Levinas Possibility Dialogue Straners

Problemos, 2020

The destruction of man in the Shoah or Holocaust did not mean that Levinas argues in favor of turning away from the socio-historical reality to cultivate his own little garden. The deepest truth of subjectivity can be found in an alterity that calls for a socio-political responsibility. The political implications are rooted in different layers of Levinas’s thought. In his Talmudic comments, Levinas questions the reality of war as the truth of politics. But his explorations of subjectivity, ethical relationality and society allow to understand different political options such as contract theory (responsibility in the first person), liberation philosophy and human rights (responsibility in the second person) and the necessity of building a just society (ethics in the third person). Paradoxically, a just and equitable society ignores the uniqueness of the unique other. While organized responsibility is necessary, it introduces a new form of violence. In this article, we bring together ...

Levinas and Political Theory How best to avoid the Levinas Effect, as it has been called, the tendency to make Emmanuel Levinas everything to everyone? One way is to demonstrate that Levinas’ thinking does not fit into any of the categories by which we ordinarily approach political theory. If one were forced to categorize Levinas’ political theory, the term inverted liberalism would come closest to the mark. As long, that is, as one emphasizes the term “inverted” over “liberalism.” Levinas’ defense of liberalism is likely the strangest defense the reader has encountered. We should, argues Levinas, foster and protect the individual because only the individual can see the tears of the other, the tears that even the just regime cannot see. The individual is to be fostered and protected for the sake of the other individual. Whether this has anything to do with “real” liberalism, and whether it should, is the topic of this essay.

Contemporary Political Theory

Recent political critiques and appropriations of Emmanuel Levinas' work demonstrate the need to fundamentally reevaluate the meaning and status of his philosophy. Both the Marxist critiques (often apropos Lacan) and 'third wave' applications interpret Levinas' singular and unique relation to others-a bond which prohibits even the slightest trace of historical, hermeneutic, or political context-as the greatest obstacle to a Levinasian politics. From this standpoint, Levinas offers little more than a hyperbolic ethics that, at best, ignores, and, at worst, provides philosophical cover for, the political status quo (often defined by capitalism, imperialism, and Eurocentrism). To counter this established link between Levinas' philosophy and his potential for political thought, this article reexamines the significance of the decontextualized social relation. I argue that such interpretations misapprehend the intended analytical depth of Levinas' thought, which, in turn, misconstrue the relationship between Levinas and more traditional social ontologies. As a consequence, Levinas' valuable normative import for political theory is obscured. By shifting our perspective, we can understand Levinas as articulating a philosophy of political utopianism, well-suited to the challenges we face in our present conjuncture. (link below to the online version of the article)

The inseparability of ethics and politics: Rethinking the third in Emmanuel Levinas, 2009

Emmanuel Levinas is variously used to provide a conceptualization of ethics from which to deduce an ethical politics, an account of the movement from ethics to politics or an exhortation to continually interrupt politics in the name of ethics. What all these approaches share is a reading of Levinas where ethics and politics are separated and ethics is prioritized. My argument in this article is that if the concept of the Third is given due weight in Levinas's work then this separation and prioritization is untenable. The reading advanced foregrounds the Third and in doing so demonstrates that the unproblematized 'ethics' often drawn from Levinas is more complex than might initially appear. I argue that if the Third is taken seriously then Levinas's work leads to a requirement to think in terms of the ethicopolitical, so complicating any attempt to deduce politics from ethics which draws on this.

Analecta Hermeneutica, 2010

Emmanuel Levinas has been credited, or at least associated, with a number of socalled "turns" in contemporary thought. The first, which still remains the prevailing reading of Levinas and which is drawn primarily from his groundbreaking work Totality and Infinity, credits him for the "ethical turn" in contemporary philosophy by the priority he gives to "ethics as first philosophy." To simplify a great deal, before Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and more broadly poststructuralist theory and deconstructive philosophy, were seen as largely nihilistic endeavors-that is, as simply negative thought procedures containing no fundamental commitments and contributing little to the positive efforts at determining meaning, fostering shared values, and clarifying a greater understanding of the good. After Levinas, however, it has been precisely this nihilistic narrative of deconstruction that has itself been deconstructed. This reversal is something that informs not only the reading of Derrida, deconstruction, and poststructuralism, but after the Levinasian ethical turn, even ethical theory itself must answer to the radical challenge issued by that of deconstruction and must made to account to the call of the Other. As Derrida puts it in his eulogy for Levinas, our thanks to Levinas is due at least in part for his entire recasting of the ethical, for with Levinas we are faced with an "ethics before and beyond ontology, the State, or politics, but also ethics beyond ethics." 1 Or, as argued by Simon Critchley, the rupture marked by the before and after Levinas in the reading of Derrida marks "a third wave in the reception of deconstruction, beyond its literary and philosophical appropriations, one in which ethical-not to mention political-questions are uppermost." 2 We will return to the question of Levinas and the political, and more specifically, the relation of the ethical to the political, in due course, but regarding Levinas"s recasting of the

Responses of Mysticism to Religious Terrorism. Sufism and Beyond, 2020

To take a stance against the mystic underpinnings of Islamic terrorism, which serves to justify "glorious martyrdom," one might have to look for an appropriate countervailing mysticism. However, to be in search of a concrete, suitable alternative amidst too many mystical traditions to choose from, such a counter approach does not necessarily have to start from an explicit mysticism. And somehow unexpectedly, such a countervailing notion we find in what I call, "the mystic undertones in Emmanuel Levinas' metaphysic of ethics." Those unfamiliar with Levinas' thinking may question the term "undertone," but the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) does not assent to an explicit mysticism. He considers mysticism to be a nostalgia which culminates in a religious and thereby socially isolated Self that is indifferent to the Other as his fellow man. In its place, he argues for the differential notion of the "metaphysical other," as the one who initiates my ethical responsibility within the social realm. However, one early text of his, "The Trace" ("La trace," 1963; "La trace de l'autre," 1964),1 shows the undeniably mystical undertones of his social ethic. My aim, therefore, within the perspective of Levinas' elaboration of "the trace of the Other"purporting the ethical imperative not to kill-is to touch on the mystic natural (the body), the social (the other) and the spiritual (God) layers in his metaphysic of ethics. By doing so, it must become clear that a Levinasian reworking of a "fundamental mystic" would be anathema to any fundamentalist-terrorist notion of the same.2

2006

Emmanuel Levinas' thought seems to be strictly neither rational, phenomenological nor ontological, and it thus intentionally exposes itself to the asking of the question 'why call it philosophy at all'? While we may have trouble containing Levinas' thought within our traditional philosophical boundaries, I argue that this gives us no reason to exclude him from philosophy proper as a mere poser, but rather provides the occasion for reflection on just what it means, in an ethical manner, to call something 'philosophical'. Instead of asking whether or not philosophy can 'contain' Levinas' thought, I contend that it would be more ethical to instead re-phrase the question in terms of 'sociality'. When we do this, I argue, we can indeed justifiably call Levinas' thought philosophy. BIOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY Paul Formosa is a postgraduate research student in the Philosophy department at the University of Queensland. His thesis is on the topic of evil, considered from an ethical perspective, with special emphasis on the work of Hannah Arendt. He has forthcoming publications on his thesis topic appearing in the Journal of Social Philosophy and Philosophy and Social Criticism. His other research interests include Kant, ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of the social sciences.

Philosophy and Social Criticism

Emmanuel Levinas’ radical heteronomous ethics has received a great deal of scholarly attention. However, his political thought remains relatively neglected. This essay shows how Levinas moves from the anarchical, ethical relationship with the Other to the totalizing realm of politics with his phenomenology of the third person, the Third. With the appearance of the Third, the ego must respond to more than one Other. It must decide whom to respond to first. This decision leads the ego from the an-archical, ethical realm to the realm of politics. Although the Third universalizes the an-archical relationship with the Other into the political realm, it does not supplant the original ethical relationship. Instead, there is a never-ending oscillation between ethics and politics. The world of institutions and impersonal justice must be held in check by the an-archical responsibility for the Other. Levinas calls for both an-archy and justice.