Reading Of Levinas Research Articles

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170–1390. By Alice Hazard

This book is a challenging and inventive study of the face and faciality in medieval French literature. Alice Hazard’s core project is to rethink faciality, defined here as ‘the quality of being a face’ (p. 202), in a way that destabilizes and uncouples this concept from its associations and apparent affinities with the physiological face. Hazard also challenges the traditional view that the human face in medieval literature might offer any kind of reliable guide to individual subjectivity or interiority. She is more interested in the philosophy of faciality and the shifting planes and patterns of perception in medieval literature — its ‘engagement with the productive illusion of interiority’ (p. 146) — than, for example, the face as the site of gesture, physiognomic character, the expression of emotion, or the marker of ethnic or racial difference. The book’s conclusion makes it clear that, for Hazard, the face is not a text to be deciphered; but, in its mutability and instability, it is a ‘literary motif, a cultural model and a philosophical construct’ (p. 206). Four core chapters consider the face in Arthurian romance, in ‘doodles’ in the decorated margins of manuscripts (p. 82), in the opening scenes of Le Roman de la Rose, and in selected fabliaux. All four chapters explore the inherent and productive instability of faciality. Hazard draws her theoretical inspiration variously from Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Lacan, Silvan S. Tomkins, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Judith Butler, and others, while also engaging with recent scholarship and criticism on medieval French literature. Most of her primary texts and her theoretical approaches are oriented towards secular literature. This means that her reading of Levinas, for example, is somewhat selective, as she interprets his conception of otherness through the face primarily as a relationship with another subject, not with the divine. Throughout this book, Hazard consistently steers us away from the face as a stable sign that might be confined to or co-extensive with the physiological features on the front of our heads. For instance, her reading of the armed and helmeted combatants in Old French romances leads to a very subtle argument about the dispersal of faciality onto ‘codified facial surfaces’ such as the knight’s helmet and shield which both constitute the ‘facing surface’ of the knight and therefore, his face (pp. 148, 207). The chapter on Le Roman de la Rose uses Deleuze and Guattari to read the wall around the garden of Deduit as an example of faciality, while the discussion of the relationship between faces and genitalia in the fabliaux affirms how little one needs, in the surreal and improbable world of these stories, to make a face (p. 176). This book reads like a PhD that has been adapted — not entirely successfully — for publication as a monograph. It is somewhat weighed down by the burden of its theoretical material, and its prose is careful and dutiful rather than elegant or lively; nevertheless, it is a strikingly original book that makes a powerful intervention into contemporary theories of the face and faciality.

Is Finitude Original? A Rereading of “Violence and Metaphysics”

Abstract This article seeks to challenge what may seem to be an obvious assertion: that finitude is original in the sense that it must be presupposed that any possible meaning can only be thought beginning from this finitude. I do this through a rereading of Derrida’s epochal essay “Violence and Metaphysics,” which perhaps is the most decisive interpretation of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In the essay, Derrida demonstrates how Levinas is forced to betray his own intentions in his attempt to describe the Other as transcendent. By making use of a newly published lecture series, Derrida held at the same time as writing the essay, I show how Derrida’s reading of Levinas is intimately tied to his interpretation of Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysics of presence, and how both Levinas and Derrida end up in the paradox I call “original finitude.” I then show how new commentary literature on Levinas’ analysis of enjoyment gives us an alternative to Derrida’s notion of original finitude. I do not propose that this alternative overcomes Derrida’s problematic, but rather that it gives another option of how to relate to that which escapes the grasp of philosophy. The key difference will be whether transcendence is conceived as a failure of philosophy or its excess.

Heidegger as Levinas’s Guide to Judaism beyond Philosophy

This essay reflects on the way that Emmanuel Levinas stages the difference between Judaism and Philosophy, namely how he approaches Jewish thought as a concrete other of philosophy. The claim is that this mise en scène underlies Levinas’s oeuvre not only as a discourse about the Other, but as a real scene of an actual encounter with otherness, namely the encounter of philosophy with the epistemic otherness of Judaism. It is in the turn to Jewish thought beyond Philosophy that the essay identifies Heidegger’s strongest influence on Levinas. The essay’s reflection is performed through a reading of Levinas’s first major philosophical work of 1961, Totality and Infinity. The encounter between Philosophy and Judaism is explored in this context both as an epistemic and as a political event.

The ethics of the ethics of autonomous vehicles: Levinas and naked streets

My starting point in this article is that investigating the ethics of autonomous vehicles through the lens of the trolley problem is not only limited but also unethical. I construct my case by aligning myself with Niklas Toivakainen, who argues against David Gunkel’s reading of Levinasian ethics as an answer to the “Machine Question”. I adumbrate Toivakainen’s critique that the attempt to give a Levinasian face to the machine is an example of a compensatory logic – a way to avoid a deeper exploration of the moral dynamics from which our technologies emerge. I offer an extended reading of Levinas’s formulation of the face of the other to argue that while the machine cannot signify as a face, the machine can announce or anticipate the signification of the face which the self is infinitely responsible to. I reach this conclusion through focusing on the uncertainty and ambiguity of the signification of the face. I then argue that current approaches to the ethics of autonomous vehicles, based on variations of the trolley problem, fail to locate ethical responsibility to the other, precisely in its attempts to evade uncertainty. I demonstrate how an embrace of uncertainty can make the ethics of autonomous vehicles more ethical through a consideration of the concept of shared space and naked streets in the work of the late Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman.

Derrida’s Glas between Hegel and Levinas

Derrida’s Glas can be interpreted against the background of a confrontation with Hegel, after and with Levinas. Derrida’s position in front of the great shadows of tradition (see “Violence and Metaphysics”) becomes in Glas an exceeding of the limits, searching for the other than logos, for instance, remains or writing. Glas is interpreted on the background of Derrida’s reading of Levinas: against the archeologic totality of Hegel’s system, Glas does not oppose nevertheless the eschatological infinity of a metaphysical alterity, but rather the finite infinity of a transgressive desire for contingency. Language, art, and literature, much more than the ethical or religious dimension, are external phenomenological transcendence, against which Hegel’s system of absolute knowledge and Genet’s literary experiments are constantly measured.

Weak Action

The notion of “weak action” is developed in this paper in an attempt to overcome the schism between the action of a free political subject on the one hand, and their dependency on the support of others and the environment on the other. This paper focuses foremost on Judith Butler’s later work raising two different questions. First, following Butler and her critical reading of Levinas, the problem is raised how and at what price the ethics of vulnerability would be able to become not only the source of a critique of politics, but also the source of a concrete political action. Second, through Butler’s reinterpretation of Arendt’s political thinking, the notion of “action” is enriched by the dimension of vulnerability.

Levinas in Lyotard’s Ear

This article explores the seemingly exaggerated emphasis of Lyotard on the importance of hearing the ethical commandment in Levinas, instead of seeing or perceiving it in sensibility. Lyotard wants to read Levinas as a “Jewish thinker,” and his ethics as deeply connected to “Hebraic ethics.” Such a reading contrasts with phenomenological and Christian interpretations of Levinas, like Jean-Luc Marion’s, that focus on incarnation, the face, love, and the concrete relation to the other. Yet Lyotard outbids the rigor of commandment in Levinas, insisting on the radical heterogeneity of hearing and any phenomenological seeing. Ethics is completely outside phenomenology. This article argues that, instead of reading Lyotard as misreading Levinas, his approach can be one of the names for the skeptical phase that suspends or interrupts the Levinasian Said itself, especially when it tends to become excessively Christian.

La radicalité métaphysique de l’être chez les premiers phénoménologues français

Versions of the “Idealist” position dominated twentieth century Continental Philosophy, although this position has recently come in for influential criticism from contemporary “Speculative Realists”. My paper shows, however, that the basis for a forceful critique of the Idealist position was already laid by two crucial but poorly understood figures in the twentieth century continental tradition: Levinas and Sartre. I propose to defend herea Neo-Realist view together with Levinas and Sartre based on a demonstration of a “transphenomenality of being” against the Idealist option taken by the first phenomenologists. The goal of this work is to build arguments in favor of the Realist position against Husserl’s Idealism through a close reading of Levinas’ and Sartre’s ontological phenomenologies.

Sacred violence in mimetic theory and Levinasian ethics

ABSTRACTLevinas is famously opposed to the sacred and its association with violence. In Totality and Infinity, he writes that he seeks to describe a relationship with the other that is ‘purified of the violence of the sacred.’ René Girard’s attempt to explain the paradoxical nature of the sacred leads him to a sharp criticism of the sacred and like Levinas, he argued that the sacred is linked to violence and murder. Insofar as they both associate the sacred with violence, Levinas and Girard are often seen as bedfellows. In this paper, I will argue that they are irreconcilable, and that, moreover, reading Levinas with Girard shows just how much sacred violence can still be found in Levinas. It is conceivable that a similar argument could be levied against Girard, but that would be too much for one paper.

ENACTING LEVINAS’S INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY AS AN ETHICO-POLITICAL COMPROMISE

Levinas’s work does not offer us an ethical theory but seeks rather todescribe a pre-originary ethical encounter with the other. Within this face-to-faceencounter with the other, my subjectivity is held hostage because of an originaryasymmetry between us. This ethical asymmetry produces an infinite responsibilityto and for the other, in order that the singularity of the other be preserved. In orderto moderate such a demanding position Levinas introduces the third party whorestores justice by permitting ethical calculation. This marks a move from ethics topolitics. Nonetheless, there remains a lacuna between ethics and politics. I arguefor a reading of Levinas’s claim that the third party is an incessant correction ofthe asymmetry of proximity in order to posit infinite responsibility as thecompromise of ethics with politics. I discuss some implications for business ethics,in particular CSR, in light of these findings.

Alterity in Simone de Beauvoir and Emmanuel Levinas: From Ambiguity to Ambivalence

This article is meant to stage an encounter, a kind of rendezvous, between Emmanuel Levinas and Simone de Beauvoir regarding how alterity seems to enable an ethical relation for Levinas while closing one for Beauvoir. I will argue that Beauvoir's reading of Levinas on “the other” is not a charitable one, and the ethical ambivalence in Levinas's notion of alterity can motivate the praxis Beauvoir seeks for undoing social forms of oppression. I will start with Beauvoir's interpretation of alterity as “feminine otherness” in Levinas's ethics that, for her, originates in the violent perspective of male privilege. Then I will move to Levinas's response to this critique in a set of interviews with Philip Nemo, and to consideration of how a more charitable reading of alterity, understood as a sort of ambivalence in the structure of subjectivity, creates a close proximity between Levinas's and Beauvoir's ethics of action. I contend that both Beauvoir and Levinas respectively developed their ethics of action, either of ambiguity or of ambivalent alterity, in order to free thought from the absolute seriousness with which normative standards are held.

Decolonizing Dialectics by George Ciccariello-Maher

Reviewed by: Decolonizing Dialectics by George Ciccariello-Maher Ben Etherington Decolonizing Dialectics By George Ciccariello-Maher. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2016. At heart, George Ciccariello-Maher's Decolonizing Dialectics is a study of political identity. The three thinkers on whom he focuses each confront the conundrum of oppressed groups that fail to recognise their political agency, or are stymied in doing so. Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon and Enrique Dussel each conduct theoretical analyses and fashion concepts that enable these groups better to recognise themselves and their situations and so constitute themselves as radically oppositional political forces. Ciccariello-Maher begins with Sorel. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sorel contended that the European working class could not wait for objective conditions to "ripen" to the point at which their deepening immiseration would inevitably lead them to act. Their identity as a class "for itself," he argues, needs to be consciously instantiated through acts of mythologizing violence against their oppressors. For Fanon, similarly, racialised colonial subjects are not in a position to sign up to a vision of political struggle as a reciprocal structure of recognition and interdependency when colonisation had denied their humanity. They first need to overcome this ontological denial and, in so doing, forge the basis for a positive political grouping. Again, this requires constituting acts of violence. Turning to Dussel, Ciccariello-Maher argues that the former's reading of Levinas on alterity gives him the basis for a politics that is oriented to that which was historically external to the coloniser's ontological and epistemological regimes. Rather than conduct politics on the basis of a one-dimensionally conceived "historical subject" (129), whether that be a subject determined by race, gender, class, Dussel conceptualises the "pueblo" as a group fused by their various exclusions. The "pueblo" is, thus, an "identity of identities" (147). Ciccariello-Maher finishes his study by discussing Chavismo in Venezuela as an example of a "Pueblo" constituting itself and successfully capturing state power. This is a study for our times, attempting in political theory what intersectional activists have been doing in practice: grafting the identity politics of the 1980s and 90s with the re-emergence of first-world socialist politics in the wake of the global financial crisis. The challenge for Ciccariello-Maher, and others who share his aspirations, is to conceptualise an "identity of identities" that is sufficiently concrete for those who act on its behalf. Are these simply rainbow coalitions that form in response to particular issues only to dissolve, or can these alliances be turned into formal groupings that pursue lasting programs? As an argument against a certain kind of stodgy dialectical materialism, Ciccariello-Maher's thesis rests on two connected claims: i) that any dialectical political theory premised on mutual recognition and dependence between classes will be ineffective where one party is treated as "sub-ontological"; ii) that such relations of non-reciprocity are endemic to the colonial situation and its aftermath. This explains the title, which promises to "decolonize" the Hegelian-Marxian tradition by critiquing the assumption that all politics is one or another manifestation of the dialectic of capital and labour. Key for Ciccariello-Maher is the notion that the dialectic of oppressor and oppressed frequently needs to be "jumpstarted" by identity-based political acts. Once jumpstarted, though, the dialectical motion seems to behave in the same manner as that dynamic negation of antitheses given an ideal account by Hegel. The philosophical presuppositions of dialectics are not really interrogated by Ciccariello-Maher, let alone "decolonized." Ciccariello-Maher takes from Fanon in particular the notion that decolonial politics continually confronts the problem of ontological denial. Is this a pattern that extends beyond the thinkers that this study considers? For instance, do the ideas of the dependency school of economic theory, which saw itself as opposing neo-colonialism, in some way respond to the problem of ontological denial? Or does non-reciprocity in meta-geopolitical relations obey a different logic? In the South Asian context, does Gandhi's program of satyagraha, built as it was on the strong assertion of precolonial Indian identity, obey a decolonised dialectic more so than that of a rationalist communist like M.N...

Mediation and Its Shadow

Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno never spoke to one another. Both thinkers were of Jewish ancestry, though their lives would be impacted in distinct ways by the rise of Nazism. With these historical parallels in mind, this paper seeks to place these thinkers in a productive juxtaposition with regard to the status of ethics and politics in either’s work. In particular, I examine the ramifications of philosophical reflection on Auschwitz as a mediating event in post-war European philosophy, reading Levinas’s and Adorno’s theoretical differences as alternate philosophical responses to this momentous event. I argue that Levinas’s thought is ailed by the problem of immediacy, exemplified by his positing ethics as first philosophy and his rejection of the category of totality which, as Adorno highlights, is an important critical tool for an analysis of the form of society which produces Nazism.

The Renewal of Phenomenology in France: Levinas and Marion

Starting from Hans-Dieter Gondek’s and L/szl7 Tengelyi’s statement concerning the recent development of French phenomenology, I examine the relation between Marion’s phenomenology of givenness and Levinas’ ethics. Focusing on their common concept of the call (appeal), I demonstrate, first, that Marion’s general concept of the phenomenon is based on Levinas’ idea of the manifestation of the Other, which he deprives of its original ethical meaning. In the second part I criticize Marion’s anti-ethical reading of Levinas, while trying to give a tenable interpretation of the meaning of the ethical. Taking into consideration the results of the second section, in the third part, I look into the possibility of a different general phenomenology starting from Levinas’ ethics. By this rather sketchy idea I intend to provide a possible alternative to Marion’s general phenomenology of givenness, which maintains the privilege of the Other and, consequently, the primacy of ethics

Levinas’s Restlessness: “God and Philosophy” without Consolation

The paper reflects on the experience of reading Levinas’s ‘God and Philosophy’ paying particular attention to the ways in which it would have us read the word ‘God.’ Levinas refuses to let the word become the property of even the most radical treatment of religious faith. The word, the biblical word, must never serve the self-consolation of philosophy. Many of Levinas’s readers regret this aspect of his writing, but the paper argues that ‘God and Philosophy’ offers an exemplary introduction to Levinas’s most developed style of writing and thinking, and it does so while bringing to mind the question of the relation between Levinas’s (and, by implication, the reader’s) philosophy and their religion. The second part of the essay considers possible contexts (religious, philosophical and cultural) in which this question and ‘God and Philosophy’ itself can perhaps best be understood.

‘Ethics is an Optics’: Ethical Practicality and the Exposure of Teaching

The importance of Levinas's philosophy for education has been widely discussed. In ‘Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?’ however, Alistair Miller questions whether Levinas's work is of value at all, raising doubts about whether his philosophy can, in any way, be helpful when it comes to practical ethical decision-making, especially within education. Levinas's ethics, he argues, in the light of its lack of rational argument, amounts only to poetic imagery and mystical incantation. The purpose of this paper is to read Levinas in relation to education against this indictment by Miller. This paper proceeds by investigating the basis of Miller's arguments, in the light of exegesis of relevant aspects of Levinas's work. My purpose is not the positing of a new system or the formulation of systematic ideas of ethics but rather achieving an understanding of human experience, especially in contexts of teaching and learning, under a different, more accurate description. In doing so I attempt to show that Levinas's philosophy indeed provides a ground for ethics—that is, a means of understanding the practicality of ethics differently, beyond systematic approaches. In the last section, where education is discussed more directly, ethics will be seen as its very condition.

Introduction

Introduction

예술의 윤회, 철학의 해탈 : 레비나스의 「현실과 그 그림자」 독해

40여 년간 지속적으로 전개되었던 레비나스 예술론의 기본 골격이 형성된 모태와 같은 논문인 「현실과 그 그림자」는 레비나스의 예술론 이해에 핵심적인 중요성을 가지면서도, 높은 난해성과 밀도로 인해 안이한 독해를 거부한다. 이 글은 레비나스의 논문에 암묵적으로 전제되어 있는 배후의 존재론적 구도를 온전히 식별해내는 것이 그의 예술론을 이해하기 위한 열쇠라는 작업가설에 입각하여 레비나스 예술론의 독창성을 드러내려는 시도로서, 특히 플라톤과의 미묘한 차이를 부각시키는 길을 취한다. 이를 통하여 우선적으로 밝혀지는 바, 인식론적-존재자적 관점에 따라 예술을 보는 플라톤과는 달리, 레비나스는 현상학적-존재논리적 관점에서 예술에 접근하고, 인식 범주로 환원되지 않는 자신만의 미학 범주들을 고안함으로써, 예술이 독자적인 존재론적 함의를 지닌 사건 - 존재의 무명화 사건 - 임을 드러낸다. 다음으로, 본 논문은 이 예술 사건의 공간과 시간을 드러내는 범주들인 ‘닮음’과 ‘시간 틈새’가 각각 뜻하는 바를 규명하여, 레비나스가 본 예술이란 문명(文明)의 찬란한 현실이 드리우는 무명(無明)의 그림자 - 업보(業報)에 의한 중생(衆生)의 윤회전생(輪廻轉生)이라는 그늘 - 을 연출하는 것임을 밝힌다. 끝으로, 레비나스가 생각하는 대로의 예술과 철학의 대결 구도는 결국 〈윤회 대 해탈〉의 구도로 귀착되는 것임을 영화 『복수는 나의 것』의 예시를 통하여 보인다.

Ethics as a true revolution, another way to read Levinas or beyond

This paper criticizes social revolution, by focusing on the reconfiguration of the notion from an ethical point of view. It is divided in three sections: (i) Brother’s death; (ii) Remove the sandals; (iii) Thou wilt be as many as the stars. Each section contains Levinas’s thought as the main axis. Although it is well known that Levinas does not develop a theory of revolution, it is possible to find a fruitful analysis in light of his meditations about politics and ethics.

To Surrender or To Submit: Making Distinctions in Terms of Levinas’ One-for-the Other—A Reply to Gregory S. Rizzolo

An interdisciplinary dialogue between Levinasian philosophy and Kohutian self-psychology, while viable, benefits from clarification regarding shared terms (like “subjectivity,” “self,” and “other”) and distinctions between theoretical and practical constructs. This article considers how these types of distinctions might be made so that Levinas’ ideas can more productively inform a psychoanalytic context. Ghent’s article “Masochism, submission, surrender” (1990) suggests distinctions between the affective experiences of submission and surrender that help to develop a more experienced near reading of Levinas. Reading Levinas through or along side Ghent also helps the analyst recognize why submission might shade into moral masochism and how the analyst can discriminate between the two experiences in way that is informed by Levinas’ ethical stance.