Emmanuel Levinas
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Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995, b. Lithuania, d. Paris)
was a contemporary Continental French philosopher and Jewish theologian/Talmudic scholar whose works dealt in between the studies of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and postmodernism. His life was witness to many wars; in WWI, his family was forced to flee to the Ukraine from Lithuania, there witnessing the Russian revolutions of 1917, in 1920 they returned to Lithuania, but he soon left to study philosophy in Strasbourg, France and then Freiburg (under Husserl) and back to Strasbourg where he was awarded the doctorate in 1929; he became a naturalized citizen of France in 1931 and was soon after drafted into the French army with the start of WWII; he was sent to the front lines and captured and, in 1940-45, detained in the Stalag as a POW in the Fallingsbotel forced labor camp near Hanover—this is where he began work on E&E. Later, he taught and then directed a Jewish high school in Paris, before becoming an University professor at Poitiers (1961), then Nanterre of the U. of Paris (1967), and the Sorbonne (1973 to his retirement in 1979). |
Early to Mid Main Works
- Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930 dissertation, but published in 1963)
- On Escape [De l’évasion] (1935)—escape as the weariness of the disorder of the time; introduces the Il y a as eternal truth, then life as a suffering game that feels like a trap, riveted to Being, we desire to break the chains (the fact that moi est soi-même, that the I is oneself) and flee—this need for escape allows us to rethink being qua being (the ‘need’ is not a lack, but a fullness, the ground of our existence (even as it is pleasure or nausea—abysses, intensities, concentrations in the instant), hence, the escape is a ‘transcendence’ as a continual directedness to something other than ourselves, other than our situations, our embodiments … thus, access to a temporality that is neither the moment we await in anticipation nor the flow of time).
- Existence and Existents [l’Existence à l’Existant] (1947)—anonymous Being as the source of the emergence of (a) being.
- Time and the Other (1947)—lectures expand notions of time (as relationship of the subject with the other), time’s relation to being, and the Other from E&E.
- Totality and Infinity (1961)—the face of the Other (radical alterity) as the possibility of ethics, responsibility to and before the face.
- Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974)—face of the other supplemented with the ‘Third,’ as the generative force of infinite possibilities, the trauma of impossible choice, demand of justice, and develops ‘substitution’ of the self for another as the Other’s hostage.
Philosophical Overview
Levinas’ philosophy is generally characterize by his declaration of ‘Ethics as First Philosophy’—emphasis on the ‘right’ to be, rather than just what is Being?, instead of why being rather than nothing, he asks how being justifies itself. Complacency of being is to be disrupted; ethics does this best. Ethics begins and therefore found in the face of the Other; this is the disruption of being.
Key Ideas
The “Il y a” [“There is …”]—the “present absence” of Being, of impersonal existence (the ‘personal Other’ [autri] is later characterized as the ‘Face,’ a radical alterity as the face of the other). It is the generality manifested as anonymous, impersonal, indifferent, but critical to the formation of subjectivity; it is the indifference of a primary ontological relationship between Being and a being. The impersonality of the Il y a is the radical alterity against which an ethical proximity of the face of the Other stands out and surmounts the impersonal; it provides the possibility for the ethical. This challenges the strict existential premise of ‘existence precedes essence’ by being the ground preceding the existent, and also challenges the dialectic of being and nothing as it presences itself as something that is neither a being nor is nothing. It is the ‘beyond’ of being and thereby also a beyond of nothingness; it is an ‘evil’ that is not a lack in the presencing of Being, nor is it becoming, but is an a-subjective being-present of being.
Access to the Il y a: a return/revert to nothingness, e.g., reductions done by imagining such, experiencing horror, experiencing insomnia, etc..
The Light and Dark: Being identified by the light and visibility, which are created from the darkness (Being as the indeterminate, revealed through mood—the Il y a); to sink into Being is to sink into the dark turmoil, it horrifies us, e.g., in insomnia; light, however, is a quasi-transcendence, a condition of possibility, yet not outside of the world. For Husserl, light indicated intentionality of the awakened consciousness; for Levinas, this intentionality becomes ‘lived affectivity,’ not a ‘ray’ or ‘beam’ of light that is directed at something. In the light, the existent’s moods are desire and sincerity, versus Heidegger’s care and circumspection—hence, more ‘ontic’ than Heidegger’s ‘ontological’ frame. While Heidegger’s Being calls to us through anxiety, Levinas indeterminate dark does not (his call comes only from the Other); however, both are ‘beginnings.’
The Hypostasis: while it is much like the presentation of a being, it is more similar to Heidegger’s Ereignis, the event, than it is Dasein; it is the appearance of an existent; it concerns consciousness (but is not simply the same thing as consciousness, but is his replacement for the idea of subjectivity) as an awakening (but is not thinking), but a rather passive power, and also its own opposite or dissolution into sleep, hence bears an activity of something like exit from Being, a negative transcendence (although is not spirit, nor is it a part of a dialectic of the me and world). (Akin to the medieval emanation theory version of hypostasis, it is a natal but non-causal, non-temporally-linear simultaneity of flow and containment arising from and overflowing itself.)
Access to the Il y a: a return/revert to nothingness, e.g., reductions done by imagining such, experiencing horror, experiencing insomnia, etc..
The Light and Dark: Being identified by the light and visibility, which are created from the darkness (Being as the indeterminate, revealed through mood—the Il y a); to sink into Being is to sink into the dark turmoil, it horrifies us, e.g., in insomnia; light, however, is a quasi-transcendence, a condition of possibility, yet not outside of the world. For Husserl, light indicated intentionality of the awakened consciousness; for Levinas, this intentionality becomes ‘lived affectivity,’ not a ‘ray’ or ‘beam’ of light that is directed at something. In the light, the existent’s moods are desire and sincerity, versus Heidegger’s care and circumspection—hence, more ‘ontic’ than Heidegger’s ‘ontological’ frame. While Heidegger’s Being calls to us through anxiety, Levinas indeterminate dark does not (his call comes only from the Other); however, both are ‘beginnings.’
The Hypostasis: while it is much like the presentation of a being, it is more similar to Heidegger’s Ereignis, the event, than it is Dasein; it is the appearance of an existent; it concerns consciousness (but is not simply the same thing as consciousness, but is his replacement for the idea of subjectivity) as an awakening (but is not thinking), but a rather passive power, and also its own opposite or dissolution into sleep, hence bears an activity of something like exit from Being, a negative transcendence (although is not spirit, nor is it a part of a dialectic of the me and world). (Akin to the medieval emanation theory version of hypostasis, it is a natal but non-causal, non-temporally-linear simultaneity of flow and containment arising from and overflowing itself.)
Existence and Existents [l’Existence à l’Existant] (1947):
Preface (xxvii):
While identifying the Platonic idea of the Good beyond Being as a grounding premise, this establishes how the movement of an existent to the Good is not the Platonic or canonical sense of a transcendence, but is an Ex-cendence, a departure from Being.
Introduction (1-5):
Existents (beings) have already made contact, a contract, with Existence (Being), thus, are not isolatable from Being itself. The adherence here is given/accomplished by a stance within an INSTANT wherein Being posits being and being masters Being (a mastery as a subjugation). How, then, do we approach Being? The relation manifests as an EVENT, one grasped in fatigue and indolence.
The work is within the influence of Heidegger, but seeks to depart from a few key aspects. The two key departures are against the Heideggerian ideas of being as ecstatic and as a dialectical relation of being-nothingness; Levinas argues these as mere phases of the more primal, more originary Being: the Il y a [there is …].
Chapter One: The Relationship with Existence and the Instant (8ff):
Il y a as Being we become aware of when all is laid bare (8).
Light and Night as existent and Existence, being and Being (as Il y a) (9).
The Struggle: relation of being to Being (10).
Fatigue and Indolence: refusals (11).
Weariness concerns existence itself; weariness in existence as a reminder of our commitment to exist; weariness is a desire to escape existence (11-12).
Indolence concerns beginnings, the beginning, therefore concerns existence itself; indolence is an aversion to effort (13). It is an impossibility of beginning and an effecting of beginning. Beginnings are not free; there is already something we can lose before we begin (14). (Hence, beginnings here unlike games (14).)
Action is an inscription into Being; indolence is the recoil before action; it is not peace, but is suffered as an affliction by boredom (14).
Inwardness is the feeling of being burdened with the self (that one is oneself, le moi est soi-meme), and this is why we are indolent (16). Indolence is prior to action (17).
Fatigue and the Instant (18ff):
Fatigue is indicated with a feeling of numbness: revelatory of how fatigue is in action/labor (18-9). Effort surges from and falls back into fatigue. There is the present that lags behind in this gap opened between effort and fatigue (20). Fatigue’s condemnation (20) borne within effort concerns the Instant (21) (illustrated by music (21-22)) and is about taking up the instant as an inevitable present (23).
To be weary is to be weary of Existing (23). To ACT is to take on a present—this is servitude, subjection; this is the CONSTITUTION of an EXISTENT (23). This is an ought, a must; the HYPOSTASIS (25) is herein constituted and, too, the present constituted by taking charge in the lag of self behind self (25).
Chapter Two: The World (p.27ff.):
Prefacing Contextualization: While the Preface and Introduction concentrate the text’s focus on ‘Being,’ remember how apt the title is—Existence and Existents: this text is about ‘Existence’/‘Being,’ but this is also approached through the existent/being … hence, chapter one shows us best how we approach Being through the moments like fatigue, and chapter two will focus on ‘the world,’ namely, ‘being-in-the-world’—the existentialist primary premise of the thrownness of the existent into existence in such a way one is not separable from one’s ‘being-in’ … chapter three will turn to Existence itself, the sort without an embeddedness in the world, then chapter four will explore the Hypostasis (appearance of an existent in existence that is a fleeing from existence) in detail, and finally a brief conclusion. So … for chapter two, where we are mainly looking at the existent/beings, recall chapter one’s description of ‘the Instant’—think about being in and through time: the instant is right now, the present, and there are ways of being through time that are flows (like the duration of music where its instants are without self-possession, hence, there is no present in music) and those like punctuated discrete periods in succession (like the duration of effort that is all stops, and herein effort takes on the instant, even as it struggles and lags behind it). In its instant, effort is an undertaking, serious, fatigue, and suspends all play; effort is the effecting of an instant (so to act is to take on a present); it is caught up with the instant as an inevitable present in and to which it is irrevocably committed.
Instead of the Heideggerian connection of intentionality and “Care” [Sorge]—wherein ‘care’ is the unification of the fundamental structures of Being, e.g., being-in-the-world, being-with, being-towards-death, and there by shows that the unification of the fundamental traits of beings to be a ‘care for,’ an intentional directedness that characterizes one’s dispositional stance within Being as ecstatic, as ‘outside of one’s self’—Levinas connects intentionality in the world to desire (intentionality in the instant or immediate will be soon differentiated) (28).
Revises “contemplation” as intentionality as desire, hence, as a taking hold of what is given in advance (38).
It is not the “I” that is given (38). The “I” in the world tends to and withdraws from things; inwardness and exteriority (39).
The exteriority of things is given as Form (39).
Intentionality now connected radically to “sense”—intentionality as the origin of sense: as luminosity (40). Light, then, is the condition for the possibility of phenomena, that is, for meaning (40).
Review and Critique of Canon: Kant and Descartes (41-3);
Levinas’ position: “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is, then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being” (43).
While identifying the Platonic idea of the Good beyond Being as a grounding premise, this establishes how the movement of an existent to the Good is not the Platonic or canonical sense of a transcendence, but is an Ex-cendence, a departure from Being.
Introduction (1-5):
Existents (beings) have already made contact, a contract, with Existence (Being), thus, are not isolatable from Being itself. The adherence here is given/accomplished by a stance within an INSTANT wherein Being posits being and being masters Being (a mastery as a subjugation). How, then, do we approach Being? The relation manifests as an EVENT, one grasped in fatigue and indolence.
The work is within the influence of Heidegger, but seeks to depart from a few key aspects. The two key departures are against the Heideggerian ideas of being as ecstatic and as a dialectical relation of being-nothingness; Levinas argues these as mere phases of the more primal, more originary Being: the Il y a [there is …].
Chapter One: The Relationship with Existence and the Instant (8ff):
Il y a as Being we become aware of when all is laid bare (8).
Light and Night as existent and Existence, being and Being (as Il y a) (9).
The Struggle: relation of being to Being (10).
Fatigue and Indolence: refusals (11).
Weariness concerns existence itself; weariness in existence as a reminder of our commitment to exist; weariness is a desire to escape existence (11-12).
Indolence concerns beginnings, the beginning, therefore concerns existence itself; indolence is an aversion to effort (13). It is an impossibility of beginning and an effecting of beginning. Beginnings are not free; there is already something we can lose before we begin (14). (Hence, beginnings here unlike games (14).)
Action is an inscription into Being; indolence is the recoil before action; it is not peace, but is suffered as an affliction by boredom (14).
Inwardness is the feeling of being burdened with the self (that one is oneself, le moi est soi-meme), and this is why we are indolent (16). Indolence is prior to action (17).
Fatigue and the Instant (18ff):
Fatigue is indicated with a feeling of numbness: revelatory of how fatigue is in action/labor (18-9). Effort surges from and falls back into fatigue. There is the present that lags behind in this gap opened between effort and fatigue (20). Fatigue’s condemnation (20) borne within effort concerns the Instant (21) (illustrated by music (21-22)) and is about taking up the instant as an inevitable present (23).
To be weary is to be weary of Existing (23). To ACT is to take on a present—this is servitude, subjection; this is the CONSTITUTION of an EXISTENT (23). This is an ought, a must; the HYPOSTASIS (25) is herein constituted and, too, the present constituted by taking charge in the lag of self behind self (25).
Chapter Two: The World (p.27ff.):
Prefacing Contextualization: While the Preface and Introduction concentrate the text’s focus on ‘Being,’ remember how apt the title is—Existence and Existents: this text is about ‘Existence’/‘Being,’ but this is also approached through the existent/being … hence, chapter one shows us best how we approach Being through the moments like fatigue, and chapter two will focus on ‘the world,’ namely, ‘being-in-the-world’—the existentialist primary premise of the thrownness of the existent into existence in such a way one is not separable from one’s ‘being-in’ … chapter three will turn to Existence itself, the sort without an embeddedness in the world, then chapter four will explore the Hypostasis (appearance of an existent in existence that is a fleeing from existence) in detail, and finally a brief conclusion. So … for chapter two, where we are mainly looking at the existent/beings, recall chapter one’s description of ‘the Instant’—think about being in and through time: the instant is right now, the present, and there are ways of being through time that are flows (like the duration of music where its instants are without self-possession, hence, there is no present in music) and those like punctuated discrete periods in succession (like the duration of effort that is all stops, and herein effort takes on the instant, even as it struggles and lags behind it). In its instant, effort is an undertaking, serious, fatigue, and suspends all play; effort is the effecting of an instant (so to act is to take on a present); it is caught up with the instant as an inevitable present in and to which it is irrevocably committed.
- (1) Intentions
- Note: Remember that “intentionality” was a critical philosophical premise in Husserl’s phenomenology—his insight is that all consciousness is intentional, which means that all consciousness is consciousness of something, a directedness of oneself to the other, giving and openly receiving—and was adopted as just as important for Heidegger and Sartre and descriptive of not just a ‘knowing’ or ‘perception,’ but of the meaning of beings themselves. “Intention” in Latin, intentionem, is a “stretching out,” “an effort or exertion,” and “attention”—the noun is active, from the verb intendere, meaning “to turn one’s attention” from the literal meaning “to stretch out.”
Instead of the Heideggerian connection of intentionality and “Care” [Sorge]—wherein ‘care’ is the unification of the fundamental structures of Being, e.g., being-in-the-world, being-with, being-towards-death, and there by shows that the unification of the fundamental traits of beings to be a ‘care for,’ an intentional directedness that characterizes one’s dispositional stance within Being as ecstatic, as ‘outside of one’s self’—Levinas connects intentionality in the world to desire (intentionality in the instant or immediate will be soon differentiated) (28).
- Desire (28, 30, 34-)
- Desire as consumption versus desire as insatiable (34-5)
- Conscious/Unconscious (28-9)
- Sincerity (29, 33-, 36, 38)
- (Canonical View): Things as ends; existence: intentional movement from inwardness to exteriority (29)
- Finitude (33)
- The Other: Clothed beings; the Nude; Form (30-31-)
- Social Life (32-)
- Husserl’s Epoche; Heidegger’s tool; Marxist rendition (33-4, 37)
- (2) Light
Revises “contemplation” as intentionality as desire, hence, as a taking hold of what is given in advance (38).
It is not the “I” that is given (38). The “I” in the world tends to and withdraws from things; inwardness and exteriority (39).
The exteriority of things is given as Form (39).
Intentionality now connected radically to “sense”—intentionality as the origin of sense: as luminosity (40). Light, then, is the condition for the possibility of phenomena, that is, for meaning (40).
Review and Critique of Canon: Kant and Descartes (41-3);
Levinas’ position: “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is, then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being” (43).