Levinas Presentation

I. Our “Natural” Egoism

(a) violence: the order of the day

(a) violence: the order of the day

Emmanuel Levinas Philosopher and commentator on the Talmud Born in 1906 in Lithuania Died in Paris in 1995

Totality and Infinity Otherwise than Being Ethics and Infinity

Family was assassinated by the Nazis His life was dominated by the “presentiment and the memory of the Nazi horror” (“Signature”)

1917 – witnessed the Russian revolution in Ukraine 1923 – began philosophical studies in Strasbourg 1928-29 – studied under Edmund Husserl in Freiburg, contact with Heidegger 1930 – opted for French citizenship 1933 – Heidegger became politically committed to Nazism, became rector of Freiburg University 1930-32 – was preparing a book in Heidegger, which was later abandoned

(b) Rooted in conatus essendi

(b) Rooted in conatus essendi

Dasein = the only being for whom its own being is an issue Dasein is the ultimate “for the sake of which” Levinas: Dasein’s being is interesse, Dasein is self-inter-esseested

(c) Dasein and authenticity

Dasein individualizes itself by emerging from The They And taking charge of its existence, Appropriating even its own death

“When he (Heidegger) sees man possessed by freedom rather than possessing freedom he puts over man a Neuter (Being) which illuminates freedom without putting it into question.” (p. 38) “And thus he is not destroying but summing up a whole current of Western philosophy.” (p. 38)

The movement of TOTALITY “Thanks to truth, these realities, whose plaything I am in danger of becoming, are understood by me.” (p. 33)

(d) Centripetal movement/involution Two conceptions of TRUTH “Autonomy or heteronomy? The choice of Western philosophy has most often been on the side of freedom and the Same.” (p. 32) “Thus Western thought very often seemed to exclude the transcendent, encompass every Other in the Same, and proclaim the philosophical birthright of autonomy.” (p. 33)

(d) Centripetal movement/involution Two conceptions of TRUTH (i) heteronomy = “Truth would thus designate the outcome of a movement that leaves a world that is intimate and familiar . . . And goes toward another region . . . a beyond . . . Truth would imply . . . Transcendence (p. 30) =“Philosophy would be concerned with the absolutely other; it would be heteronomy itself.” (p. 30)

(d) Centripetal movement/involution (ii) Freedom or auto(self)-nomy(law) = free adherence to a proposition = the reduction of the other to the Same (p. 31) =“Freedom, autonomy, the reduction of the Other to the Same, lead to this formula: the conquest of being by man over the course of history.”

(e) JOUISSANCE or ENJOYMENT = the life of appropriation, integration, assimilation. = The ego emerges from material elements to dominate and enjoy them from an independent point of view (a certain distance by objectification). = because of our dependence on things we become independent individuals.

(e) JOUISSANCE : - Something eaten is ingested; - broken down into elements that become part of my body; - that which does not become part of us is eliminated.

(e) JOUISSANCE : possession Possession is the postponement of enjoyment “And here every power begins. The surrender of exterior things to human freedom through their generality does not only mean, in all innocence, their comprehension, but also their being taken in hand, their domestication, their possession.” (p. 36) “To possess is, to be sure, to maintain the reality of this other one possessed, but to do so while suspending its independence.” (p. 36)

(e) JOUISSANCE Work = giving definition to nature according to my needs and wants. The dignity of work lies in giving nature human nature; self is the source of meaning.

Knowing = movement of immanence. What is other (thing, experience, phenomenon) becomes in me. I situate an object in my mind and I can say “I know.”

(e) JOUISSANCE : knowing “To understand the non-I, access must be found through an entity, an abstract essence which is and is not (neutral=anonymous and universal). In it is dissolved the other’s alterity (otherness). The foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in the impregnable fortress of its singularity, instead of facing, becomes a theme and an object.” (p. 35) “Cognition consists in grasping the individual, which alone exists, not in its singularity which does not count, but in its generality, of which alone there is science.” (p. 35)

But if things do not resist the ruses of thought, and confirm the philosophy of the Same, without ever putting into question the freedom of the I, is this also true of men? Are they given to me as things are? Do they not put into question my freedom? (p. 36)

(f) Totality and society “In a civilization which the philosophy of the Same reflects, freedom is realized as wealth. Reason, which reduces the other, is appropriation and power.” (p. 36) = The perspective here is Egonomy or Egocentrism. = The egocentrism of Western culture and civilization finds theoretical expression in Western philosophy. “Every philosophy is—to use Husserl’s neologism—an egology.” (p. 35)

(f) Totality and society EGOLOGY = concretely practiced as objectification, manipulation, planning, and exploitation. = forming a pattern of action: Economy = community of self-preserving beings = a system of mutual satisfaction, political network of resistance, tension, war and peace, all on the basis of need and satisfaction.

(f) Totality and society Economic totalization of non-human elements through work is not (always entirely) bad. But what if this is applied to other human persons? =(thinking) ignoring the individuality of the other =(action) regarding the other as a power to be subjugated

“They (other people) wage war. War is not a pure confrontation of forces; it can perhaps be defined as a relationship in which force does not alone enter into account, for the unforeseeable contingencies of freedom—skill, courage, and invention—count too. But in war the free will may fail without being put into question, without renouncing its rights and its revenge.” (p. 36)

(f) Totality and society Tyranny: subjugates without killing But the enslavement of all is practically impossible.

Homo homini lupus   Everyone is driven to protect and expand his own totality. But egoism collides with the egoism of others. This situation is to everyone’s disadvantage.

(f) Totality and society Solution is compromise or the use reason to receive a reasonable domain within which to exercise freedom.  There is then a need for a rational order, an external authority, to govern all subjects: necessity of the state. BUT, egocentrism is still in force; selfishness remains the order.

(g) Re-envisioning society, opening up Totality In the egocentric model of society, the weak, the minority, and the powerless are forgotten. Attention will be given to the powerless only in so far as they pose a threat.

There is another way of thinking and being that moves from the Same to the Other. Recall Abraham, who, responding to the call of God, left Ur for an unknown place. This constitutes the ethical (other-centered) model of relation and society.

Totality

the Same

Odyssey

prise

Infinity

the Other

Exodus

sur-prise

Instead of seeing all realities as moments of the Same, all otherness that is irreducible must be recognized. Experience = an event integrated into my life. But there is an “experience” that breaks away from immanentization. It is located in the banal fact of conversation or the vocative situation.

“To understand the non-I, access must be found through an entity, an abstract essence which is and is not (neutral=anonymous and universal).

In it is dissolved the other’s alterity (otherness). The foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in the impregnable fortress of its singularity, instead of facing, becomes a theme and an object.” (p. 35)

In the vocative situation, one is FACE-TO-FACE with another person Focus is on the face-to-face relation Focus is on the person I talk to, who is irreducible to something that can be talked about. In speaking the other comes to the fore, irreducible to the Said.

To see the Other as Other is to see him in his FACE.

“We call a face the epiphany of what can thus present itself directly, and therefore also exteriorly, to an I.” (p. 45?)

“An object, we know, is integrated into the identity of the Same; the I makes of it its theme, and then its property, its booty, its prey, or its victim.

The exteriority of the infinite being is manifested in the absolute resistance which by its apparition, its epiphany, it opposes to all my powers. Its epiphany is not simply the apparition of a form in the light, sensible or intelligible, but already this no cast to powers; its logos is: ‘You shall not kill.’” (p. 44)

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The “face” here is used in a metonymic way: Levinas means the person as person (loob).

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Levinas calls this encounter an “epiphany.” But there is a certain suddenness to the encounter.

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Otherness is concretized in the face of the other person. •

Complete objectification is impossible

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“Enjoyment” of the other does not happen without bad conscience

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Irreducibility to traits or facticities

One always encounters others obliquely. Through a category or a system.

We encounter the other only insofar as s/he fits our categories, a set of expectations.

But what happens when the other looks at me or speaks to me?

When the Other regards me (autrui me vise), sees me, the Other “touches” me not because of beauty, talents, roles, but because of the nakedness of the Other’s face.

“To be sure, the Other (Autrui) is exposed to all my powers, succumbs to all my ruses, all my crimes. Or he resists me with all his force and all the unpredictable resources of his own freedom . . . But he can also—and here is where he presents me his face—oppose himself to me beyond all measure, with the total uncoveredness and nakedness of his defenseless eyes, the straightforwardness, the absolute frankness of his gaze.”(p. 45?)

In this encounter there’s a decentering. You were staring and the Other was under your stare. But there’s a sudden shift: the Other emerges as another center.

The face of the Other speaks. I experience the resistance of what has no resistance.

It’s not merely a perceptual experience, but a moral one. When I see the face of the other, I hear the command: “Thou shall not kill!”

“Not that conquest is beyond my too weak powers, but I am no longer able to have power: the structure of my freedom is, we shall see further, completely reversed.

Here is established a relationship not with a very great resistance but with the absolute Other, with the resistance of what has no resistance, with ethical resistance.

“Freedom is put into question by the Other, and is revealed to be unjustified, only when it knows itself to be unjust. Its knowing itself to be unjust is not something added on to itself and know itself to be, in addition, guilty.

A new situation is created; consciousness’s presence to itself acquires a different modality; its positions collapse.” (p. 36)

Ambiguity of the encounter with the face of the Other Height/superior

“lowness”/poverty

Resists my violence

powerless

Commands

pleads/begs

It opens the very dimension of the infinite, of what puts a stop to the irresistible imperialism of the Same and the I.” (p. 44)

The Idea of the Infinite and the Face of the Other

Descartes’ analysis of consciousness offers a formal structure close to the relation meant by Levinas.

The human mind thinks more than it can think. The infinite surpasses our capacity for conception.

Every genuine experience includes a surprising element irreducible to the autonomous production of the ego.

Self-consciousness discovers an irreducible relation to an-other that cannot be absorbed and could not have been created by itself.

“The idea of the infinite, in which being overflows the idea, in which the Other overflows the Same, breaks with the inward play of the soul and alone deserves the name experience, a relationship with the exterior.” (p. 46)

“In thinking the infinite, the I from the first thinks more than it thinks. The infinite does not enter into the idea of the infinite, is not grasped; this idea is not a concept. The infinite is the radically, absolutely, other.

The transcendence of the infinite with respect to the ego that is separated from it and thinks it constitutess the first mark of its infinitude.” (p. 42)

“Experience, the idea of the Infinite, occurs in the relationship with the Other. The idea of the Infinite is the social relationship.” (p.43)

“The ethical relationship is not grafted on to an antecedent relationship of cognition, it is a foundation and not a superstructure.” (p. 45)

The social relation ego and the Infinite

I and the Other

Before I understand myself

Before autonomy

“in” me and yet beyond me

I’m related to the other and yet separate

Gives me to myself

Gives my existence meaning

The Other’s emergence does not fulfill a need but answers my deepest Desire.

“Desire is unquenchable, not because it answers to an infinite hunger, but because it does not call for food. This Desire without satisfaction hence takes cognizence of the alterity of the Other.” (p. 47)

“The true Desire is that which the Desired does not satisfy, but hollows out. It is goodness.” (p. 47, see also footnote 66.)

The Other’s face is the revelation not of the arbitrariness of the will but its injustice . . . The infinite does not stop me like a force blocking my force; it puts into question the naïve right of my powers, my glorious spontaneity as a living being, a “force on the move.” (p. 48)

“Existence is not condemned to freedom, but judged and invested as freedom . . . This investiture of freedom constitutes moral life itself, which is through and through heteronomy.” (p. 49 and see footnote 73)

“The unssatisfiedness of conscience, the de-ception before the Other, coincides with Desire—this is one of the essential points of this exposition. The Desire for the infinite . . . [has] the rigor of moral exigency . . . For the benefit of which goodness is exercised.” (p. 49)

The face of the Other calls me to fulfill my INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY

“This situation is the moral conscience, the exposedness of my freedom to the judgment of the Other. it is a disalignment which has authorized us to catch sight of the dimension of height and the ideal in the gaze of whom justice is due.” (p. 51)

Fulfilling my infinite responsibility

me voici: Narito ako. apres vous: Ikaw muna, Kayo muna.

The Other is always ahead. And this makes sacrifice possible. This responsibility is not merely an attitude. It is very concrete, has an economic dimension.

Fulfilling my infinite responsibility

My response is always inadequate (like utang na loob).

Dostoevsky: “I am responsible for all, before all, and I more than others.”

There are other Others.