Like Bread from One's Mouth: Emmanuel Levinas and Reading Scripture with the Other

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”.

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.


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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madipoane Masenya ◽  
Hulisani Ramantswana

In this article, two lenses are used to engage the task of African Biblical Hermeneutics. The one lens is derived from African wisdom, i shavha i sia muinga i ya fhi?, in which there is a need for people to affirm their own roots. Drawing from the wisdom of the preceding proverb, we argue that, in their scholarship, African biblical scholars have to take seriously their own African heritage and thus do justice to their contexts rather than rely heavily on Western paradigms if their scholarship is to impact communities and also contribute towards shaping the face of biblical hermeneutics as a whole. The other lens is an analogy derived from the following events in Jesus� life: incarnation, death and resurrection. The task of African Biblical Hermeneutics has to be a three-fold process for the Bible to be �gospel� in Africa: Firstly, the incarnation of the Word � the Bible as the Other has to incarnate into African contexts for it to become an African Word. Secondly, the death of the Word � this entails a critical engagement with the Word from multiple perspectives for it to be relevant to the struggles of African people. Thirdly, the resurrection of the Word � the biblical text has to be allowed to address and transform an African person in new creative ways.


Ritið ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-94
Author(s):  
Lára Magnúsardóttir

The article recounts the account from the Árna saga about Loftur Helgason’s trip to Bergen in 1282 and his stay there over winter, explained in terms of the formal sources about the organization of the government and changes in the law in the latter half of the 13th century. These changes were aimed at introducing into Iceland the power of both the King and the Church and in fact marked the actual changes throughout the Norwegian state. Loftur was Skálholt‘s official and the story about him was part of a long-standing dispute about the position of the chieftains versus the new power of the Church and the opposition to its introduction. The article defines the political confusion described in the Árna sagain Bergen in the winter of 1282-1283 as, on the one hand, changes in the constitution and, on the other hand, legislation, and at the same time whether the Kings Hákon Hákonarson and his son Magnús had systematically pursued a policy of having the Church be an independent party to the government of the state from 1247 onward until the death of the latter in 1280. When the disagreement is looked at as continuing, it is seen that Icelanders had made preparations for changes in the constitution with assurances of introduction of the power of the Church beginning in 1253 and the power of the King from 1262, but, on the other hand, the disagreements in both countries disappeared in the 1270s in the face of the conflict of interests that resulted from the laws that followed in the wake of the constiututional changes. Árna saga tell of this and how the disputes were described, but also that their nature changed as King Erikur came to power in 1280, as he gave the power of the King a new policy that was aimed against the power of the Church. Ousting of the archbishop from Norway and the Christian funerals of the excommunicated chieftains are examples of the conditions of government that could not have been, if the King had no longer had executive power over Christian concerns, as he had already conceded power over spiritual issues to the Pope in Rome with the Settlement at Túnsberg in 1277.


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):  

Ecclesiology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
Tina Beattie

Two related themes running through Pope Francis’ theology form the focus of this article: the importance of time over space in the context of the unfolding story of salvation as a journey through history, and the motherhood of the Church, personified in Mary. On the face of it, these two different theological metaphors are not easy to combine to form a coherent ecclesiology. The first develops the Second Vatican Council’s imagery of the Church as the pilgrim people of God, and the other draws on the ancient metaphor of the Church as Mother. This article explores each of these in turn, in order to suggest ways in which they can be creatively integrated to offer a revitalised ecclesiology for our times. However, this can only happen if the church takes a leap of faith to acknowledge the sacramental significance of the female body.


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