Émmanuel Lévinas

Phénoménologie de la filiation

by Laura-Maï Gaveriaux

Emmanuel Levinas and the Prophetic Voice of Postmodernity

by Anthony Beavers

Da Totalidade ao Infinito - Quanto às possibilidades de superação das limitações éticas da Cultura Ocidental Contemporânea: um estudo à luz do pensamento de Emmanuel Lévinas

by Herlon Bezerra

BEZERRA, Herlon A. Da Totalidade ao Infinito - Quanto às possibilidades de superação das limitações éticas da Cultura Ocidental Contemporânea: um estudo à luz do pensamento de Emmanuel Lévinas. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia. Fortaleza: 2006.(Dissertação)

Este trabalho apresenta dois contextos significadores últimos: (1) por um lado, deve o mesmo ser entendido como... more Este trabalho apresenta dois contextos significadores últimos: (1) por um lado, deve o mesmo ser entendido como participante dos jogos argumentativos praticados na tradição hermenêutica do pensamento filosófico, particularmente naquele espaço teorético que reúne Fenomenologia, Pensamento Existencial e as Filosofias da Vida; (2) por outro lado, este exercício compartilha das preocupações morais que marcam a humanidade nos últimos séculos, em especial àquelas que dizem respeito à possibilidade e necessidade de significação ético-filosófica do multiculturalismo, tenso e caótico, que marca as urbanizadas sociedades contemporâneas, visando produzir condições culturais globais capazes de possibilitar a convivência pacífica entre as inúmeras diferenças em choque cotidiano. Nesse sentido, o mesmo encontra suas direções investigativas nas seguintes pressuposições: embora seja a Ética uma particularidade cultural grega, foi mesma “imposta” às mais diversas culturas “incorporadas” pelo violento processo
global de expansão e domínio em que se possibilitou, estabeleceu e desenvolveu a Civilização Ocidental. Os efeitos das evidentes contradições morais de tal processo
impõem severas limitações éticas à Cultura Ocidental Contemporânea, uma vez que, em resposta a tais contradições, dissemina-se o relativismo como único critério universal de julgamento ético das condutas, quer de indivíduos quer de
coletividades humanas. À luz do pensamento ético de Emmanuel Lévinas, propõe-se neste trabalho que a possibilidade de superação ética de tal condição cultural reside numa difícil escolha a ser hoje realizada pela consciência filosófica: de um
lado, a reposição do universalismo, fictício e violento, possibilitado na tendência intelectualista do logos grego e as abstrações de suas Luzes; de outro, a assunção das exigências advindas da imediaticidade concreta da Sensibilidade e da Proximidade, única fonte para uma universalidade humanamente significativa, já que pré-originária do próprio humano e, assim, anterior a toda possível cultura.

Levinas Beyond the Horizons of Cartesianism

by Anthony Beavers

Originally published as Levinas beyond the Horizons of Cartesianism: An Inquiry into the Metaphysics of Morals. American University Studies, Series V, Volume 150. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

The very subjection of the subject: Levinas, heteronomy and the philosophy of education

by Anna Strhan

presented in April 2009 at the annual conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

A Look Anew at Beckett's Other Peg

by Dan Mellamphy

Modern Drama 49(4), pp.490-500, Winter 2006

The topic of this essay, as the title suggests, is
Endgame’s ‘dramatis non-persona’ Mother Pegg,
and how... more The topic of this essay, as the title suggests, is
Endgame’s ‘dramatis non-persona’ Mother Pegg,
and how this non-persona functions as the focal point
not only of that play in particular (Endgame), but figurative-
ly—or rather, figurelessly: that is, as a function (function-
ally) rather than a figure per se—more generally
in Beckett’s work. As early, indeed, as 1935,
Beckett in his works began to delve or dig
(‘claw’, as he once put it) deeper and deeper into
his personae—and ‘the persona’ more generically—
in order to come into contact with the non-
persona obscured by the persona, the non-
being ‘masked’ or ‘covered over’ by being itself.
In Endgame, Mother Pegg is this ill-seen, ill-said ‘illeity’
(non-person) displaced—replaced—by the ‘personae’
present and presented in the play; personae that
(as we come to learn in Endgame’s diegesis)
are presented—illuminated—onstage
by dint of a denial: the denying of any light
to Mother Pegg. At a critical point in the play
we are told (by way of the character Clov) that
the light which shines upon the stage
shines by the grace of a prior disgrace:
the death by darkness of an absent other,
Mother Pegg (who ‘died...of darkness’...which explains
her nonappearance in the play: her ‘existence by proxy’
as Samuel Beckett would say). This absent other
or ‘être manqué’ is, I argue, the focal point
qua vanishing-point of the play itself
and of Beckett’s writerly gaze en générale
(poetic and dramatic) from the late 1930s or 1940s onward.

http://uwo.academia.edu/documents/0010/5279/Mellamphy_-_A_Look_Anew___Beckett_s_Other_Peg_-_Modern_Drama_49.4.pdf
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Responsibility and Revision: A Levinasian Argument for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (Cont Phil Rev)

by Benjamin Yost

Most readers believe that it is difficult, verging on the impossible, to extract concrete prescriptions from the... more Most readers believe that it is difficult, verging on the impossible, to extract concrete prescriptions from the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Although this view is largely correct, Levinas’ philosophy can, with some assistance, generate specific duties on the part of legal actors. In this paper, I argue that the fundamental premises of Levinas’ theory of justice can be used to construct a prohibition against capital punishment. After analyzing Levinas’ concepts of justice, responsibility, and interruption, I turn toward his scattered remarks on legal institutions, arguing that they enable a sense of interruption specific to the legal domain. It is here that we find the conceptual resources most important to my Levinasian abolition. I argue that the interruption of legal justice by responsibility implies what I call the “principle of revisability.” The principle of revisability states a necessary condition of just legal institutions: To be just, legal institutions must ensure the possibility of revising any and all of their rules, principles, and judgments. From this, the argument against capital punishment easily follows. Execution is a legal act, perhaps the only legal act, that cannot be undone. An application of the principle of revisability to this fact leads to the conclusion that legal institutions cannot justly impose capital punishment. After defending these points at length, I conclude with some observations on the consequences of the principle of revisability for law more generally.

‘Bringing Me More Than I Contain …’: Discourse, Subjectivity and the Scene of Teaching in Totality and Infinity

by Anna Strhan

published in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2007

This paper explores the relationship between language, subjectivity and teaching in Emmanuel Levinas’s 'Totality and... more This paper explores the relationship between language, subjectivity and teaching in Emmanuel Levinas’s 'Totality and Infinity.' It aims to elucidate Levinas’s presentation of language as always already predicated on a relationship of responsibility towards that which is beyond the self, and the idea that it is only in this condition of being responsible that we are subjects. Levinas suggests that the relation with the Other through which I am a subject as one uniquely responsible is also the scene of teaching. Through examining these ethical conditions of subjectivity, I suggest that this notion of the self as oriented towards the Other in a relation of passivity presents a challenge to many of the standard topoi of teaching and learning and invite us to consider the nature of teaching in a provocative new manner.

Levinas allende Europa y el judaismo: la responsabilidad levinasiana en el contexto latinoamericano.

by Lutz Keferstein

Conferencia leída el 29 junio de 2009 en la Universidad de Toronto, Canadá.

¿Quién es responsable de la debacle de los pueblos latinoaméricanos? ¿Por qué el Imperio tiene una invencible... more ¿Quién es responsable de la debacle de los pueblos latinoaméricanos? ¿Por qué el Imperio tiene una invencible capacidad de reproducirse?

Escrito para aquellos a quienes la discusión sobre el Eurocentrismo, la globalización y la autonomía de los pueblos les interesa.

2009 - Est-Il possible de dire l’éthique de la proximité? Contribution au dossier Kierkegaard–-Levinas

by Dominic Desroches

PhaenEx, hiv. 2009, Vol 4, N° 1, 112-145.

Résumé

Quand il se positionne face à Kierkegaard, Levinas a le réflexe de placer la pensée de l’auteur... more Résumé

Quand il se positionne face à Kierkegaard, Levinas a le réflexe de placer la pensée de l’auteur danois dans un idéalisme abstrait. Ce réflexe le conduit à croire que le Moi existentiel, égoïste, se détache de l’autre dans la violence et se trouve impuissant à revenir sur lui-même. Cet article veut montrer que, nonobstant cette critique, les deux auteurs, attentifs aux limites du langage, partagent de nombreux points en commun, tant et si bien qu’ils sont peut-être les deux plus grands représentants d’une éthique de la proximité que tente d’échapper au langage totalisant de la métaphysique.