scholarly journals Unconditional Responsibility in the Face of Disastrous Violence

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-212
Author(s):  
Burkhard Liebsch

Abstract This essay draws attention to the question how a strong notion of unconditional responsibility in the face of the other’s mortality (as it was claimed by Emmanuel Levinas) is related to the historical experience of a disastrous violence that seems to annihilate not only numerous bodies, lives, identities and histories but, rather, any responsible religio to the other – whether living or dead. It is well known, that Levinas claimed that human responsibility demands not to let the other alone in his death. But if the other is already dead – like numerous others who share the same fate – keeps human responsibility silent, then? And how is this religio of human responsibility related to forms of disastrous violence which seem to deny it?

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin Dirscherl

The thinking of E. Levinas deeply influences the actual debates in Christian systematic theology. In catholic thinking, we know the norm of the Lateran Council in 1215: You cannot discern a similarity between God and man without discerning a greater dissimilarity between them. Do we take this norm seriously in our metaphysical ontology and theology? The otherness and goodness of God is the main problem in Levinas's philosophy and with regard to the catastrophes of the two world wars and the Shoa in the twentieth century he asks, what the significance of the talking about God in present times could be. Ethics has to become the »prima philosophia« because all our thinking and acting has an ethical significance and thus we may not forget this. Therefore, infinity and otherness receive an ethical meaning and constitute our responsibility as »inspired subjects« for the whole world. In the tradition of Jewish thinking, Levinas combines the unicity of each man and the universality of human responsibility for all people. In the face of the other, who is suffering, we are confronted with the face of God himself. What can we learn from Levinas today?


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abimael Francisco do Nascimento

The general objective of this study is to analyze the postulate of the ethics of otherness as the first philosophy, presented by Emmanuel Levinas. It is a proposal that runs through Levinas' thinking from his theoretical foundations, to his philosophical criticism. Levinas' thought presents itself as a new thought, as a critique of ontology and transcendental philosophy. For him, the concern with knowledge and with being made the other to be forgotten, placing the other in totality. Levinas proposes the ethics of otherness as sensitivity to the other. The subject says here I am, making myself responsible for the other in an infinite way, in a transcendence without return to myself, becoming hostage to the other, as an irrefutable responsibility. The idea of the infinite, present in the face of the other, points to a responsibility whoever more assumes himself, the more one is responsible, until the substitution by other.


Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-297
Author(s):  
Bob Plant

Emmanuel Levinas’ semi-phenomenological analyses of the “face-to-face” encounter with “the other” are frequently alluded to in the therapeutic literature. Indeed, for some therapists, Levinas provides the conceptual apparatus to reconfigure traditional therapeutic practice. While acknowledging the importance of his work, in this article I raise critical questions about the way Levinas’ ideas are often used by psychotherapists. The discussion is divided into five sections: First, I provide a short explanation of the motivations for writing this paper. Second, I offer an overview of some prominent themes therapists typically draw from Levinas’ writings. Next, I present my own reconstruction of the face-to-face encounter. Then, drawing on the previous reconstruction, I outline the main questions Levinas-inspired therapists need to address. Finally, I reconsider the potential significance of Levinas’ work for therapists.


Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 381
Author(s):  
Steve Larocco

Adi Ophir has suggested that the political realm is an order of evils, producing and managing regular forms of suffering and violence rather than eliminating them. Thus, the political is always to some extent a corrupted order of justice. Emmanuel Levinas’ work presents in its focus on the face-to-face relationship a means of rethinking how to make the political more open to compassionate justice. Though Levinas himself doesn’t sufficiently take on this question, I argue that his work facilitates a way of thinking about commiserative shame that provides a means to connect the face-to-face to its potential effects in the political sphere. If such shame isn’t ignored or bypassed, it produces an unsettling relation to the other that in its adversity motivates a kind of responsibility and care for the other that can alter the public sphere.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-306
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ryan

Discussions of alterity in biblical hermeneutics wrestle with paradox. While attempts to “speak for” the other frequently reduce to the same, interpretive approaches safeguarding difference are often unable to respond to concrete needs of actual others. Emmanuel Levinas's efforts to negotiate this paradox serve biblical hermeneutics well, challenging interpreters to recognise the call to responsibility encountered in the face of the other. Levinas himself is not without his others, and conversation with christology and Eucharistic ecclesiology (represented here by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Miroslav Volf, and John Zizioulas) challenges him toward more coherent accounts of transcendence in the human other, and of the communal obligations of the church toward the other. With these cautions in view, this article commends Levinas as a guide for breaking the bread of Scripture with others, even — and especially — when this demands “the bread from one's mouth”.


2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarence W. Joldersma

THIS PAPER ARGUES that the call to teach ought to be conceptualized not so much in terms of subject matter (‘what’) or teaching method (‘how’) but with respect to the subjectivity of the people involved – that is, of the one who teaches and of the one who is taught. Building explicitly on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the essay develops the idea of a responsible subject as the condition that makes visible the distinctiveness about the call to teach, suggesting that God's call to teach manifests itself through the face of the student, in the asymmetric relation between the teacher and the student as the other. In doing so, the teacher becomes a responsible subject for and to the student, instead of merely for the subject matter and the methods of teaching. Familiar tensions in teaching illustrate this call to responsibility.


GeoTextos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamille Da Silva Lima

A relação lugar-identidade apresenta uma ambivalência que vai da celebração à condenação, ganhando novo fôlego após os anos 1990 tanto com a relevância que os movimentos identitários de resistência (étnicos, raciais e de gênero) alcançaram, na luta pelo lugar, enquanto território, quanto na força que o clamor pelo respeito à diferença e pelo reconhecimento do sentido opressor e colonial da identidade receberam, questionando o papel dos processos de territorialização nos conflitos e na negação da diferença que promovem a captura do Outro pelo Mesmo. Deslocamos a questão da relação identidade-diferença para o nexo consciência-lugar, desfazendo esta associação que dá relevo ao sentido frente ao sem-sentido. A prevalência da consciência é compreendida como um dos instrumentos da razão imperialista-colonizadora, eurocêntrica, e por isso é necessário fissurá-la para um outro sentido geográfico de identidade. Mas como significar nossa relação geográfica e sua implicação para a identidade libertando-se das amarras da consciência e dos modelos coloniais de intelecção do ser? Este é o principal questionamento mobilizador do artigo, o qual será enfrentado a partir da experiência com os indígenas Payayá e da interlocução com a filosofia de Emmanuel Lévinas, como metafenomenologia, no sentido de um pensamento descolonial latino-americano. Abstract IDENTITY AND PLACE IN THE METAPHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PAYAYÁ’S ALTERITY The identity-place relationship presents an ambivalence that goes from celebration to condemnation, gaining a new impetus after the 1990s, both with the relevance that identity resistance movements (ethnic, racial and gender) have achieved, fighting for the place – as territory –, as with the strength that crying for respect differences and the oppressive and colonial sense of identity received, questioning the role of the territorialization processes in the conflicts and in the denial of the distinctions that promote the capture of the Other by the Same. We move the question of the identity-difference relationship to the nexus between consciousness-place, undoing this association that gives relevance to sense in the face of the non-sense. The prevalence of consciousness is understood as one of the instruments of the imperialist colonizing reason, Eurocentric, and therefore it is necessary to break it into another geographical sense of identity. But how do we give meaning to our geographical relationship and its implication to identity, freeing ourselves from the bonds of consciousness and the colonial models of the intellection of being? This is the main question that mobilized the paper, which will be faced from the experience with the Payayá natives and the interlocution with the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, as methaphenomenology, toward a Latin American descolonial thinking.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (004) ◽  
pp. 120-128
Author(s):  
Aleksandr BELAREV
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Jan Słomka

Lévinas presents atheism as the original good condition of the soul before acknowledging or rejecting God. Such description is closely linked to the notion of separation. Man is a created being, but a separated one, self-contained, though not absolute. Even if not causa sui, he may exist on his own. The description is radically different from that by Augustine, who refers to creation as the participation of man in God. Similarly, there is an almost literal contradiction between the statement by Lévinas and the words of Tertullian, claiming that the soul is Christian by nature. A comparison of Levinas’ text with the theology of Karl Rahner also points to significant differences. Rahner presents the awareness of God as a transcendental, unthematic experience. Lévinas also states that the awareness of God is unthematic, however, he does not share Rahner’s description of the experience of God as the primary transcendental experience. According to Lévinas, God comes from outside through the face of the Other. Levinas’ analyses seem highly interesting for fundamental theology and the theology of spirituality.


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