First off sorry for not writing much of late. I've been both very busy and very tired. I did want to address something Blake brought up in our discussion of his book. Blake is, from what I can tell, very influenced by Levinas and Buber and their discussion of Other Minds. What I suggested in several places was that the analysis that they (and particularly Levinas) makes of the Other as Other person applies for the most part to things. Now the caveats. i'll be the first to admit that it has been some years since I last studied Levinas with any care. I came to the conclusion that everything he said Derrida said and said perhaps in a more interesting way. (This is partially because Derrida is deeply influenced by Levinas but because the opposite is also true - especially after Levinas took into consideration the important paper "Violence and Metaphysics") I also am of the opinion that while there are definite differences between their thought, Levinas and Heidegger on most points are saying the same thing. (Contra Levinas who, I believe, seriously misread Heidegger)
As I said I bring all this up because of my belief that most of the logic Levinas brings to bear on the issue of the Other as a kind of Other free mind applies equally to all material things as Other and even universals as Other.
First a step back. Heidegger during his middle period famously did a phenomenological analysis in which he argued that beings were not fundamental. Rather he focused on what one might call a pragmatic consideration. We encounter things not fundamentally as objects (beings) but as useful equipment. Thus I don't encounter a paint brush as matter that I then think of how I can use it. Rather the uses come first. I use a paint brush in-order-to paint a wall. The paint brush is part and parcel of a world with aims, projects, practices and equipment. Thus the paint brush has its meaning in terms of walls, paints, paint thinner, rollers and the aim of painting walls. There are many such worlds. For instance the world of an accountant involves pencils, Excel spreadsheets, Quickbooks, paper, tax forms and the purposes of paying taxes, pleasing tax men and clients and so forth.
If we consider any purpose, the for-the-sake-of-which, we quickly see that this purpose has its meaning only in terms of other purposes (other for-the-sake-of-which or in-order-to). So, for instance, a painter paints a wall in order to give it the color the client wants. This is in order to make an attractive room. This is in order to sell the house. And of course there are usually multiple purposes. The painter not only paints in order to make the wall tan but in order to provide a pay check which is in order to pay his rent, buy food an so forth. Ultimately we reach a point where the final for-the-sake-of-which is the person themselves. (In Heideggarian terms Dasein since he's trying to avoid the contamination of Cartesian thought) So if we consider the purposes of things like paying rent being for shelter and comfort we eventually realize we're doing all these things for myself. (Holding aside, for now, what a "self" is)
Now of course we still talk about things as objects independent of use. The way science talks of things, for instance. However Heidegger argues that we notice this aspect of things only when they stop working. Often as we use things they become invisible to us. Much like as when we drive a car we stop noticing the car and just think about where we are going. However if the car malfunctions (say it runs out of gas or we get a flat tire) it comes suddenly in view. We notice that it is more than our uses. The idea of thing as object is thus an abstraction from our pragmatic uses. One of the errors of philosophy was to assume that this sense of things as objects present to me is primal. It isn't. But neither is my pragmatic use of them.
Consider an object like a flat board. It can be a table. It can be a wall. It can be used for many, many things. Each of these uses makes sense, as I said, as part of a world of equipment of uses. But there are many such worlds. Indeed there may well be an infinite number of such worlds. This can't exhaust the object though. We can not say that the object only "is" what we make it. There is always that openness that it is something more. Something transcendent.
Now Levinas is doing a similar, yet somewhat distinct project. His philosophy is largely a reaction against Heidegger. (Primarily because of Heidegger's Nazi connections) Levinas takes up a project of phenomenology in terms of the Other while thinking of the Other as roughly Other minds. Now Levinas does discuss in places things. However he conceives of things in Totality and Infinity in a roughly Aristotilean sense. We have form and matter. What makes people different from regular objects is that we have a face. To Levinas this means that we are creating the form whereas for objects form is imposed upon them. This makes sense in an Aristotilean setting where we can think of the sculpture as the metaphor for his form/matter distinction. A craftsman imposes form on the clay. The form can be moved and shifted and is ultimately a matter of technology. Roughly in Heideggarian terms they are always for-the-sake-of-which that gives them form. The face is different since the face doesn't signify something else (the for-the-sake-of-which that an object ready-at-hand points to). Rather it signifies itself. This is roughly the same as Heidegger's notion that there is an ultimate for-the-sake-of-which that is Dasein. Form or meaning ultimately is grounded in the opening that allows things to be manifest as something. (i.e. the opening of consciousness)
Now the problem Levinas faces (and I think Derrida brings this out in "Violence and Metaphysics" is that he is applying a double standard. Why can he say faces are free but other entities are not? That is why should we be open to a person as Other but not a dog, cat, or even rock? He argues (or rather asserts) that their existence is ultimately a matter of an economic principle. They are things whose meaning is determined by a technological transfer of purposes. But we ought recognize that things are the things they are beyond our ability to speak of them. Language is the house of being in that it lets us see a table as a table (the predicate) but it is not so determinate as to control the things. That matter had a kind of form independent of the form we give it.
In a sense the violence Levinas does to things is by imposing on them by language even as he denies this.
Now I believe Levinas accepted a lot of Derrida's criticism. Thus I think in later works such as "Transcendence and Intelligibility" he accepts the future as implying a more thorough-going openness than he was willing to admit in his earlier work. (In a sense coming to the position Heidegger espouses in works like Time and Being) I'll admit I'm no Levinas expert though. But I believe that in his earlier works his rough conception of matter and things in terms of Aristotle is a huge error. The idea that the only kind of spontaneity is the spontaneity of a conscious self. (That is ironically the influence of Descartes on Levinas even as he attempts to avoid it - the idea of prime matter)
An other and perhaps easier way to think about it is to think of the internet. Now on the internet everything's form ultimately derives from free acts of humans. In a sense it's all arbitrary and all the forms are just an expression of economics. That is we can shift bits around based upon the power of individuals. It's all language. Thus the form is imposed upon the raw material with the raw material not mattering as such. (Obviously we could get picky, but for the analogy just think of a pure virtual world)
Now the argument would be whether our world is a pure virtual world in that sense. In one sense clearly it is virtual in that all we encounter are what Derrida calls traces. We have just representations. What Levinas wants to say is that the only thing that is "beyond" (or Other) this virtual world are human minds. It is the human as transcendent.
There are two ways to attack Levinas on this point. The first is the religious attack. God is the ultimate Other and for Levinas God is the source of all existence. (Perhaps in a more Kabbalistic way than a traditional Christian creation ex nihilo but it's close enough for our needs) Now if we are dealing with things they become the face of God to the degree he is behind them. So they are ultimately transcendent just as my body is a sign of my transcendence.
Clearly Blake, who rejects creation ex nihilo can't take that track.
The other way to attack Levinas is to simply ask if matter only has the forms it has via individuals or if there are natural forms. I think this is the obvious place to attack him. That is are there aspects to things that escape our projected utilities. Something about the thing that is always there before the human uses them. I think that clearly there are and to the degree our uses hide those aspects we are doing violence to things just as Levinas argues we do violence to the Other. That is things are as much Other as humans are. If Levinas moves the discussion from God as Other to humans as Other I think it quite natural to suggest that things are also Other. Indeed the logic of the situation demands it to the degree we have to acknowledge that the world we find ourselves already embodied in is not of our making. ("Our" meaning humans) We are not in a kind of co-operative sollipsism.
Turning back to the virtual reality the issue really is whether our physical world is virtual in the way the internet is virtual. Clearly it isn't. There is an aspect of "surprise" in our encounters with objects that suggests they are more than mere economics. That "surprise" is the aspect of things operating as Other.
you're right. you're levinas scholar. first, his philosophy is not only a reaction to heidegger. that misses so much of where is coming from. One, his philosophy is a response to his suffering in the holocaust. your example that levinas does violence to a dog is contradicted by an essay he wrote before derrida's piece. secondly, it's not that levinas articulates derrida - although he does certainly brings some of derrida's insights into his later work - it's that derrida is more levinasian than derridians would like to admit. in addition, you may say levinas does a bad job or reading heidegger, but his agenda is different than heideggarians. levinas's problems with heidegger are more about being and time than the middle or late heidegger. also, his reading of heidegger is more about heidegger's lack of responsibility or ethics for the other. for example, no where do find heidegger's thought resisting or showing how to resist fascism. for an ethicist like levinas, this is a problem. on the other hand, levinas always spoke of his dept to heidegger's thought, but not the man. by trying to locate levinas in heidegger, you also miss that levinas is merely exercising the ancient hebrew emphasis on the other's face. read the bible, you'll find it in so many places. his emphasis on the saying and the said can be traced to rabbinic thought and rosenzweig. his discussion of AND in Totality and Infinity is also found in Rosenzweig and can be traced to the biblical understanding of the hebrew letter aleph, which is striking similar to derrida's notion of differance. i recommend reading derrida's deconstruction of his early thought on levinas, which is found in adieu to levinas.
i meant to say, you're right, you are not a levinas scholar. in addition, i'm not sure why you say "The idea that the only kind of spontaneity is the spontaneity of a conscious self. (That is ironically the influence of Descartes on Levinas even as he attempts to avoid it - the idea of prime matter."Levinas does not avoid descartes, he reads him in a very original light as oppossed to the traditional light and would be happy to be shown descarte's influence in his thought, albeit from his (levinas's)reading of descartes. also, your thoughts take levinas out of the ethical realm to which he circumscribes himself. it makes sense that for an ethical, spontaneous response one is concious when levinas asserts that our first relation with the other is an ethical relation, which is why he protests aristotle's ontology as first philosopohy (which he also finds in heid's being and time's privileging of ontology) with ethics as first philosophy.
Well, I don't think I argued he was merely reacting to Heidegger. I think he did so in an extremely creative way that I read as ending up retracting a lot (but not all) of Heidegger.
If Levinas has problems with the middle Heidegger that's fine up to a point, although I think many argue that the Turn was more a change of emphasis than a significant change of views. So I'm not sure Levinas can make that move in a non-problematic fashion.
Which essay of Levinas contradicts how I read him regarding things like dogs? I'll be the first to admit that I've not read close to all his corpus.
As to Heidegger and fascism. I'd be the first to agree that Heidegger is complacent there although I tend to see him as attempting to us fascism. But I'd never say Heidegger is necessarily a nice guy. As to what degree his philosophy combats fascism I think that's more problematic. I think one can read it in a way that does. I think aspects such as the technological critique are in conflict with fascism. But clearly he didn't go as far as Levinas. So certainly Levinas brings up areas Heidegger doesn't. Whether that would be a way to read Heidegger or is something opposed to Heidegger seems more complex.
I certainly catch the Hebrewisms in Levinas, especially the Kabbalistic overtones. I just think a lot of that can be found in Heidegger as well - even if unintentionally.
The issue of what I perceive as a kind of latent Cartesianism is not over the self and our conscious response but the nature of the Other as the source of spontaneity. Put an other way, who (or what) is the Other?
I'd also add that I think "Violence and Metaphysics" is much more significant than you are making out. (Or at least as I see you making out) Derrida establishes pretty well I think how the call of Being ends up being a responsibility and thereby ethical.
Clark --
I think using the language of continental philosophy when talking about continental philosophy is a *big* problem (but then, it's also a problem when trying to understand, say, Kant). There has to be a way to avoid this.
first, i begin with saying how much i like your blog. i discovered itin the list on 'philosopher's playground.'
levinas's essay on the dog is found in "difficult freedom."
i would never suggest 'violence and metaphysics' did not influence levinas. but think of derrida's paradox. if you love your teacher's thought and are deeply influenced by it, and your teacher gives you love and yet your teacher says, do not give me what i give you, for that would silence discussion, but you want to give your teacher something, for you love him, what would you give such a teacher? well, if your teacher desires discussion, which means not repeating what your teacher has taught you, you would naturally disagree with your teacher. thus, one might see 'violence and metaphysics' as the unltimate assertion of levinas's philosophy, not to mention a gift for levinas, a gift that levinas himself never gave.
-"I certainly catch the Hebrewisms in Levinas, especially the Kabbalistic overtones. I just think a lot of that can be found in Heidegger as well - even if unintentionally."
actually, levinas is more talmudic and not very kabbalistic, even though kabbalists are talmudists. buber is kabbalistic. levinas is deeply influenced by rabbi chaim of volozhyn, who had a student named israel salanter that started one of the most powerful ethical traditions for orthodox judaism. the kabbalist is able to be present with God, so to speak. Levinas argues strongly against God's presence, we are able to trace God's presence to Sinai, but God is not present (for Levinas) today. Traces of God's presence at Sinai are understood - according to levinas - only through one's ethical obligation and, thus, ethcial response for the other.
- What is the Other?
this question is the very reasoning Levinas is critiquing. To better understand Levinas and why he would be critical of such a question regarding the Other, (who is beyond knowledge and your question is asking for knowledge), I recommend reading a book by Franz Rosenzweig calld "understanding the sick and the healthy." it's a fun, fast read. but unlike rosenzweig, who wants nothing to do with philosophy after ww1, levinas does not want to completely move beyond it. rosenzweig also had a deep influence on walter benjamin, theodore adorno, and perhaps, as hilary putnam suggests, on the later wittgenstein.
- for me, levinas's phenomenological account of ethics moves phenomenology beyond the onlotogical trappings of knowledge, at least when it comes to ethics.
thanks for your thoughtful reply.
Someday I'll study Levinas et al enough to be able to contribute (by challenging your opinions?) to discussions like this, but for now I can only say thanks for the very interesting post and discussion.
Now the problem Levinas faces (and I think Derrida brings this out in "Violence and Metaphysics" is that he is applying a double standard. Why can he say faces are free but other entities are not? That is why should we be open to a person as Other but not a dog, cat, or even rock?
I'm not very good at this but I think that unlike Heidegger who see all things defined by function, Levinas is “open to a person as other” because the other is a window into intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity is immediate affective experience. However, we must use language in order to describe these affective disruptions. And in this exchange the ‘I’ discovers its own particularity. Obviously this does not happen with a dog or a cat or even a roc.
The idea that the only kind of spontaneity is the spontaneity of a conscious self. (That is ironically the influence of Descartes on Levinas even as he attempts to avoid it - the idea of prime matter)
You may be right but Levinas seems to distinguish the conscious self and the embodied self in which the embodied self hold priority. Embodied self is defined in terms of sensibility and affectivity. It is the spontaneity of this sensibility and affectivity brought out for another person which Levinas considers to be transcendent.
By the way, thanks for turning me onto Levinas. I like his thoughts on affection.
Rich
Clark: What this post is missing is the Buberian recognition that we value things differently than persons. As an intersubjective other, a Thou has intrinsic value that cannot be compared to a mere thing. The other is a revelation for Buber when we enter into the I-Thou relation. That is not to say that others cannot be regarded as mere things, something to be used and abused in an I-It relationship; it merely means that humans have a capacity that mere things don't have. They can reveal themselves as intrinsically valuable and make moral demands upon us. We cannot control the Thou in the I-Thou because the Thou is heteronomous and its purposes can be heteronomous to our purposes. That it what makes a Thou truly Other and not merely the same.
I also don't think that the Other in Levinas is a conscious or disembodied self. The other is merely an other who cannot be reduced to our categories to be made into whatever we impose on the other. This impossibility of reducing the other to just one's own categories, the very demand to recognize and interact with the other intersubjectively gives rise to the ethical.
being new to this blog, who are all of you?
Clark, this is what I mean -- when I read through these posts, I don't see how theses are being established by arguments. All I can see are definitions of words. And that's what I dislike about *some* continental philosophy -- one defines one terms in such a way that the conclusion is guaranteed to follow -- without *ever* giving a justification for using those particular terms.
Alex,
You wrote: All I can see are definitions of words. And that's what I dislike about *some* continental philosophy.
I have brought this up in the past on this blog but it was not well received. Good luck, I hope you either change minds or figure out why it is valuable, I did neither.
For those interested, I somewhat breached this topic here. I would also suggest Jim Faulconer's contribution to Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen where he argues along similar lines (it's a minor point in his paper, but important nonetheless). I think it wrong to say that Heidegger only viewed things as tools or equipment; that just stares in the face his later work on the work of art and poetry.
Wow. Tons of comments. A few responses.
Kevin: (#11) I think it wrong to say that Heidegger only viewed things as tools or equipment;
Note that's not what I'm saying. (I suspect you're responding to Rich - but I just want to make this clear) I'm asserting quite the opposite. I'm saying that for Heidegger an authentic view of things is always more than mere equipment. That for Heidegger they are Other in the way an other Dasein is Other and that the call of Being leads to a responsibility to the thing as Other akin to other people as Other. Indeed this call which brings responsibility is (in my eyes) key to Truth as Alethia.
Alex: (#9) I don't see how theses are being established by arguments.
I think everyone is assuming some familiarity with the figures. So we're taking the arguments they make for granted. But to a certain extent you are correct in that it is an alternative way of thinking. However I think Heidegger's analytic in Being and Time provides quite a few compelling arguments. Levinas argues less and adopts more of a Talmudic move, as our pseudonymous interlocutor mentions. For a Talmudic ethical "argument" there is more a presentation made that brings a call to praxis. It is far less "evidentiary" as we expect in the Enlightenment project. For Levinas to make an ethical statement is quite different from making a factual or logical argument. It is more akin to a prophetic call.
Likewise in phenomenology one could well say that one ultimately is presenting a description. Often a complex description where one is led to an experience rather than arguing from an experience. While Levinas has an odd connection to phenomenology I'd still see both he and Derrida as within that tradition. (Although clearly in a fashion quite unlike Husserl) So in a sense they are making an appeal via pointing. The can point but the persuasion and "argument" ultimately comes from the reader rather than the writer. So it definitely is quite different from even a lot of Continental thought let alone analytic thought. It really is much more akin to a religious move where some element within the worshipper recognizes the truth of what is said. This is both a strength as well as a grave weakness in this approach. (Perhaps why, despite being very deeply influenced by Derrida I often turn back to the middle Heidegger or Peirce - I think both approaches are necessary.)
Blake: (#8) What this post is missing is the Buberian recognition that we value things differently than persons.
But the fact we do this doesn't entail that it is correct. Further one must ask why we do. Finally even if one concedes we do value differently it doesn't follow that it is a black or white situation. After all I value my son differently than I value someone I do not know living in Africa. One could make an claim that this is wrong. But then some environmentalists would claim that the distinction we make between the living environment and individual people is unethical.
So I think this "taking for granted" of Buber must be called into question.
I certainly recognize the point you are making. I'm suggesting things are much more complex. That is that things themselves ought be engaged in a relationship more like the "Thou" than the technological approach Buber takes for granted as applying to the non-person.
Blake: (#8) You may be right but Levinas seems to distinguish the conscious self and the embodied self in which the embodied self hold priority.
I probably should have been more careful with my language in the above. But I felt that qualifying all the terms too much would have made it unreadable. (I had done this for the earlier paragraphs and then deleted it) Then there's the inevitable problem of time. (grin) At a certain point it's just a blog post and thus a "good enough" attitude pervades.
Anyway consider most of the problematic terms like "self", "person", "consciousness" and so forth as if written under erasure. That is they shouldn't be conceived of as the normal sense of the terms as found in the analytic tradition. After all, all the figures we're discussing are attempting to move beyond the Cartesian conception. Especially as found in Husserl. (Although one can clearly see that what they replace them with, say Dasein for a conscious self, still bears a family relationship to the Cartesian conceptions)
Certainly the embodied self holds priority. Both for Levinas and Heidegger. So, for Heidegger, Dasein is being-there. That is our being already thrown into a world. We are always essential embodied.
The question I raise for Levinas is whether more Cartesianism remains. (In at least his pre-"Violence and Metaphysics" writings - I personally notice a change after that critique by Derrida.)
Rich: (#7) I'm not very good at this but I think that unlike Heidegger who see all things defined by function, Levinas is “open to a person as other” because the other is a window into intersubjectivity.
Note that for Heidegger function is itself tied to intersubjectivity. The world we find ourselves in arises from our relationship with others. Indeed part of the problem Heidegger sees is that we are often trapped in this meaning determined by das Man which is a kind of averageness determined by our situatedness with others. (It ends up being a somewhat controversial notion to pin down - kind of roughly like "They say" with das Man being this "they.")
Heidegger's notion of "authenticity" versus "inauthenticity" is when we move beyond that particular kind of intersubjectivity into an "originary" encounter with things by providing a space of freedom where they can manifest themselves. Thus for Heidegger Truth as Alethia is tied to the sponteneity of the things themselves as they unconceal themselves to us. That would be as true of a boot as it would a person.
While there are multiple ways one could read Being and Time I believe the more accurate one is the one I think Derrida makes use of in critiquing Levinas. That is that Being demands responsibility. Heidegger's analytic of authenticity then can be seen in ethical terms. (Although whether Heidegger sees this himself is an other matter)
I'll get to the other points later when I have a bit more time. I confess "Difficult Freedom" is an essay of Levinas' I've not read. It's not in any of the collections I have on my shelves either. As I said, I'll fully confess to not being a Levinas expert. I've read probably a dozen of his essays and then Totality and Infinity but all some years back.
And of course as readers of my blog know I don't mind being wrong. One always learns more being wrong than being right.
David: I can see how you arrive at the conclusion that you do. However, all post-modern thinking begins from the assumption that everything we touch must begin from the recognition that we conceptualize by bringing ourselves to a problem, language or text. As such we do "violence" to everything we touch by overlaying it with already assumed categories built into the structure of human thought or thinking, language and so forth. So in fact it seems to not begin with definitions to me but from a recognition that we must always take into consideration the many assumptions built into the mode of human communication and intersubjectivity. That doesn't absolve thinkers like Buber, Levnas and Derrida from demonstrating what they assume -- it means that they cannot show what is already assumed because it is built into the very structure of human communication.
A few other comments and then the rest will have to await for later tonight when I'm home at my library.
"confused, maybe not": (#5) actually, levinas is more talmudic and not very kabbalistic, even though kabbalists are talmudists. buber is kabbalistic. levinas is deeply influenced by rabbi chaim of volozhyn, who had a student named israel salanter that started one of the most powerful ethical traditions for orthodox judaism.
While that's true to a point, it's hard to deny the parallels with various Kabbalistic notions such as the Ein-Sof. Further as I understand it Volozhyn was himself influenced by Kabbalism. Also a lot of the terminology Levinas uses, while somewhat Talmudic also seems drawn from Lurianic Kabbalism. I'll admit that I first read Levinas while studying Kabbalism so it may be that I'm simply reading too much into it. (Once again that problem of distance to my readings)
I should also note that one can be influenced by Kabbalism without being mystical. For instance I read a reasonable amount of Kabbalistic texts (albeit in translations) and studied the tradition yet am fairly anti-mystic. So while Volozhyn and Levinas may have been influenced by Kabbalism that doesn't make them mystic. (One immediately thinks of the quasi-religion and quasi-myticism in Derrida even as Derrida opposes the idea that he's a mystic or religious)
To me the biggest parallels are the Ein-Sof and then the notion of constriction in creation. The more (to me) neo-Platonic breaking of the vessels is interesting with regards to Derrida although I can't speak to that in Levinas although I suspect one can see it there as well.
I should also add that by bringing up the Kabbalistic aspects I don't mean to imply that's all there is. Clearly there is original thought in Levinas. There is also more Talmudic as well as Christian influences. Then there is Descartes, Aristotle, Heidegger, and Husserl. Indeed to me, the most problematic part of Totality and Infinity are the Aristotelian aspects, as I mentioned in my original post. I'd be interested in your take on my comment on the form/matter issue there that I raised.
The issues of Derrida and Levinas I'll leave until tonight.
First sorry about the duplicate numbers. This blog is run by an astoundingly short Python script I wrote that I've just not had time to go back to. Sometimes when two people post at the same time the numbers are off. One of several things I need to fix when I have time.
Alex: (#4) I think using the language of continental philosophy when talking about continental philosophy is a *big* problem (but then, it's also a problem when trying to understand, say, Kant). There has to be a way to avoid this.
I think, Alex, that I do try to do this. Indeed in most of my non-Continental posts I'm really still doing Continental philosophy but from within a more Analytic tradition. Indeed that's largely why I talk about Peirce, Davidson and company so much. However at the same time sometimes when making a discussion one has to do so from within that Continental tradition. Admittedly that does make it harder for those not as up on the jargon. But the opposite is also true. I don't think analytic philosophy is as obvious to most as some take it.
One last thing. I've discussed Levinas and the Talmud before -- albeit quite a few years ago. An interesting paper I'd found back then which generated that short post was "A phenomenological outlook at the Talmud: Levinas as reader of the Talmud" that some might find interesting. As I said, I'm no Levinas scholar, but I found the paper interesting.
Blake: So in fact it seems to not begin with definitions to me but from a recognition that we must always take into consideration the many assumptions built into the mode of human communication and intersubjectivity. That doesn't absolve thinkers like Buber, Levnas and Derrida from demonstrating what they assume -- it means that they cannot show what is already assumed because it is built into the very structure of human communication.
If what I read about Levinas is correct, the problem is so not with assumptions within communication but rather the difficulty of over laying an inadequate communication over the self which is sensible-affective in nature and pre-cognative.
Rich
Kevin, I wanted to thank you for a link to some philosophy lectures you posted on your blog, but wasn't able to comment there for some reason (you might want to check that---I was caught in some loop where I'd click post but it would just reload the page with my partially-written post). Anyway, thanks, I hope you'll keep posting interesting audio lectures on your blog as you rurn across them.
I don't know -- I think a good, Wittgensteinian directive for doing any philosophy is not to ask any questions concerning which you don't know what would count as answer.
i.e. Philosophy would just be parasitic on other intellectual pursuits: you're studying science and you don't understand quantum physics -- you're having conceptual difficulties -- so you reconceive of it in such a way that you can make progress (and likewise for set theory) -- but this easily applies to literature (think of all the confusions that go by the name of 'literary theory'). What is important is not to commit yourself to another body of truths besides the one you're studying (philosophical propositions cannot have truth values).
I'm even less of a Wittgenstein expert than I am a Levinasian expert. But wasn't Wittgenstein's point that the important things were those we couldn't easily characterize philosophically?
Clark: One last thing. I've discussed Levinas and the Talmud before -- albeit quite a few years ago. An interesting paper I'd found back then which generated that short post was "A phenomenological outlook at the Talmud: Levinas as reader of the Talmud" that some might find interesting. As I said, I'm no Levinas scholar, but I found the paper interesting.
Extremely interesting paper. Levinas’ efforts to replace ontology with ethics is fascinating. This fits in quite well with my studies of affect as the foundational aspect of man. That’s why I referenced Levinas’ ‘self’ earlier. His views of text is also interesting. While he validates the historical philological method, he also points out the limitation aspects of such an understanding of the text. The text comes out of a cultural tradition. As such one should also be open to hermeneutics of that tradition as well. In opposition to one such as Derrida who would state that indeterminacy is an aspect of text as text, Levinas seems to assert the opening of the determinism of the text. I wonder if he believes this method of viewing the text can be reversed. That is to say the text as a window to culture, such as Quinton Skinner does in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Renaissance and Reforamtion)?
Rich
I don't think there is that big a difference between Derrida and Levinas here and both interestingly move towards neo-Platonic semiotics in many ways. (Well, from what I can see with Levinas - all the normal caveats of not reading him extensively apply) I think the opening is somewhat different than how you are reading it.
I haven't read Skinner at all, so I can't speak there. Political philosophy is one of the few areas where I'm less well read than Ethics.
Just a note, I ordered Difficult Freedom in which the essay in question appears. I couldn't find it locally nor online. So if you don't mind waiting a week or so until it appears.
Just to add, if it wasn't already clear in my above clarifying comments, when I ask, "what is the Other" I was questioning the kind of phenomena. But of course this is an area in which it is difficult to talk. Thus my response to Blake about "being under erasure." Of course Levinas is after this kind of thinking. I think I'm avoiding that kind of thinking yet adopting similar language. Much like in Heidegger one can use similar language yet be speaking authentically or inauthentically. Distinguishing the two can be quite difficult.
In either case, getting back to my original debate with Blake. If Levinas does all for the Other in encounters with dogs, paintings of muddy shoes, and even computers, then it seems he supports the point I was making.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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Blogged by Clark Goble