scholarly journals Sumud Freedom Camp: Levinas’ Face-to-Face in Praxis

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 256
Author(s):  
Robin Podolsky
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Political Program ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

In Levinas’s thought, the subject emerges and is founded in relationship with the other, in the face-to-face. In response to other’s summons, the call to respond with discourse, not violence to the vulnerable face of another person, the subject is constituted, and all human society, hence all justice, becomes possible. This relationship, in which the other is always higher than oneself, is complicated by questions of justice and politics. The subject is obliged to respond unreservedly to her neighbor, but what happens when neighbors disagree and the necessity to adjudicate claims arises? This paper describes, based on the author’s direct experience and study, the nonviolent practice of relationship-building initiated at Sumud Freedom camp by diaspora Jews, Palestinians and Israelis who came together in the south Hebron desert hills to form a nonviolent community in which to encounter one another. Initiatives such as Sumud Camp do not represent retreats from the political. They do prioritize the interhuman face-to-face, relationship-building, and they seek to evolve political program based on personal investments in other people’s well-being. Thus, they represent an instance of Levinasian praxis from which a grass new roots politics might emerge.

scholarly journals La politique comme le lieu de l’universalisation de l’exigence éthique chez Levinas

2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-181
Author(s):  
Ericbert Tambou Kamgue
Keyword(s):  
Final Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Third Party ◽  
Ethical Requirement

Levinasian philosophy is characterized as a philosophy of ethical subjectivity and asymmetrical responsibility. Ethics is understood as the subject that gives itself entirely to the Other. However, the Other is never alone. His face attests to the presence of a third party who, looking at me in his eyes, cries for justice. There is no longer any question for the subject to devote himself entirely to the Other (ethical justice), to give everything to him at the risk of appearing empty-handed before the third party. How then to serve both the Other and the third party? The question of the political appears in the thought of Levinas with the emergence of the third party who, like the Other, challenges me and commands me (social justice). The third party establishes a political space. Politics is in the final analysis the place of the universalization of the ethical requirement born from face-to-face with the face of the Other.

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 Transcendência e Materialismo em Memórias do Subsolo

Numen ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Sudário Cabral
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Short Novel ◽  
Wet Snow ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century

Este artigo analisa a obra de Dostoiévski, Memórias do Subsolo, apresentando o universo filosófico e político no qual se deu a sua gestação. A pequena novela traz consigo o confronto entre as principais ideologias políticas da Rússia do século XIX, colocando frente a frente materialismo versus romantismo, oferecendo o cenário do encarniçado conflito entre os chamados homens novos, da geração de 1860, e os representantes da geração de 1840, reconhecidos como homens supérfluos. O artigo está dividido em dois atos e procura descrever os distintos núcleos narrativos que organizam a primeira parte da obra, intitulada “O subsolo”, e a segunda parte, “A propósito da neve molhada”. Após apresentar os singulares universos filosóficos e políticos nos quais a novela está inserida, o artigo procura demonstrar o lugar explosivo desta narrativa, que foi articulada como crítica religiosa e núcleo de desconstrução das virtudes estéticas e políticas da modernidade.The present article analyses Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, presenting the political and philosophical atmosphere which conditioned its genealogy. This short novel highlights the conflict between the main political ideologies in Russia during the 19th century, putting face-to-face materialism versus romanticism and presenting the terrible conflict that took place between the so-called “new men” belonging to the generation of the1860s, and the representatives of the generation of the 1840s, known as the “superfluous men”. The article is divided in two main parts and it seeks to describe the distinct narrative frames which structure, on the one hand, the first part intituled “The Underground”, and, on the other, the second part intituled “On the Subject of the Wet Snow”. After describing the distinct philosophical and political contexts within which the novel is set, the article tries to demonstrate that the narrative is deliberately woven in order to function as a religious critique and an instrument to deconstruct the esthetical and political virtues of modernity.

scholarly journals The Ethical Value of the Inhumanity in Art A Levinasian Reading

Itinera ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aisha Pagnes
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Text ◽  
Mature Work ◽  
And Inversion ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Ontology Of Art

Reality and its Shadow, a brief yet powerful essay written in 1948, is the only text where Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) deals solely with the ontology of art. Already in this early text, we can see how his understanding that ethics is the ground of philosophy drives his discussion. The nature of art is therefore treated in relation to what it does, ethically, to the subject, the maker, and the viewer. Art is the “inhumanity” and “inversion” of ethics. Only philosophical criticism reintegrates its “inhumanity” in the ethical relation. The strength of Levinas’s philosophy issues from a pre-cognitive commitment to the “other”, epitomised in the “face to face” relation. Any philosophy emphasising the primacy of the subject over and above the “other” crumbles under his reading. Yet this same strength implies that those domains where the “face to face” relation is obscured lead to irresponsibility. One such domain is art. In this essay I argue that by applying his mature work to the criticism he advances in Reality and its Shadow we can find ethical value in art in virtue of its “inhumanity” and “inversion”. That is, we can agree with Levinas that art leads to irresponsibility, and yet ascribe to it positive ethical value in Levinas's own terms. This can help concretise the tension between the ethical and unethical aspects of art within a Levinasian framework.

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.

Democratic Resilience

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The Face ◽  
Distinguished Group

Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? What can make some democratic institutions resilient in the face of such challenges? Democratic Resilience brings together a distinguished group of specialists to examine how polarization affects the performance of institutional checks and balances as well as the political behavior of voters, civil society actors, and political elites. The volume bridges the conventional divide between institutional and behavioral approaches to the study of American politics and incorporates historical and comparative insights to explain the nature of contemporary challenges to democracy. It also breaks new ground to identify the institutional and societal sources of democratic resilience.

To what question is the Badiouan notion of the subject an answer? On the dialectical elaboration of the concept in his early work

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Jan-Jasper Persijn
Keyword(s):  
Direct Consequence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Work Up

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject ( Théorie du Sujet) was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, it investigates to what extent the (early) Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse (Lacan) and a certain Marxist discourse (Althusser) insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document