Abstract
Levinas’s constitutive analysis conflicts with his phenomenological descriptions. There are problems in his essential theses: Recognizing alterity is recognizing wants and needs. These are said to be unending, infinite. The wholly Other—God—is constitutive of the alterity of the other human. Ethics originates in Jewish religious history. Ethical absoluteness conflicts with political responsibility.
Highlights
Emmanuel Levinas introduced a new conception of sensibility
Space is fundamentally structured by the retreat into a sphere of the home, zone of rest and tranquility, and the outlying environment in which we move, supported by the ground that supports the things in their places
We breathe for the sake of breathing the good air, we eat in savouring the goodness of terrestrial nourishments, we drink in enjoying the tang and bouquet of the wine
Summary
Emmanuel Levinas introduced a new conception of sensibility. The primitive form of sensibility is the impersonal vigilance in insomnia that watches the beginningless endless continuity of the night. Levinas explains that things take form in the elements by my detaching them, appropriating them, making them meubles—furnishings. The sense of things is constituted by the subject that appropriates them; their very reality appears “as though they came from me.” They exist for my enjoyment, and lay no claims on me.
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