics his text ‘Alterity and Transcendence’ and shows, by relating what (...) he says to Plato, Aristotle and Heidegger, that Lévinas’s ethics are themselves shaped by a commitment to intersubjectivity which fails to achieve a genuine orientation to the ‘other’ of contemporary discourse, and that results only in the self-positing of the subject. Finally it examines Heidegger’s own discussions of alterity, ethics and being-with-one-another to show how Heidegger’s work does in fact point to what an ethical discourse of the other is seeking to achieve. (shrink)

Levinas's notion of il y a (there is) existence is shown to be the organizing principle behind his challenge to Being and Time. The two main aspects of that challenge propose an ontology that is not entirely reduced to being-in-the-world and a correlative account of the self that is not entirely reduced to context. In that way Levinas attempts first to restore unconditional value to the self and then to 'produce' a pluralist social ontology based on the independence of persons. (...) The il y a argument is shown to be composed of two versions, one constitutive and one axiological. It is argued that the constitutive argument fails, but that the axiological one remains pertinent. The latter, moreover, recalls a poetics of the transcendence of the work of literature and uncannily resembles the later Heidegger's own critique of Being and Time. The results contribute to a social ontology that affirms commonality without reducing the singularity of events. Key Words: Blanchot • Heidegger • il y a • Levinas • poetics • self • singularity • social ontology • transcendence. (shrink)

Already in his earlier works Levinas proposes a distinct phenomenological project which takes into consideration the radicality of the other and otherness by questioning intentionality and the validity of intersubjectivity within intentional consciousness. His move “towards Heidegger and against Husserl” was due primarily to Heidegger’s Dasein analysis, understanding of Being and being-with. However, in his major work, Totality and Infinity, Levinas proposes a new perspective on reading intersubjective relations with the Other which strongly contrasts with the Heideggerian concept (...) of intersubjectivity. This paper addresses the question of the Other, intersubjectivity and ethics in the writings of Levinas and Heidegger respectively. It considers Levinas’s critique of intersubjectivity as provoked and developed by Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, and concentrates on Levinas’s specific understanding of intentionality in his account of metaphysics, metaphysical desire and the Other. It also takes up the question of temporality as a necessary condition for intersubjective relation and explores its implication for the self and the Other in Levinas’s and Heidegger’s respective philosophies. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 10, Edition 2, October 2010: 23-32. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Levinas can be read as a critic, not just of Heideggerian being, but also of being-with. After pointing out that the publication of the Black Notebooks only makes this criticism more interesting to revisit, I first of all discuss passages from both earlier and later writings in which Levinas explicitly takes issue with Heidegger’s claim that there is no self outside of a specific socio-historical community. I then explain how these criticisms are reflected (...) in Levinas’s own account, arguing that Levinasian subjectivity and alterity are precisely defined by their not belonging to a larger unity; to the extent that they partake in a multi-personal collectivity, this does not take the form of a traditional community. In the final section, I look into a different and seemingly opposing argument Levinas makes against Heidegger: on the basis of the latter’s reflections on death, he argues that Dasein is anti-social rather than overly immersed in the socio-historical. Arguing that this rests on a misreading of Being and Time, I use this opportunity to raise questions about Levinas’s interpretation of Heidegger and his “otherwise than being-with” more generally, for Levinas’s account runs into several problems as well. Yet as I will conclude, this in fact offers a valuable insight, not just for the present-day reception of Heidegger, but also for thinking community today. It indicates that a radical break with human situatedness does not automatically fare better than a firmly enrooted account of existence. (shrink)

In the eyes of many “classical” phenomenologists, Kantianism has seemed to invite individuals to leave the rich, complexly motivated environment of lived experience in favor of a shadowy, formal kingdom of abstract duties and rights. Yet there have been notable attempts within the phenomenological tradition to articulate a richer vision of Kantian moral consciousness and to exhibit, from a first-person perspective, the shape of mental life and the standing dispositions that befit membership in a Kantian kingdom of ends. Here I (...) offer two such competing paradigms of Kantian moral consciousness: on the one hand, the responsive, situational Kantian moral consciousness that recent commentators have reconstructed from Martin Heidegger’s work, and on the other hand, the very different, explicitly cosmopolitan Kantian moral consciousness traced in Hannah Arendt’s conception of an “enlarged mentality.” While each is arguably a legitimately Kantian view, these alternative models of moral consciousness offer considerably different spirits of Kantianism with different benefits and detriments, and each places very different cognitive and moral burdens on agents. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;The thesis considers the work of Maurice Blanchot: first, by noting four 'steps' in its gradual clarification of what we might call literature's question to philosophy; second, by reading it alongside the works of Heidegger and Levinas. The aim is to formulate a question from Blanchot to Heidegger and Levinas respectively. ;Heidegger and Levinas both write from, and to, a time in which philosophy itself is called into question. (...) How are we to continue thinking in such a time? How are we to address the future when the very means of relating the future to the present have been undermined? Heidegger and Levinas insist on a radical openness or response. Confronted by an extreme discontinuity , philosophy continues, but differently. I am not to think of the future as mine, not to ground it in the present. The relation into which philosophy is called is one that cannot be thought in terms of a traditional logic of relation. It alters the way in which we talk of nearness and distance. To what does philosophy respond? What brings about this new relation? ;For Heidegger, that which has always concealed itself in the history of the tradition. Not that it is now to to be revealed, for it has concealed itself in and from the dialectic of presence and absence that defines 'revelation'. Neither present nor absent nor on its way to being either, what has been concealed is a more originary concealment. It is this concealment that first provoked the questions of philosophy and it is this concealment, concealed in the answer philosophy has given, that now calls philosophy into question. For Levinas, the alterity of the other person: an alterity always violated when the other is deemed analogous to the same, the self or 'I', or when myself and the other are thought from out of a common ground. My relation with another, however 'symmetrical', is always already vulnerable to the claims of the other as Other. (shrink)

This paper examines Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical development from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being as a self-critique and revised understanding of Martin Heidegger. It focuses on later Levinas’s analysis of language in terms of the difference between Saying and Said. For Levinas, the Said represents the betrayal of ethical Saying into ontological essence. This echoes Heidegger’s notion of the forgetfulness of Being in beings. However, Levinas critiques Heidegger’s own philosophy as remaining within the Said. The paper (...) explores three strategies of “unsaying” that Levinas discerns in Western philosophy to disrupt ontological Said: ontology itself, skepticism, and philosophical conversation. It argues that Levinas ultimately seeks an alternative “prophetic” mode of language beyond philosophy that enacts difference, which the paper relates to Talmud. The paper claims that the later Levinas no longer simply opposes Greek to Jewish thought, but rather seeks to deploy a specifically Jewish form of language to interrupt Western metaphysics from within. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that conscience is a phenomenon that takes place on two different architectonic levels: the sedimented level of intentional consciousness and the pre-intentional level of sense-formation and intersubjective perceptive phantasiai. On this pre-intentional level, one does not clearly distinguish between what is alien and what is one’s own: the lived experiences are not yet ascribed to an already constituted self but can be qualified as “nomadic.” This architectonic level is the locus of one’s openness to the (...) Other and their embodied life, be it ethical or aesthetic openness. This is why pre-intentional conscience is lived through as a silent call. This call, on the one hand, affects and destabilizes the recipient and compels them to a certain understanding, and, on the other hand, it is marked by an essential ambiguity regarding the identity of the caller and/or the transferred message. This call becomes manifest in the response, when it gradually acquires a well-defined shape and is subsequently identified as the voice of my authentic self, or the voice or the gaze of the Other in need, or the voice of a universal law, or the voice of God. The recipient of the call of conscience becomes a kind of “translator” or “spokesperson” who lends their own flesh with its bodily and mental habits to the caller, translating the silent call into a practical judgement of conscience. (shrink)

Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that (...) there is a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful. (shrink)

Levinas n'est pas le premier ni le seul penseur à avoir eu le souci de décrire la subjectivité pour elle-même et à partir d'elle-même. Cette subjectivation, toujours à reprendre, Levinas l'aura envisager lui-même doublement, en deux lieux distincts, l'ontologie et l'éthique. L'ontologie dans la mesure où elle se propose de déduire la signification de l'étant subjectif dans l'être, l'éthique dans la mesure où elle pense l'unicité du moi à partir de la responsabilité pour autrui. L'ontologie et l'éthique sont, pour Levinas, (...) deux figures de l'egologie, elles décrivent deux manières d'être soi. Pour le comprendre l'auteur rétablit les rapports souvent oubliés entre Levinas et Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty et Henry. (shrink)

One of the most pressing concerns for contemporary society is the issue of violence and the factors that promote it. In ____Altared Ground: Levinas, History and Violence__ Brian Schroeder stages an engagement between Emmanuel Levinas, one of the leading figures in 20th century Continental philosophy, and Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and others in the history of ideas. Not merely an exposition of Levinas' original and complex thinking, Brian Schroeder seeks to re-read the history of Western philosophy and (...) religion by going beyond Levinas' alternatives to traditional theories of the self in order to suggest a notion of subjectivity that is not grounded in violence. (shrink)

The present article aims to illuminate a notion of finite freedom in both Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas criticizes the Heideggerian ontology for holding an egoistic, unconstrained notion of freedom. The article first responds to such a criticism by showing that the Heideggerian notion of freedom as self-binding involves normativity. It then argues that both Heidegger and Levinas propose a notion of finite freedom as the unity of autonomy and heteronomy. Finally, the article also sheds light on what different (...) approaches to the source of normativity separate the two philosophers’ understandings of freedom. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material others (...) such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

While influential works have been devoted to comparative studies of various Asian philosophies and continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, this collection is the first to fully treat the increased interest in intercultural and interdisciplinary studies related to the work of Emmanuel Levinas in such a context. Levinas and Asian Thought seeks to discover common ground between Levinas’s ethical project and various religious and philosophical traditions of Asia such as Mahāyāna Buddhism, Theravādic Buddhism, Vedism, Confucianism, Daoism, (...) and Islam. -/- In these 13 essays, contributors draw on resources as diverse as the self-sacrificial ethic of bushidō, Islamic jurisprudence, and contemporary research in cognitive science. The essays are organized around three primary themes of enduring ethical, political, and religious importance. The first set of essays considers a dialogue between Levinasian and Asian accounts of the self, others, and the intersubjective relationship. Through a conversation with a variety of non-Western traditions, the second group of essays addresses the question of Levinas’s extreme portrayal of the self’s responsibility to the other and its potential limits. Finally, the collection ends with essays that utilize Asian thought and culture to consider ways in which Levinas’s ethics of alterity might be put into practice in the sphere of politics, social norms, and institutions. -/- Levinas and Asian Thought is not only a comprehensive attempt to bring Levinas into conversation with the philosophies of Asia, but it also represents a focused effort to recognize, address, and overcome Levinas’s own Eurocentrism. Overall, the thoughtful investigations collected here chart new territory, pushing Levinas’s practice of philosophy outside its familiar European and Jewish contexts, expanding our understanding of key Levinasian terms, thus furthering the thinking necessary for ethics as first philosophy. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students, as it builds connections among Levinas studies, Asian philosophy, comparative philosophy, continental philosophy, and ethics. (shrink)

In sharp contrast with Heidegger's insistence that the metaphysics of presence, in particular the objectivation of beings in terms of their being “ready at hand” culminating in the techno‐scientific world‐view, be destructed and overcome in light of a more fundamental thinking of “presencing” or “coming into presence” (Anwesen), the philosophy of the infinitely Other introduced (or should we say: rearticulated) by Emmanuel Levinas marks a radical rupture with all ontology. Indeed, it breaks away from every thought of Being, from (...) the notion of the event or eventhood (Ereignis) of Being, but also from the notion of the gift implied in Heidegger's formula that Being “is” what “there is,” that Being “is” what essentially “gives,” or, finally, that Being “is” (what is) fundamentally given (Es gibt das Sein). From the publication of his earliest phenomenological studies in the 1930s and late 1940s onwards, but especially since the appearance, in 1961, of his first major book Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority), Levinas has left no doubt that the central concern of his philosophical thinking was to leave the parameters – indeed, the very “climate” – of Heideggerian thought behind. This flight, as it were, not merely from ontology but also from Heidegger's later thinking‐of (Andenken) of Being consists, in its first phase, in the reorientation rather than destruction or deconstruction of traditional Western philosophy – a tradition which, according to Levinas, has been by and large a philosophy of the Same (le Même) – in the direction of the Other (l'Autre) or, more precisely, other human beings (autrui). At first glance, therefore, Levinas's first major work is characterized by the attempt to establish ethics as the genuine first philosophy. The ethical relation here is at once the primum intelligibele that puts an end to the essential arbitrariness and the anarchy of the world of opinions and truths, of appearances and idealized constructs. For all its apparent abstraction, it signals itself in the concrete event of obligation, more specifically in the introduction of a responsibility that precedes and exceeds contracts and rules, reciprocity and recognition, norms and conventions. In Totality and Infinity this relation of the self to the other is described in terms of the asymmetrical structure of discourse, of dialogue, and, most importantly, of the face‐to‐face with the other's visage. For, so the argument goes, it is solely in the face‐to‐face that the Desire (désire) for the other arouses, provokes, or evokes. It is in this singular relation without relation alone that the self is accused and made responsible. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to accentuate those features that distinguish Levinasian ethics from the egoism that prevails in management thought. It focuses on differences in the constitution of the subject, how Levinas seeks an ethics that goes beyond the subjective point of view that structures the self as being self-present, self-interested, free and systematic and relates to others through this perspective. Levinas's concepts are critically discussed by reading these alongside Jacques Lacan and Adam Smith, which enable observations (...) to be made about Levinas's concept of the Same and about the difference he effects between human and the nonhuman. It is concluded that it can be easy to misread Levinas in key respects in ways that may act to assimilate his thought to egoism. (shrink)

This article traces the development of how the early Heidegger tried to integrate the structures of social life into phenomenological ontology. Firstly, I argue that Heidegger's analysis of the three elements of the lifeworld—the with-world (Mitwelt), the environing world (Umwelt), and the self-world (Selbstwelt)—is ambiguous, because it shifts between defining sociality as a domain of entities and a mode of appearance. This is untenable because the social as a mode of appearance constantly overflows the definition as a domain (...) by implicating social structures in phenomenological explications of entities that, formally, belong to other domains. Secondly, I argue that Heidegger realized this and subsequently changed his terminology from Mitwelt to Mitsein in order to avoid confusing the mode of appearance with the innerworldly entities. The systematic consequence of this line of argument is that the object of social ontology must be the world as such rather than a particular domain. Lastly, I respond to the common worry that this position is unable to explain the significance of interpersonal encounters by arguing that the world not only makes the appearance of others possible but also that the world is itself at stake in these encounters. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to analyse the incrimination of ontology and ontological manifestations in reason, articulated speech and social order and argue that such an incrimination, which is characteristic of traditional philosophy, can be explained as a phenomenon of onto-theology. Then I demonstrate that the ideas of Levinas - and to some degree the Derridean response to them - suffer from residues of onto-theology to the extent that they preserve and promote the assumption that ontology is essentially violent. (...) I claim that the Levinasian priority of ethics over ontology and the Derridean treatment of the opposition ‘ethics vs ontology’ rest on an epochal understanding of being. Such an understanding arrests time and echoes old religious doctrines that traditional philosophy preserved in a secular form and handed down to contemporary philosophical thinking. By charging Levinasian and Derridean ideas with onto-theology, I unveil what I consider to be one of the last dogmas of Occidental thought, i.e. the assumption that self-interest and violence are somehow endemic in the human condition. I suggest that we overcome this assumption, if we truly wish to view the I-Thou relation Other-wise. Key Words: Derrida • ethics • evil • Fall • Hegel • Heidegger • I-Thou • Kant • Kierkegaard • Levinas • ontology • onto-theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Merold WestphalM. Jamie FerreiraMerold Westphal. Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 261. Cloth, $32.95. Paper, $16.95.The Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy describes itself as attempting to provide insight into a philosopher by means of a focus on a single (...) major text. Such a focus is unusual for a series in the history of philosophy, and Westphal’s [End Page 144] accomplishment in this study is a fine example of how fruitfully this can be done. Commentary on over six hundred pages of Kierkegaard’s Postscript is presented in ten manageable chapters, which follow the order of the Postscript and deal with segments of it ranging from as few as twelve pages to as many as one hundred and seventy-five pages. The result is a commentary which can wonderfully guide students through the Postscript in its entirety, or through the assignment of individual chapters to accompany discrete reading selections. Westphal’s discussions are informed by an unusually wide-ranging knowledge of the history of philosophy—he considers the text not only in relation to Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, as others commentators have, but also brings to this work his clear strengths in phenomenological, existential, and postmodern thought (so we get useful comparisons with Gadamer, Derrida, Levinas, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, among others). Lying behind Westphal’s entire approach to the book is his desire to address the two most common major criticisms of Kierkegaard’s thought, namely, that it is individualist and irrationalist. Thus, the major perspective from which everything is approached is the tension between the fallible yet responsible self—more precisely, the tension between individual and society, and the tension between irrationalist (voluntarist, blind) and rationalist. Westphal does a superb job of laying out the diversity of protests Climacus is registering in the Postscript—against Platonic intellectualism, against systematic philosophical speculation, and against the rhetorical compromising embodied in the “priest-orator.” There are, of course (as one would expect), sensible, suggestive, illuminating, and detailed exegeses of passages concerning all the significant themes associated with Climacus (approximation, appropriation, leap, direct communication, second reflection, dialectic, etc). Westphal examines the Postscript in the light of the distinction between Socratic religion and the non-Socratic (Christian) alternative found in the earlier Philosophical Fragments, to which this Postscript is an admittedly peculiar postscript, and employs material from much of Kierkegaard’s other work, including journal entries. With respect to the (in)famous category of leap, Westphal incorporates contemporary discussions of volitionalism and presents a fine summary of ways in which willing (decision) can be viewed as indirect, yet allowing the relevance of an ethics of belief. In fact, regarding even the commentary on “Truth Is Subjectivity,” where one might feel nothing new could be said, he manages to be innovative, by identifying “four moments” in the presentation of a theory of subjectivity (a satire, a parable, a definition, and a portrait) which make the chapter much more manageable for teaching. After considering Climacus’s presentation of the relation between Religiousness A and Religiousness B, Westphal appends a discussion of his own creation, Religiousness C (Chapter XIV). But all of this discussion would be unhelpful to a reader who does not fully appreciate the role of pseudonymity and indirect communication in Kierkegaard’s works; so Westphal prefaces his entire discussion with a fine chapter on pseudonymity which can be used even in courses where the entire book is not required reading. This chapter, relating pseudonymity to twentieth-century discussions of themes such as the effacement of the author of a text and the forfeiture of the privilege of authorship, is part of a three-chapter introduction setting the Postscript in relation to Kierkegaard’s biography, pseudonymity, and the familiar theory of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages. This entire introduction is written in a remarkably [End Page 145] engaging style which will surely seduce readers new to Kierkegaard and his creation, Johannes Climacus. For example, Westphal announces that “the flow of Regina’s... (shrink)

Although Emmanuel Levinas is widely respected as one of the classic thinkers of our century, the debate about his place within Continental philosophy continues. In _Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,_ Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak shows Levinas's thought to be a persistent attempt to point beyond the borders of an economy where orderly interests and ways of reasoning make us feel at home--beyond the world of needs, beyond the self, beyond politics and administration, beyond logic and ontology, even beyond freedom (...) and autonomy. Peperzak's examination begins with a general overview of Levinas's life and thought, and shows how issues of ethics, politics, and religion are intertwined in Levinas's philosophy. Peperzak also discusses the development of Levinas's relations with Husserl and Heidegger, demonstrating thematically the evolution of both Levinas's anti-Heideggerian view of technology and his critical attitude toward nature. (shrink)

One of the most persistent and poignant human experiences is the sensation of longing--a restlessness perhaps best described as the unspoken conviction that something is missing from our lives. In this study, Drew M. Dalton attempts to illuminate this experience by examining the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas on longing, or what Levinas terms "metaphysical desire." Metaphysical desire, according to Levinas, does not stem from any determinate lack within us, nor does it aim at a particular object beyond us, much (...) less promise any eventual satisfaction. Rather, it functions in the realm of the infinite where such distinctions as inside and outside or one and the other are indistinguishable, perhaps even eliminated. As Levinas conceives such longing, it becomes a mediator in our relation to the other--both the human other and the divine Other. -/- Dalton follows the meandering trail of Levinas's thought along a series of dialogues with some of the philosophers within the history of the Western tradition who have most influenced his corpus. By tracing the genealogy of Levinas's notion of metaphysical desire--namely in the works of Plato, Heidegger, Fichte, Schelling, and Otto--the nature of this Levinasian theme is elucidated to reveal that it is not simply an idealism, a "hagiography of desire" detached from actual experience and resulting in a disconnect between his phenomenological account and our own lives. Rather, Levinas's account of metaphysical desire points to a phenomenology of human longing that is both an ethical and religious phenomenon. In the end, human longing is revealed to be one of the most profound ways in which a subject becomes a subject, arising to its "true self," and hearing the call to responsibility placed upon it by the Other. -/- Throughout, Dalton explicates the nuance of a number of key Levinasian terms, many of which have been taken from the Western philosophical tradition and reinscribed with a new meaning. Eros, the "Good beyond being," shame, responsibility, creation, the trace, the il y a, and the holy are discovered to be deeply tied to Levinas's account of metaphysical desire, resulting in a conclusion regarding longing's role in the relationship between the finite and the Infinite.". (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of the world elaborated by Heidegger in the early Freiburg lecture courses of the years 1919 to 1923, in which he proposes a renewed conception of phenomenology through a comparison with Husserlian phenomenology. First, I show that although the theme of the lifeworld became central only in late Husserlian works, especially in _The Crisis of European Sciences_, Husserl began to deal with this concept before 1920, anticipating some fundamental issues of the _Crisis_, as it (...) results from the lectures of 1919 on _Natur und Geist_. Husserl had addressed the concept of the world already in the lectures of 1910/11, _The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_, and, subsequently, in the second book of _Ideas_, which was published posthumously, but which was known to the young Heidegger. Then, I discuss the way in which Heidegger revisited the issue of the world in the early Freiburg lecture courses by means of a critique of Husserl’s analysis, focusing on perceptual experience as “environmental experience” and on the “world-character” of life. Particular emphasis is placed on the distinction between “environing-world,” “with-world,” and “self-world,” which Heidegger introduces in the lectures of 1919–1920. Finally, I point out that the Heideggerian rethinking of the concept of lifeworld is closely connected to the recognition of the immanent historicity of life, while Husserl only later takes into account the historicity of the lifeworld. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics and Time:Lévinas Between Kant and HusserlJoanna Hodge (bio)This article stems from the conviction that the source of the bloody barbarism of National Socialism lies not in some contingent anomaly within human reasoning, nor in some accidental ideological misunderstanding. This article expresses the conviction that this source stems from the essential possibility of elemental evil into which we can be led by logic and against which Western philosophy had (...) not sufficiently insured itself. This possibility is inscribed within the ontology of a being concerned with being—a being, to use the Heideggerian expression, "which in its own being is concerned with that being." Such a possibility still threatens the subject correlative with being as gathering together and as dominating, that famous subject of transcendental idealism that before all else wishes to be free and thinks itself free. We must ask ourselves if liberalism is all we need to achieve the authentic dignity for the human subject. Does the subject ever arrive at the human condition prior to assuming responsibility for the other in the act of election that raises him up to this height? This election comes from a god—or God—who beholds him in the face of the other, the neighbour, the original "site" of the Revelation.—Emmanuel Lévinas, 28 March 1990, introduction to "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism" (1934)1IntroductionThe intent of this essay is to establish the relevance of various divergent workings of time for an understanding of the difficulties distinctive of moral dilemmas and ethical doubt. It will introduce the thinking of Lévinas (1905-96) to bring into focus the differences entailed in addressing ethical contexts from various perspectives of time, whether in terms of past experience, present contingencies, or considerations of the future. It turns out to be necessary to distinguish between various conceptions of the future as well, in order to grasp the different construals of constraints on moral deliberation. A contrast may be drawn between the individualism and the collectivism, [End Page 107] respectively, of Nietzsche's and Heidegger's visions of the future;1 and between the religious determinacies of Lévinas's invocation of futurity and Derrida's more ascetic, formally indicative recasting of Lévinas's à-dieu.2 It is also the case that distinct conceptions of the past impose significant constraints on what human beings can hope to achieve in their moral efficacy. There is an important difference between the Greco-pagan past, invoked by Nietzsche and Heidegger, and the divine time of creation invoked in the opening pages of Genesis, which is the source of Lévinas's notion of an immemorial time, and which is subjected to deconstructive reading by Jacques Derrida in "The Animal Which Therefore I Am, to Be Continued" [see Derrida, "L'animal autobiographique"].I shall introduce a reading of the second part of Kant's treatise The Conflict of the Faculties (1798) [139-71], on the contest between philosophy and law, to suggest that for ethics, by contrast to concerns with aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology, a consideration of conceptions of futurity is especially pressing. This provides a context for responding to Lévinas's early article "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism" (1934), to which Lévinas wrote an introduction, including my opening citation, some sixty years later.3 Lévinas is not simply engaging with the problem of evil, in relation to the now well-known moral deficiencies of Heidegger's fundamental ontology.4 He is also warning, more generally, against delusions arising from theoretical abstraction, in both absolute idealism and, indeed, in a Nietzschean ethics. His own writings, from Time and the Other (1947) on, suggest that the deficiency arises from oversimplifications [End Page 108] in the thinking of time. Taking this as a clue, the main tasks of this essay are to show that the broadly historical notion of time, which appears oriented toward the past, requires a complementary reflection on futurity, if the ethical significance of different ways of relating to the past is to emerge; and, in relation to that futurity, to show that the broadly teleological, future-directed notions of self-formation, deliberation, and genesis require supplementation... (shrink)

Levinas argues that tragic descriptions---from the Greeks to Nietzsche and Heidegger---rarely dare to draw the full implications of asserting that being is tragic. At the same time that it accurately attests to the irremediable character of being, the tragic position proposes a remedy that presupposes the self's capacity for transformation and meaningfulness. Heidegger, for example, holds that Dasein possesses as its highest possibility the capacity to embrace its finitude. For Levinas, however, the self is mired in a hopeless (...) state of perpetual ambivalence---oscillating between moments of enjoyment and a horror of being. If the self lacks the means to rectify its condition in being, what is the genuine source of meaningfulness and purpose in our lives? Levinas attempts to respond to this question by inquiring into what he dubs the Desire for transcendence. Though western philosophy has at times voiced this Desire---for example, Plato's notion of a 'good beyond being' or Descartes's conception of the idea of the Infinite---ultimately, the philosophical tradition betrays the Good, because transcendence is almost always conceived in relation to anonymous being. For Levinas, the true 'site' of the Good is the face or presence of the other human being that speaks to me directly. The deepest level of the human drama takes place in what he calls the "ethical intrigue" that binds the self to the Other. The Other's plea for me to address the ruins of being affects me immediately. Integrity or moral wholeness involves the mature capacity to accept bad conscience---which always bears the Other's imprint---as fundamental to being human. The capacity to be responsible necessitates desacralization. Levinas awakens us to the importance of uprooting the sacred impulse at both the social and the individual level. The sacred is the attempt to bypass the ethical intrigue for direct communion with a supposed supernatural world. The sacred experience, like the tragic position, ultimately promotes moral evasiveness by undermining the Other's call to be responsible. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’s writings militate against an ontological way of thinking that he claims dominates the history of European philosophy. In their drive towards truth and knowledge, Levinas argues that thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger efface the alterity of the Other, the Other’s “otherness,” by appropriating alterity as a moment of self-consciousness or Being. This ontological thinking, Levinas argues, attempts to violently reduce the unthematizable excess of the Other by systematically assimilating the Other in the concepts of totalizing thought. (...) Levinas articulates his opposition to this tradition at length in Totality & Infinity by insisting upon an irreducible heteronomy: an Other who remains radically outside of any relationship that I might have with them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tracing a Traumatic Temporality: Levinas and Derrida on Trauma and ResponsibilityCathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen (bio)For more than three decades, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas develop their conceptions of trauma and responsibility in close, critical, and engaged readings of each other’s works.1 In a text first published in 1973, Levinas explicitly considers different aspects and implications of Derrida’s “new style of thought,” as well as his own relation to Derrida, describing (...) their recurring crossing of paths as “a contact at the heart of a chiasmus,” which is further said to constitute “the very modality of the philosophical encounter” (PN 56, 62).Since the publication of “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’” in 1990, in which Derrida makes the somewhat surprising announcement that justice can be considered the undeconstructible condition of deconstruction (AR 243), as well as the subsequent publication of Specters of Marx in 1993, which is often designated as the work in which Derrida begins to consider ethico-political concerns more explicitly than hitherto, there has been much scholarly discussion about a so-called “ethical turn” of deconstruction.2 Throughout [End Page 43] the 1990s and up until this day a tendency prevails among certain scholars to strive for the establishment and legitimization of a more or less harmonic accordance between Levinas and Derrida with reference to concepts that preoccupy them both (e.g., “justice,” “hospitality,” “the other,” or “responsibility”). However, as Martin Hägglund has convincingly argued, a certain disjoining of Derrida and Levinas is required in order not to conflate what ultimately amount to two very different styles of writing and thinking. Such disjoining is particularly important when it comes to an issue such as responsibility, which is too often and too quickly categorized as an “ethical issue,” as if such a categorization were self-explanatory.3The aim of this article is not to carry out a comparative study focusing on the similarities and dissimilarities of the writings of Derrida and Levinas. Instead, the article is an attempt to let a “third” voice arise from the ongoing philosophical conversation between Derrida and Levinas, which is neither entirely accordant nor discordant, in order to emphasize a certain traumatic temporality of responsibility that finds a space in both their works while indicating the subtle nuances of disjuncture separating these spaces. In what follows, I therefore wish to explore some of the most significant displacements to which the notions of trauma and responsibility are subjected throughout the writings of Derrida and Levinas, as a result, to some extent at least, of their repeated chiasmic encounters.By way of introduction, it should be noted that both Derrida and Levinas transport the notion of trauma away from its most frequent psychopathological, psychoanalytic, or neurological areas of interpretation, just as they transport the notion of responsibility away from its usual autonomist or decisionist connotations toward a more extensive space of signification.4 Bearing this introductory note in mind, the question concerning what precisely enables this transport of trauma will direct the approach of the article. In other words, the article will question what it is about the structure of “trauma” or “traumatism” that allows the somewhat “fearsome” generalizations—to employ [End Page 44] Derrida’s own formulation from “Typewriter Ribbon”5 —to take place in the writings of both Derrida and Levinas.The suggestion in what follows will be that it is the peculiar temporality of trauma that allows for the generalizations, openings, and disseminations of trauma in Derrida and Levinas. More specifically, this traumatic temporality inscribes itself through an interruption of what might, with a reference to Heidegger, be called the vulgar understanding of time.6 Drawing attention to the temporality of trauma as a vehicle of transportation, the article advances in six main sections, each exploring different aspects of the relationship between temporality, trauma, and responsibility displayed in Derrida and Levinas.Traumatic TemporalityAs is well known, at least since Freud, trauma only becomes a trauma belatedly, or after its own fact, since a trauma only manifests itself by withdrawing itself in the traces it leaves behind, that is, by its aftermath and its effects of repetition and deferral. Trauma is somehow... (shrink)

In the present article, we are faced with two phenomenological philosophers who, in two different intellectual traditions, namely philosophical hermeneutics and moral phenomenology, have referred to the concept of the Other as the fundamental possibility of the individual. The other, as an ontological and common concept in the thought of Gadamer and Levinas, is the turning point of the condition for the possibility of understanding and ethics. Focusing on the concept of the other, while addressing the points of difference and (...) commonality between Gadamer and Levinas, this article will show that Levinas’s preoccupation with the other as a philosopher refers to the foundations of ethics, and the condition for the possibility of foundations of ethics is encountering the other. In Gadamer, the turning point is the determination of the possibilities of understanding in dialectical and dialogue-oriented relationships. Without the other, in Levinas’s thought, ethics, and moral matter, and in Gadamer’s thought, the process of understanding will not occur in the form of a fusion of horizons. Therefore, this article shows that the other is a common concept between these two philosophers, which both of them cannot avoid in their philosophical analyses of ethics or the process of understanding. Introduction The analysis of ethics is one of the important and innovative achievements of Levinas’s philosophical intellectual structure. Levinas’s concern is to refer to the foundations of morality itself, regardless of institutionalizing the moral in the form of law, and the foundation of morality is in face-to-face relationships with others. Regardless of Levinas’s plan about the concept of the other, Gadamer imagines the determination of understanding in a new way in the face of the other. The other is the comprehensible strain in philosophical hermeneutics, in such a way that the process of understanding is formed by the presence of the other and the face-to-face encounter with it. According to Gadamer, the other is the factor of openness in the process of understanding. The fusion of horizons is the product of openness and mutual encounters in dialogue, which is not possible without the other. The other is the condition of determining the possibility of understanding in each of the parties who are allowed to reveal a part of their being and allow the other to open up and talk. In fact, understanding is a kind of event that is revealed in a two-way conversation in an event-like way. This type of understanding depends on the presence of another. The main focus of the research is the analysis of the concept of the other, which has been done with emphasis on two important works: Truth and method, Totality and infinity. Body & discussion In general, the process of understanding is a dialogical process, whether the other side of the conversation is a text or a person, the foundation of understanding is formed in a relationship with the other. Determining the other as an independent personality and a different perspective is an ontological determination. The other thinks and becomes meaningful beyond the subject or object and even beyond my intellectual position, it belongs to its own independent world and its own experience. In conversation, it plays a significant role in the production of truth. Openness provides the possibility of dialogue and mutual agreement. In dialogue, the final product is not reproduced. The other condition for the production of the final product is dialogue According to Gadamer, facing the other is facing his world. At the moment of facing me, the other makes his abstract aspects concrete and opens his lived experience to me. He believes that the question-and-answer process is a kind of encounter with the world of experience and openness toward it. According to Gadamer, the process of understanding is the result of dialectical-hermeneutic relations between me (the interpreter) and you (the other). The dialogical relationships that allow each other to enter the other’s history are relationships that are formed based on questions and answers. From Gadamer’s point of view, questions and answers are the opening of a new horizon based on tradition and contemporary history. Levinas phenomenologically refers to the philosophical tradition of the West to reread the process of the formation of the concept of the other. Many commentators and interpreters of Levinas’s works believe that it is possible to determine the foundations of ethics from Levinas’s point of view from face-to-face relationships. The condition for the possibility of morality is to pay attention to others. To describe another concept, Levinas analyzes the negative and positive aspects of this concept. In a negative way, Levinas first answers what the other is not, and for this reason, he criticizes the history of Western metaphysics and the criticism of Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenology. Positively, the other is relative to me and different from me. The other is beyond subject and object. The other is not subjugated by any concept and recognizes its independent identity. The other and the encounter with him are the conditions for determining fundamental ethics from Levinas’s point of view. Another condition of concreteness refers to another person. According to Levinas, it is the condition for the formation of moral form. He believes that ethics is a kind of double encounter in the context of bilateral relations. Many moral concepts are formed in relation to a concrete other. In Levinas’s genealogy of ethics, we are faced with the presence of the other in a concrete way and with the subjectivity of the subject in an abstract and a priori way. Levinas specifies two approaches with the description of the other in the form of an infinite idea. First of all, there is an infinite gap between the other and the same. This issue shows its foreignness and otherness, its independence, and being true to its essence towards me. Second, it is the determination of another in a concrete or abstract form, which in both cases evokes an identity independent of me. Conclusion According to the explanations of the concept of the other in the thought of Gadamer and Levinas, we are faced with two phenomenological philosophers who have paid attention to the ontological aspects of the concept of the other in the fields of philosophical hermeneutics and ethics. In Gadamer’s thought, the other is an ontologically dialectical relationship between I-Thou and the starting point of the conversation process. The fusion of horizons is the turning point of the formation of the relation to the other, which is manifested in another area. The other has its own history, world, tradition, and authority, regardless of the formation of dialogical relationships, and has an independent identity. The other is allowed to share his lived experience in the conversation. The other creates new worlds. The other has opened himself and in return can be self-interpreting and self-revealing. Regardless, the other is the consistency of the complex relationship between language and the world. This form of bilateral relations, which is manifested in the presence of another, is a linguistic form that is the cause of a deep connection between language and the world. The other, whether concrete or abstract, is the turning point of our connection with the world in an ontological way. Regardless of Gadamer’s point of view, Levinas returns to another concept in his new thought project entitled “How to determine the possibilities of ethics.” According to Levinas, finding the foundations of ethics and determining the condition of moral possibilities is in facing the other and in face-to-face relationships. The other is concretely a kind of bilateral encounter which is the basis of many moral events and is manifested abstractly in the form of the subject’s subjectivity. This kind of infinite aspect of the other is revealed in subjectivity is implied in sense. Encountering another in an abstract form within itself is the encounter of the subject’s subjectivity with the sense, and the sense is in the encounter with the other. Sense is the basis of the subjectivity of the subject. Sense is a kind of concrete and visual face-to-face encounter that adds to the importance of determining another. Therefore, both Gadamer and Levinas raise many possibilities about the concept of the other, which shows the importance of this concept in the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Studies about the influence of sound and ambient environments on understanding and the affects, prior to intentional acts of consciousness, are employed to rectify self-fragmentation exemplified in Heidegger and Augustine. Due to a visual bias that suppresses his auditory disposition in Being and Time, Heidegger gestures toward Dasein’s fulfillment in social-being yet also recoils from it. To ameliorate this impasse, his underdeveloped modification of existence is revisited by way of Augustine’s attunement to rhetoricity during his conversion experience. As (...) a result of embracing a shared ambient space, he brings care for others as oneself into the realm of “the with” and thereby verifies the significance of an auditory way of being-in-the-world to the formation of communities. (shrink)

Dasein is authentically itself only to the extent that, as concernful Being-alongside and solicitous Being-with, it projects itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-Being rather than upon the possibility of the they-self. (Heidegger, BT, 308)The more I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution, of my freedom as a constituted, willful, imperialist subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible; the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am "in myself" (...) through the others. (Levinas, OB, 112)these singular beings [Daseins] are themselves constituted by sharing, they are distributed and placed, or rather spaced, by the sharing that makes them others: other for one another, and other, infinitely other for the Subject of their fusion, which is engulfed in the sharing, in the ecstasy of the sharing "communicating" by not "communing." ... Thus, the communication of sharing would be this very dis-location. (Nancy, IC, 25)What defines the "self" is precisely what defines us as personsnamely, the various roles and relationships that link us to others. (Bockover, ERS, 56). (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering (...) phenomena, ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. (...) For once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

This article reconsiders the influence of Rosenzweig’s thought on Levinas’s work in the light of the captivity notebooks (Carnets de captivité), as well as the lectures given shortly after the war at the Collège philosophique. Levinas’s ongoing dealings with Rosenzweig are discussed in two ways: first, by analyzing the articles he explicitly dedicated to Rosenzweig and, second, by identifying elements of Rosenzweig’s thought in Levinas’s work that are not explicitly mentioned therein. By combining these two approaches, I show that Rosenzweig’s (...) work offered Levinas an ontological narrative that contrasts with Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, and it motivated a concept of a new mode of transcendence linked to Judaism. Language, as spoken words produced face-to-face, plays a crucial role in this context: just as it opens up the mute Self into a loving Soul in The Star of Redemption, it is the face that speaks in Levinas, opening up the relationship to the Other and the “beyond of being.”. (shrink)

The article examines philosophical conceptions of responsibility found in the contributions of Martin Buber, Hans Jonas and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that, despite the significant differences of these contributions, they all share important goals, significant structural features, and corresponding challenges. All three thinkers try to overcome the solipsistic limitations of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology as well as the egocentrism of Heidegger’s concept of "solicitude" or "self-care." All three try to overcome the Kantian subject-object dichotomy. All three understand responsibility as a (...) bipolar relation only. In consequence, all of them face similar challenges resulting from new forms of dichotomies and the exclusion of “thirdness” that are the result of their conceptual decisions. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal del artículo es terminar quién es el Dasein desde el aparecer del mundo en la obra de Martin Heidegger Ser y tiempo. Para ello, se plantea la posibilidad de aprehensión del horizonte del sí mismo del Dasein, en contra de los propios análisis heideggerianos sobre el uno, y, también, se muestra de qué manera la mismidad del Dasein se presupone ya en el modo de aparición del mundo-entorno a través del existenciario significatividad. La conclusión del (...) artículo intentará descubrir los posibles rendimientos fenomenológicos de la apertura del horizonte del sí-mismo del Dasein.The main goal of the paper is to determine who is the Dasein itself from the appearance of the world in the Book of Martin Heidegger Being and time. For this, it raises the possibility of understanding the horizon of the self of Dasein itself differently to Heidegger’s analysis about the they and also it shows how the Selfhood of Dasein is presupposed already in the appearance of the world-environment through the existential meaningfulness. The conclusion of this paper will try to discover the phenomenological yields of Dasein’s openness as horizon of its Selfhood. (shrink)

Ethics and Danger examines Heidegger’s association with German National Socialism and attempts to understand both the question of politics in Heidegger’s thought and the thought that gives rise to that question. It explores the contribution of Heidegger’s work to issues of ethics, technology, and social theory, as well as his relationship to other thinkers such as Parmenides, Aristotle, Hegel, Husserl, Benjamin, Levinas, Rorty, Foucault, and Derrida. Finally, it addresses the more general question of the future of ethical (...) thought within continental philosophy. In order to engage the ethical issues surrounding Heidegger’s life and thought, the authors speak of dangers such as facism and the facile, self-congratulatory moral stance that Heidegger exemplifies. The question of how to speak in the wake of Heidegger’s thought takes many forms, and the answers represent a diversity of viewpoints from both American and continental thinkers. (shrink)

"Gabriel Cercel: Martin HEIDEGGER, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges; Attila Szigeti: Emmanuel LEVINAS, Positivité et transcendance. Suivi de Lévinas et la phenomenology; Cristian Ciocan: Jean-Luc MARION, Crucea vizibilului; Gabriel Cercel: Mădălina DIACONU, Blickumkehr. Mit Martin Heidegger zu einer relationalen ästhetik; Cristina Ionescu: Mark WRATHALL, Jeff MALPAS, Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus; Cristian Ciocan: Ion COPOERU, Aparenţă şi sens. Repere ale fenomenologiei constitutive; Cristian Ciocan: Michael INWOOD, A Heidegger Dictionary; Cristian Ciocan: Linda FISCHER, Lester EMBREE, (...) Feminist Phenomenology; Mădălina Diaconu: Renato CRISTIN, Fenomeno storia. Fenomenologia e storicità in Husserl e Dilthey; Cristian Ciocan: Michel HAAR, La philosophie française entre phénoménologie et métaphysique; Gabriel Cercel: Otto PÖGGELER, Heidegger in seiner Zeit; Roxana Albu: James RISSER, Heidegger toward the Turn, Essays on the work of the 1930s; Cristian Ciocan: Virgil Ciomoş, Timp şi Eternitate. Aristotel, Fizica IV 10-14, Interpretare fenomenologică; Cristina Ionescu: William D. BLATTNER, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism; Bogdan Mincă: Gino ZACCARIA, L'inizio greco del pensiero. Heidegger e l'essenza futura della filosofia; Mădălina Diaconu: Ute GUZZONI, Wohnen und Wandern; Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban: Emmanuel LÉVINAS, Totalitate şi infinit; Mihail Neamţu: Jean-Luc MARION, Étant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation; Gabriel Cercel: Robert PETKOVŠEK, Heidegger-Index ; Cristian Ciocan: Einar ØVERENGET, Seeing The Self. Heidegger on Subjectivity Mihail Neamţu: Rolf KÜHN, Husserls Begriff der Passivität. Zur Kritik der passiven Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie.". (shrink)

To what extent can business ethics be hospitable to Levinasian ethics? This paper raises questions about how business ethics relates to its guests, in this case the guest called Levinas; the idea of introducing or inviting the work of an author into a field, as its guest, is by no means a simple problem of transference. For Jacques Derrida, there is hospitality only when the stranger's introduction to our home is totally unconditional. Such a conceptualization of hospitality becomes even more (...) demanding when the stranger that is near our home is an ethics also demanding hospitality, such as the ethics proposed by Levinas. An invitation puts in place particular circumstances that allow only for an arrival of the one invited. These conditions precede the so-called stranger, thereby predetermining the route to be taken, the destination to be reached and the correct manner of self-presentation. An invitation already reduces the Other to that which is expected by the inviter, that is to the Same. The hospitality of the field of business ethics becomes an endorsement of a particular version of the stranger, therefore recognizable by the field. Perhaps conceptualizing Levinasian ethics as an ethics that cannot be invited might protect it from procedures that reduce the strangeness of the stranger, making it knowable. That is the argument presented in this paper. (shrink)

Pretende-se situar os momentos determinantes que dão sustentação à proposta de Levinas, elaborada ao longo de sua leitura de Heidegger, no sentido de romper com o pensamento do ser e propor um pensamento do Outro. A leitura de Levinas, como se pretende demonstrar, é atravessada, desde o seu início, pelo fio condutor de uma problematização da pretendida abertura para fora de si mesmo, na qual o Dasein heideggeriano quer se afirmar para além de toda autoconfirmação inerente às filosofias da (...) consciência. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Alteridade. Dasein. Heidegger. Levinas. ABSTRACT This article seeks to situate the decisive moments that support Levinas’s proposal, elaborated throughout his reading of Heidegger, insofar as it breaks away from the thought of Being and proposes a thought of the Other. Levinas’s reading, it is argued, is marked from the beginning by the leading motif of a problematization of the supposed openness out of itself, in which the Heideggerian Dasein claims to affirm itself beyond all self-confirmation inherent in philosophies of consciousness. KEY WORDS – Alterity. Dasein. Heidegger. Levinas. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal del artículo es terminar quién es el Dasein desde el aparecer del mundo en la obra de Martin Heidegger Ser y tiempo. Para ello, se plantea la posibilidad de aprehensión del horizonte del sí mismo del Dasein, en contra de los propios análisis heideggerianos sobre el uno, y, también, se muestra de qué manera la mismidad del Dasein se presupone ya en el modo de aparición del mundo-entorno a través del existenciario significatividad. La conclusión del (...) artículo intentará descubrir los posibles rendimientos fenomenológicos de la apertura del horizonte del sí-mismo del Dasein.The main goal of the paper is to determine who is the Dasein itself from the appearance of the world in the Book of Martin Heidegger Being and time. For this, it raises the possibility of understanding the horizon of the self of Dasein itself differently to Heidegger’s analysis about the they and also it shows how the Selfhood of Dasein is presupposed already in the appearance of the world-environment through the existential meaningfulness. The conclusion of this paper will try to discover the phenomenological yields of Dasein’s openness as horizon of its Selfhood. (shrink)

In this paper, I situate Hans Blumenberg historically and conceptually in relation to a subtheme in the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos, Switzerland in 1929. The subtheme concerns Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s divergent attitudes toward philosophical anthropology as it relates to the starting points and goals of philosophy. I then reconstruct Blumenberg’s anthropology, which involves reconceptualizing Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in relation to Heidegger’s objections to the philosophical anthropology of his day (e.g., (...) Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) as unduly anthropocentric. Blumenberg builds on anthropologist Gehlen’s assumption that human beings are biologically underdetermined and therefore world-open. With this starting point, symbolic forms, such as myth and language, make up a compensatory life-world that supports human existence. Action, or self-assertion, which is necessary given the lack of a seamless fit between human beings and the environment, is thus circumscribed and shaped by the historied, cultural constructs that constitute a life-world. Human beings can thus be characterized as a species that continually renegotiates the shape of its existence through its relation to biological limits on the one hand and cultural constants on the other. Because Blumenberg and philosophical anthropology are relatively unexplored by Anglophone philosophers, and because philosophical anthropology is central to Blumenberg’s methodology generally, this study provides an introduction to both. (shrink)

A new program of teacher training in a dialogical spirit in order to prepare them towards working in the field of philosophy with children combines cultivating creativity and self-reflective thinking had been operated as a part of cooperation between the academia and the education system in Israel. This article describes the program that is a part of their practice towards co-operation between academia and schools as a part of PDS (Professional Development Schools) partnership. The program fosters creativity and self-reflective thinking (...) in schools and teacher training, and offers dialogical methods through the philosophy of Martin Buber, Emanuel Levinas and Paulo Freire. The program encourages adopting principles proposed by Martin Buber (1947, 1957, 1959), who perceived education as a dialogue among people whose humanity is fully manifested in its reciprocity. This is an unequivocal stance, maintaining that neither skillful technique nor exciting contents can replace the experience of the spontaneous, authentic concrete presence of the educator’s personality. The dialogic dimension of the program draws its significance from the principle of responsibility, as expressed by Emanuel Levinas (2003). It is based on the idea that the human being, as a speaking subject, does not place himself/herself in the center, but turns to the other. This committed attitude of the other must be expressed in education action, in clothing the naked and feeding the hungry as expressed by Paulo Freire (1973). These principles implemented in teacher education and teacher training requires active listening, a capacity to be response-able to environment in which teachers are situated and it seeks to uncover assumptions, reflect on concepts in use and assist the new teacher to be involve on a philosophical inquiry, as well as situating self-understanding in the context of philosophy of education. (shrink)

Christopher Yates explores how two of Walker Percy’s seminal texts call us to practice self-examination in a way that seeks to overcome deceptive clarities in our lives. It is misguided, he argues, to read the texts as ventures in surrealist exploration or pietistic moralizing. Instead, LG and LC are one project that centers on the predicament of human finitude by way of three phenomena: the dialogical unfolding of subjectivity and truth, the ethical summons of alterity, and the conversion of human (...) inauthenticity to reflective dwelling. Yates makes his case by reading Percy’s works through the lens of philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Heidegger. This approach fills a gap in Percy scholarship by explaining and securing the interrogative arc between Gentleman and Cosmos, and appreciating how Percy’s works enliven phenomenological accounts of human identity and knowledge. (shrink)

This essay critically develops Watsuji’s nondual ontology of the self. Watsuji shows that the self is constituted by its relational contact with others and by its immersion in a wider geo-cultural environment. Yet Watsuji himself had difficulty in smoothly bringing together and integrating these notions. By showing how these domains work together to constitute the self, I bring into view the unity at the ground of Watsuji’s thought and the implications of this account for key ideas in Heidegger’s philosophy (...) and for environmental ethics. (shrink)

Jean-Luc MARION, De surcroît. Études sur les phénomènes saturés ; Magda KING, A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time ; Andreas MICHEL, Die französische Heidegger-Rezeption und ihre sprachlichen Konsequenzen ; Alfred DENKER, Historical Dictionary of Heidegger’s Philosophy ; John B. BROUGH & Lester EMBREE, The Many Faces of Time ; Daniel O. DAHLSTROM, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth ; Cristina LAFONT, Heidegger, Language, And World-Disclosure ; Eliane ESCOUBAS & Bernhard WALDENFELS, Phénoménologie française et phénoménologie allemande ; (...) Eckard WOLZ-GOTTWALD, Transformation der Phänomenologie. Zur Mystik bei Husserl und Heidegger ; Martin HEIDEGGER, Ontology – The Hermeneutics of Facticity ; Arkadiusz CHRUDZIMSKI, Die Erkenntnistheorie von Roman Ingarden ; Jocelyn BENOIST, L’apriori conceptuel. Bolzano, Husserl, Schlick ; Dennis King KEENAN, Death and Responsibility. The “Work” of Levinas ; Dan ZAHAVI, Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Central Topics in Phenomenology ; Sonya SIKKA, Forms of Transcendence. Heidegger and Medieval Mystical Theology ; Alfred DENKER, Omdat filosoferen leven is. Een archeologie van Martin Heideggers Sein und Zeit; Seán HAND, The Levinas Reader ; ; Ion MINCÃ, Informatica şi teoria cunoaşterii. O paradigmã fenomenologicã a domeniului hardware ; John van BUREN, The Young Heidegger. Rumor of the Hidden King. (shrink)

What is time? This essay offers an attempt to think again about this oldest of philosophical questions by engaging David Hoy's recent book, The Time of Our Lives: A Critical History of Temporality, which proposes a “history of time-consciousness” in twentieth-century European philosophy. Hoy's book traces the turn-of-the-century debate between Husserl and Bergson about the different senses of time across the various configurations of hermeneutics, deconstruction, poststructuralism, and feminist theory. For him, what is at stake in such a project is (...) to distinguish between the scientific-objective “time of the universe” and the phenomenology of human temporality, “the time of our lives.” Hoy's approach is to organize his book around the three tenses of time—past/present/future—and to view objective-scientific time as derived from the more primordial forms of temporalizing lived experience that occur in our interpretation of time. In my reading of Hoy's work, I attempt to explore how “time” (lived, experiential, phenomenological) can be read not in terms of “consciousness” (Hoy's thematic), but in terms of the self's relationship with an Other. That is, my aim is less to establish a continental tradition about time-consciousness, understood through the methods of genealogy, phenomenology, or critical theory, than it is to situate the problem of time in terms of an ethics of the Other. In simple terms, I read Hoy's project as too bound up with an egological interpretation of consciousness. By reflecting on time through the relationship to the Other rather than as a mode of the self's own “time-consciousness,” I attempt to think through the ethical consequences for understanding temporality and its connection to justice. (shrink)

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)