The ethical significance of illeity (Emmanuel Lévinas)

Heythrop Journal - Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 125-138

  Purcell, Michael ^a  

^a St John and St Columba   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48349141048     PISSN: 00181196     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2265.1996.tb01015.x     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Richard McCormack, Notes on Moral Theology, 1965-1980 (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 499-500
2. The article in question is: Albert C. Outler, 'The Beginnings of Personhood: Theological Considerations', Perkins Journal 27 (1973), pp. 28-34
3. McCormack, Notes, p. 500.
4. Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), pp. 161-2 (hereafter OB)
5. originally published as Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)
6. Karl Rahner, 'The Hiddenness of God' in Theological Investigations XVI (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p. 234
7. Karl Rahner, 'Reflections on Methodology in Theology' in Theological Investigations XI (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 104
8. Emmanuel Lévinas, L'Au-delà du verset (Paris: Éditions du Minuit, 1982), p. 155 (hereafter ADV)
9. Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), p. 190 (hereafter TI)
10. originally published as Totalité et infini: Essai sur l'exteriorité (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969)
11. Lévinas, OB, p. 63
12. Lévinas, TI, pp. 188-9
13. Emmanuel Lévinas, Existence and Existents, translated by A. Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), p. 48 (hereafter EE)
14. originally published as De l'existence à l'existant (Paris, Fontaine, 1947)
15. Lévinas, TI, p. 191
16. Lévinas, EE, p. 49
17. Emmanuel Lévinas, Preface (1979) to Time and the Other (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 30 (hereafter TO)
18. originally published as Le Temps et l'autre (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1979)
19. Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, translated by S. Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 43
20. originally published as Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969)
21. Cf. p. 61
22. Entretien, p. 62
23. Infinite Conversation, p. 77
24. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 235ff
25. For a brief outline of the relationship between Care (Sorgen), Concern (Besorgen) and Understanding (Verstehen), see Johnson J. Puthenpurackal, Heidegger: Through Authentic Totality to Total Authenticity (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987), pp. 27-8
26. Lévinas, TI, p. 194
27. Lévinas. TI, p. 197
28. first published as Ethique et infini (Paris: Fayard, 1982)
29. Emmanuel Lévinas, Humanisme de l'autre homme (Paris, Fata Morgana), p. 51 (hereafter HAH)
30. Edith Wyschogrod writes in a footnote in The Ethical Metaphysics of Emmanuel Lévinas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974): 'Nowhere in Lévinas' work does the problem of avoiding a world behind the scenes appear more pressing. In the attempt to bypass Kantian noumenality on the one hand, and the Hegelian reduction of being to reason on the other, Lévinas seeks to solve the dilemma by reading a double meaning into the already present instantiations, into what already exists phenomenally. What is present is all that is. What lies beyond being intrudes into the world of phenomena but its meaning wells up from the phenomenon itself and eliminates the need for intermediate idealization. Meanings lie hidden yet are available to immediate moral awareness rather than to thematising consciousness. It is not difficult to see that Lévinas has given ethical weight and import to Heidegger's notion of forest trails. To those who understand forest lore, these trails are meaningful. Similarly there are signs for those who seek a retrieve of being' (p. 147, n. 58)
31. (See Lévinas, OB, pp. 11-14.)
32. Derrida's implicit standard of rationality and meaningfulness is inadequate, for language taken as representation is only 'a mode of its promordial work of opening interlocutors to each other for mutual service' (see Steven Smith, 'Reason as One for Another' in R. Cohen [ed.], Face to Face with Lévinas [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986], p. 61)
33. Edwin Muir, 'The Difficult Land' in Collected Poems 1921-1958 (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), p. 237
34. Edith Wyschogrod, Ethical Metaphysics, p. 147
35. Lévinas, OB, pp. 12-13
36. cf. Emmanuel Lévinas, En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: J. Vrin, 1988), p. 201 (hereafter DEHH)
37. M. Faessler, 'L'Intrigue du Tout-Autre: Dieu dans la pensée d'Emmanuel Lévinas' in Jacques Rolland (ed.), Les Cahiers de La Nuit Surveilée: Emmanuel Lévinas (LaGrasse: Éditions Verdier, 1984), p. 141
38. Lévinas, DEHH, p. 202
39. See Blanchot, Infinite Conversation, pp. 36-40.
40. Emmanuel Lévinas, 'Phenomenon and Enigma' in Collected Philosophical Papers, translated by A. Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 71
41. Lévinas, OB, p. 148
42. Lévinas, ADV, p. 156
43. Lévinas, 'Phenomenon and Enigma' in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 71.