Levinas in therapy

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-297
Author(s):  
Bob Plant
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Potential Significance ◽  
Therapeutic Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Explanation ◽  
The Way

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.

Face to Face with the Dead Man: Ethical Responsibility, State-Sanctioned Killing, and Empathetic Impossibility

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Molloy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Death Row ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Dead Man ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

The image of the death house with its polished tiles and gleaming oak chair is fading. I turn my attention to where life is. Although I have decided that I will not be going to death row again, I cannot bear to think that there are some men there now who are facing death alone. The other man's death calls me into question, as if, by my possible future indifference, I had become the accomplice of the death of the other, who cannot see it; and as if, even before vowing myself to him, I had to answer for this death of the other, and to accompany the Other in his mortal solitude. The Other becomes my neighbour precisely through the way the face summons me, calls for me, begs for me, and in so doing recalls my responsibility, and calls me into question.

Face to Face, Hand to Hand: Relations of Exchange in Hamlet

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Emily Shortslef
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Relation ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Mutual Awareness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sense And Respond ◽  
The Way

In this essay, Emily Shortslef reads three linked encounters between Hamlet and Laertes in Act 5 of Hamlet—their fight at Ophelia’s grave, Hamlet’s recollection of this event in his subsequent expression of remorse, and their fatal duel before Claudius—in relationship to Levinas’s conceptualization of the face-to-face encounter as the ethical relation. She shows how Levinas’s notion of the self as constituted through the encounter with irreducible and unknowable alterity makes these scenes visible as moments in which the self is called into question by the other. At the same time, in contrast to Levinas’s famously asymmetrical concept of relationality and responsibility, the relationality that emerges in these scenes—one generated by the risk inherent in fighting on stage—necessitates mutual awareness of the other’s presence, careful attunement to movement, and reciprocal gestures of provocation and response. Each character discloses himself through the way that their facing bodies sense and respond to the other’s motion. In these antagonistic but collaborative encounters between Hamlet and Laertes, Shakespeare stages a relation of exchange that at the end of the play will also enable an exchange of forgiveness.

scholarly journals The Other, Shame, and Politics: Levinas, Justice, and Feeling Responsible

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 381
Author(s):  
Steve Larocco
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Political Realm

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.

Gratitude as a Performative

2021 ◽  
pp. 000332862110238
Author(s):  
Armand E Larive
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Over Time

Rather than a general theory of gratitude, the paper focuses on gratitude as a human dynamic in appreciative recognition of others. The phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas’ face-to-face ethics is discussed as the subject’s call to responsibility for an Other. Following Jacques Derrida’s criticism of how this responsibility binds the subject into a hostage position regarding the Other, Paul Ricoeur repairs the working value of Levinas’ ethics by loosening the face-to-face obligation of the Other into one of reconnaissance, or thankful recognition. Without losing the face-to-face dynamic, the expression of reconnaissance is then investigated through J. L. Austin’s theory of performatives where gratitude is expressed as a speech act, or with the help of Judith Butler, where performativity is an activity expressing a reconnaissance between people over time. Three examples are given at the end.

scholarly journals The Possibility/Impossibility of Ethical Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Philosophical Reflection

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-243
Author(s):  
Shining Star Lyngdoh
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
The Face ◽  
Meaningful Engagement ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Ethical Demand

AbstractThe outbreak of COVID-19 has raised a global concern and calls for an urgent response. During this perpetual time of epidemic crisis, philosophy has to stand on trial and provide a responsible justification for how it is still relevant and can be of used during this global crisis. In such a time of crisis like that of COVID-19, this paper offers a philosophical reflection from within the possibility/impossibility of community thinking in India, and the demand for an ethical responsivity and response-ability to act ethically towards the Other (autrui) to show that philosophy always already emerges from within the context of crisis. As an alternative outlook to the thinking of totalitarian singularity and individualism, community—in its possible and impossible making—can offer more meaningful engagement with the other human being by being responsible and extending care towards the Other. The thinking of a shared community life is the facticity of one’s own being-together-in-common without the dismissal of individual differences as can be seen in the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, and there is an ethical demand that comes from the face-to-face ethical relationship with the Other as argued by Emmanuel Levinas.

scholarly journals UNFOLDING FLESH TOWARDS THE OTHER: LEVINAS’ PERSPECTIVE OF MATERNITY AND THE FEMININE

Problemos ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Irina Poleshchuk
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Conceptual Work

The paper discusses a formation of the ethical body in Levinas’ philosophy. The central question is how different modalities of subjectivity, brought into light in face-to-face relation with the other, constitute a particular ethical and sensible embodiment. The main topics of the paper are caress, touch, and pain, and their role in constructing ethical embodiment. The focus is given to such existential modalities as being-in-one’s-own-skin, the-one-for-the-other and having-the-other-under-one’s-own-skin. The conceptual work of maternity and the feminine in the face-to-face situation accentuate a meaning of responsive and responsible sensibility which Levinas reveals in his major works Otherwise than Being or Beyond the Essence and Totality and Infinity. Keywords: Emmanuel Levinas, sensibility, embodiment, flesh, face, the other, skin, caress, touch, pain, maternity, feminineAtveriant kūną kitam: leviniškoji motinystės ir moteriškumo interpretacijaIrina Poleshchuk SantraukaStraipsnyje analizuojamas etinis kūnas Levino filosofijoje. Pagrindinis klausimas – kaip skirtingi subjektyvybės modalumai, išnirę į šviesą betarpiškoje akistatoje su Kitu, įsteigia konkretų etinį ir juslinį įkūnytumą. Pagrindinės straipsnio temos yra glamonė, lietimas ir skausmas bei jų vaidmuo kuriant etinį įsikūnijimą. Dėmesys skiriamas tokiems egzistenciniams modalumams kaip „buvimas savo paties odoje“, „vienas kitam“, „kito buvimas po mano oda“. Motinystės ir moteriškumo konceptualinis veikimas akistatos situacijoje išryškina reikšmę atsakančio ir atsakingo juslumo, kurį Levinas atskleidžia savo pagrindiniuose darbuose „Kitaip negu būtis, arba anapus esmės“ ir „Totalybė ir begalybė“.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: Emmanuel Levinas, juslumas, įkūnytumas, kūnas, veidas, kitas, oda, glamonė, lietimas, skausmas, motinystė, moteriškumas.

The Hierophanic Facets of the Seraphic Hymns

Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Material World ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The People ◽  
Musical History ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.

Emmanuel Levinas: Um estudo sobre a ética da alteridade

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abimael Francisco do Nascimento
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Thought ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
First Philosophy

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.

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

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.

Familiar or Unfamiliar Context?

2015 ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
Amir Mashhadi ◽  
Saeed Khazaie
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mobile Game ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Learning Tasks ◽  
Content Representation ◽  
L2 Learning ◽  
The Face ◽  
Age Range

This chapter endeavored to devise a motivating way to engage learners in L2 English learning tasks presented through the mobile game (m-game). It started on the issue of whether types of a displayed picture on m-games had any significant relationship with learners' performance in the blended mode of L2 learning. To that end, a cellphone-based form of the nonEnglish game of 'Xane Bazi', modified as didactic 'Xane Bazi' for English vocabulary learning, was grafted onto the face-to-face mode of content representation in the blended language learning module. 100 Iranian boys and girls within the age range of 10-13 were divided into two groups to learn English vocabulary items during 12 sessions of an academic semester: One group played a version of 'Xane Bazi' with learner-made paintings and the other group played a version of the game filled with photos. The results hinted at the desired effect of utilizing m-games as applying learner-made painting condition to didactic 'Xane Bazi' was proved to significantly ratchet up the participants' L2 learning.

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