Abstract
The article discusses concrete and material aspects of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics. Firstly, the paper shows that, in contrast to several alternative modern conceptions of subjectivity, the Levinasian subject is not at a safe distance from the world but involved in it through sensing and “enjoyment” and therefore vulnerability. After that the paper highlights the materiality and concreteness of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics, a “deformalization” radically opposed to abstractness. It is precisely owing to the transcendence of the Other that the face is always concrete, always a specific, concrete, material solicitation of aid.
Highlights
The reference to a non-intentional layer, which we find in Levinas, forces an expanding or overcoming the absoluteness of Husserlian phenomenology
In an earlier article “Sensuality and Sensitivity” (1996), Lingis had acknowledged Levinas’s account that “sensuality is vulnerable and mortal from the start” (Lingis 1996, p. 80), later, in what seems like an about-face, to make mortality, he argued that vulnerability, finitude the defining essence of human existence is but a continuation of an ancient error
The Other in Levinas’s philosophy does not appear directly: s/he is encountered as face
Summary
Levinas’s language of passivity and imperative seems to weaken or even eliminate the independence and freedom of the subject, who is allegedly “persecuted” and “obsessed” by the other and becomes a “hostage.” This has led certain critics to argue that such responsibility for the other is too abstract, uncertain and empty. From another direction of criticism, is it not the case that infinite requirements and obligations for the other can never be fulfilled.
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