Levinas — Another ascetic priest?

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 137-156

  Benso, Silvia ^a  

^a SIENA COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949719317     PISSN: 00071773     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1996.11007147     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. I wish to thank John Llewelyn, Robert Bernasconi, and Brian Domino, for their generous suggestions and comments.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, W. Kaufmann trans. (New York: Vintage, 1969), hereafter referred to as GM.
3. By AC I refer to Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-christ, R.J. Hollingdale trans. (New York: Penguin, 1990). There Nietzsche writes that the priest “took the side of all décadence instincts—not as being dominated by them but because it divined in them a power by means of which one can prevail against the ‘world’” (AC 24).
4. On the impossibility of this autonomy turning into a morality, i.e., on the oxymoron contained in the expression “an autonomous morality”, see Daniel Conway, “Autonomy and Authenticity: How One Becomes What One Is”, in Essays in Honor of David Lachterman, The St. John's Review, 42, 2 (1994), 27–40.
5. SeeGilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, H. Tomlinson trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 122.
6. Again, see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy.
7. By TI I refer to Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, A. Lingis trans. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). The thesis that ethics is first philosophy is evident in the title of the article “Ethique comme philosophie première”, in Justifications de l'éthique, G., Hottois edt. (Ed. de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1984), 41–51.
8. Emmanuel Levinas, Noms propres (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1975), 106ff.
9. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, A. Lingis trans. (The Hague-Boston: Nijhoff, 1981), hereafter referred to as OBBE.
10. I would like to thank Daniel Conway for pointing out to me the dangers of asceticism inherent in Levinas's ethical project.
11. Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, A. Lingis trans. (The Hague-Boston: Nijhoff, 1978), hereafter referred to as EE.
12. On the notion of the elemental, see Alphonso Lingis, “The Elemental Imperative”, Research in Phenomenology 18 (1988), 3—21.
13. By CPP I refer to Emmanuel Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis trans. (The Hague-Boston: Nijhoff, 1987).
14. On the notion of the trace, see Edward Casey, “Levinas on Memory and the Trace”, in The Collegium Phenomenologicum: The First Ten Years, J., Sallis, G., Moneta and J., Taminiaux edts. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 241–255.
15. Therefore, the inanity of Kierkegaard's protest against Hegel's system.
16. By EI I refer to Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, R. Cohen trans. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985).
17. On this issue, see Theodor De Boer, “An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy”, in Face to Face With Levinas, R., Cohen edt. (Albany: SUNY, 1986), 83–115, and Robert Bernasconi, “Rereading Totality and Infinity”, in The Question of the Other, A., Dallery and C., Scott edts. (Albany: SUNY, 1989), 23–34. According to Bernasconi neither empiricism, nor transcendentalism (De Boer) are adequate to describe the face-to-face relationship, which is rather a rupture of ordinary experiences as well as conceptualization.
18. T., Wright, p., Hughes and A., Ainley, “The Paradox of Morality: An Interview with Emmanuel Levinas”, in The Provocation of Levinas, R., Bernasconi and D., Wood edts. (New York: Routledge, 1988), 169.
19. See also TI 113.
20. By DR I refer to the essay “Diachrony and Representation”, contained in Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, R. Cohen trans. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987).
21. See Jan De Greef, “Le concept du pouvoir éthique chez Levinas”, Revue philosophique du Louvain 68 (1970), 507–520.
22. Elsewhere Levinas writes that in face of the other “not that conquest is beyond my too weak powers, but I am no longer able to have power” (CPP 55).
23. In “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite” Levinas writes that “the infinite does not stop me like a force blocking my force; it puts into question the naive right of my powers, my glorious spontaneity as a living being, a ‘force on the move’” (CPP 58). The other measures me from her/his distance.
24. See Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), especially the last chapter, “A Question of Politics: The Future of Deconstruction”.
25. Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche: God is Dead”, in The Question Concerning Technology, W. Lovitt trans. (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 95ff.
26. This is the wish of the totalitarian ego dominating ontology; but such an activity is based on negation, and therefore rejected by Levinas. Since the negation can never be absolute, the I translates itself into an unhappy consciousness, extending the ressentiment toward alterity that has first brought the I to its voracious activity.
27. In Otherwise Than Being Levinas writes that “psychism is the other in the same without alienating the same” (OBBE 112); the relation of responsibility for the other is a “service without slavery” (OBBE 54), “nor a slavish alienation in spite of the gestation of the other in the same which this responsibility for others signifies” (OBBE 112).
28. By DEHH I refer to Emmanuel Levinas, En découvrent l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Vrin, 1949).
29. Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy”, R. Cohen trans., Philosophy Today 22 (1978), 133.
30. See Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge”, in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. A., Schilpp and M., Friedman edts. (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1967), 149.