scholarly journals Comedy and humour: an ethical perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Mehrdad Bidgoli
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Life World

In this essay, I aim to study comedy and humour from an ethical perspective. My main proposal is that comedy and humour can be understood alternatively in the light of ethics, and in one sense, they actually begin, more effectively, with an ethical sensibility. Effective comedy and humour initiate through an ethical sensibility called “hospitality”; ideally, they are preceded by this ethical openness. I will argue that it is this pre-original ethical hospitality and openness that can give rise to more effective moments of comedy, humour, carnival, festivity and also laughter, opening the Self to the Other in order to be able to enter into a disinterested humorous (dialogic) experience. Hospitality is of prime importance here because it turns out to be part and parcel of comedy as it also underlies the ethics of alterity. I therefore suggest that the thoughts of both Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin can give rise to a fruitful study of ethics, comedy and humour. I will “reduce” socio-political complexities of our daily life-world to comic moments through Bakhtin, and then expose the reader to a Levinasian simplicity and ethical openness that actually takes place before effective comedy and humour can begin. In this essay, I mainly have literary/critical aims, and to fulfil that aim, I will briefly discuss two Shakespearean works and contextualize my thesis. The matter of studying comedy, humour and ethics in a broader cultural, social and/or philosophical context is open for other thinkers.

scholarly journals The identity/alterity nexus in international relations: two cases of encounter with difference

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-247
Author(s):  
Erica Resende
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Different Levels

The aim of this article is to survey the implications of the identity/alterity nexus in international relations (IR) as related to processes of othering for understanding conflict and violence in global politics. I will offer what I could call an ontology of difference in global politics, where I stress the reliance of understanding othering practices in global politics, as I explore two cases from which I ask the following questions: How do identity and identity formation processes occur and develop at different levels, times and dimensions? How do discourses of differentiation and identification help construct state identities and interests? Following Emmanuel Lévinas, I will argue that by seeking ways to reach out towards the Other, we free ourselves from the restraints of selfishness, from indifference and isolation. Finding and coming to terms with a composition of the Self that also includes the Other enables us to take responsibility for him/her inasmuch it prevents the conditions for violence and conflict.

Tracing Sexual Difference

1998 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Pamela Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
The Difference

A reading of Luce Irigaray suggests the possibility of tracing sexual difference in philosophical accounts of personal identity. In particular, I argue that Irigaray raises the possibility of moving beyond the aporia of the other which lies at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's account of self-identity. My contention is that the self conceived in Ricoeur's Oneself as Another is male insofar as it is dependent upon the patriarchal monotheism which has shaped Western culture both socially and economically. Nevertheless there remains the possibility of developing Ricoeur's reference to 'the trace of the Other' in order to give a non-essential meaning to sexual difference. Such meaning will emerge when (i) both men and women have identities as subjects, and (ii) the difference between them can be expressed. I aim to elucidate both conditions by appropriating Irigaray's 'Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love.'

“I” and the “Other”

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petrus Van Ewijk
Keyword(s):  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Language Game ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
I And Thou ◽  
To Come

In David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the presence of Alcoholics Anonymous can be considered as an attempt to come up with a solution for both the addiction and the solipsism of the characters. AA tries to accomplish this by reconnecting the addict with the “Other”. The assimilation of the “Other” by the totalizing tendency of the self is dropped in favor of an earnest connection. This article focuses on the similarities between AA’s methods, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of the language-game, Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the “Other” and Martin Buber’s I and Thou. It illustrates how, in light of this knowledge, a reader might be able to uncover moments of earnestness in Infinite Jest, as well as pick up on the rules necessary to counter contemporary American solitude.

The Life-World of Persons with Borderline Personality Disorder

2018 ◽  
pp. 664-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Stanghellini ◽  
Milena Mancini
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Life World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shame And Guilt

Persons with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations. This article analyses their fundamental emotions: dysphoria and anger, despair, boredom, shame, and guilt. Our focus will be mainly on the two distinct life-world configurations that originate from dysphoria and anger: the dysphoric life-world and the life-world of anger. The first is characterized by a quasi-ineffable constellation of feelings in which Self and Others are irritatingly indefinite. In the second, the vague sense of Self and Others disappear: the Self is the victim, the Other the Offender. This emotional intensity does not allow borderline persons to distance themselves from what they feel here-and-now, thus feelings and values overlap. We call this “frustrated normativity.” Borderline persons are guided by the value of authenticity thus entering into collision with the social norms/conventions which they consider inauthentic and therefore an unwarranted challenge to their truly natural being: spontaneity.

scholarly journals Endlessly Responsible: Ethics as First Philosophy in Stanley Cavell’s Invocation of Literature

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Mette Blok
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Ethics And Literature ◽  
Shakespearean Tragedy ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Epistemological Skepticism ◽  
First Philosophy

This essay aims to give an overview of the topic ethics and literature in Stanley Cavell’s complete oeuvre. It argues that Cavell’s preoccupation with literature is, from beginning to end, primarily ethical, even though he takes his point of departure in epistemological skepticism. Recent research on the affinities between Cavell’s early writing on Shakespearean tragedy and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas has helped to establish this but the question of how this part of Cavell’s work is related to his later development of Emersonian perfectionism is rarely touched upon. Consequently, this essay further argues that skepticism and perfectionism in Cavell’s thinking are two sides of one and the same ethics, which are bound together by the genre of romanticism. While Cavell’s work on skepticism is primarily concerned with the other, his work on perfectionism is primarily concerned with the self. Finally, this essay marks the point where Cavell’s and Levinas’ overall thinking part ways due to the fact that Cavell embraces Emersonian perfectionism.

scholarly journals Levinas and the Ambivalence of Recognition

Open Theology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Panu-Matti Pöykkö
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Theological Discourse

AbstractThis paper argues that Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of the “ontological imperialism” does not amount to a perfunctory and rejective attitude towards ontology. Against the commonly held interpretation of Levinas, I argue that if we keep in mind that the understanding of the other is grounded on and determined by ethical recognition of the person, ontological recognition of the other person does not necessarily entail violent relation towards of the other person. Moreover, ethical recognition provides a standard of evaluation for ontological recognition and traditional theological discourse. The distinction between the two forms of recognition is essential to Levinas’ account of “religious life”. The two forms of recognition are nevertheless interconnected, if not reducible to one another. It is only when we lose sight of the fundamental ethical perspective that the ontological recognition is in danger of becoming violent and repressive.

scholarly journals NILAI KEARIFAN UNGKAPAN BUDAYA JAWA “RUKUN AGAWE SANTOSA” DALAM GAGASAN PEMIKIRAN EMMANUEL LEVINAS

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-224
Author(s):  
Theresia Pratiwiningsih
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
The Earth

The focus of this research is the theme of Javanese local wisdom culture which related to Javanese proverb expressions about "Rukun Agawe Santosa". My aim is to explore further how these Javanese proverbs are carried out by the Javanese people themselves in daily life. To deepen this study the methodology that I used was Comparative Study with an awareness of the ethical values and harmony that was sparked in the Javanese proverb expression "Rukun Agawe Santosa". Through Emannuel Levinas's thoughts on Ethics and in the expression of Javanese local wisdom culture, I find that the value of environmental ethics is growing today due to the emergence of a stronger awareness of the importance of maintaining relationships with "the other" ie the earth and all its contents but in general, ethics are the most talked about in the context of human relations and ultimately the Javanese cultural expression "Rukun Agawe Santosa" becomes the main capital and the most appropriate way of creating solid unity and unity so as to create a strong and peaceful society.

Phänomenologie und Medizin

2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-308
Author(s):  
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
Life World ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
Anthropological Medicine ◽  
The One

This paper pursues two aims. First, it outlines the main intentions of a recently established research project dealing with problems of subjectivity in the field of medicine. Secondly, it discusses Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis with a view to what this famous physician considers a phenomenological method appropriate to the special requirements of his field of work. Considering whether his ideas make sense from the point of view of a phenomenological philosophy, we try to explain some basic correspondences of phenomenology and Weizsäcker’s anthropological medicine. Doing this, we focus on two issues, namely objectivity and subjectivity, and theory and practice. Referring to the latter there are two meanings of ‚practice‘ which have to be carefully distinguished: natural experience embedded in our daily life-world activities on the one hand, and applications of (natural-)scientific knowledge on the other hand.

Emmanuel Levinas

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Katz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
The Other ◽  
Husserlian Phenomenology ◽  
Ethical Project

Emmanuel Levinas (b. 1906–d. 1995) was a French-Jewish thinker known primarily as the philosopher of the ‘other.’ He studied with Husserl and Heidegger in the 1920s. He introduced phenomenology to France through his translation of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations into French, and he developed a lifelong friendship with Maurice Blanchot. Prior to the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, Levinas’s philosophical work focused on Husserlian phenomenology. His thought took a dramatic turn in the mid-1930s when he focused on the philosophical threat of Nazism. He spent 1940–1945 in a German POW camp. Returning to Paris after the war, he immediately went back to work for the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), where he became director of the École Normale Israélite Orientale (Enio), the Jewish day school. He resumed working on his question from the 1930s—the philosophical problem of identity and transcendence—with an added urgency in the wake of World War II. From 1946 until his death in 1995, Levinas’s ethical project searched for a way to address this philosophical problem of escape, developing a view of the self as an ethical subject that allows one to transcend the self without leaving the body behind. From the 1940s to the early 1960s, he developed the first version of his ethical project. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he responded to criticisms of that early work. Central to Levinas’s description of the ethical relationship are references to literary works including Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare. Although Levinas was an observant Jew, the biblical narratives, in addition to being part of a sacred text, also serve as rich sources of examples for the philosophical descriptions of the ethical relationship he develops. Levinas is not obviously identified with literary theory—not in the way that Derrida is, for example. He did become popular within literary theory circles in the 1990s and might be taught more frequently in comparative literature departments than in philosophy departments, especially in the United States. His friendship with both Blanchot and Derrida had a significant impact not only on their thinking but also those who whose work was influenced by them. References to terms like the other/Other, the trace, hospitality, ethics, and alterity found throughout Blanchot and Derrida, and now more commonly in literary theory, can be traced back to Levinas’s ethical project.

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