We discuss the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and his major work

>>7382158
It's shit.

>>7382161
why?

>>7382158
I love this book. I try to start Levinas' threads from time to time but they quickly fade into oblivion each time...
The main point that pleases me in Levinas' work is the phenomenological stance. Of course it's not "only" phenomenological, but this is not so frequent to see someone who is not strictly normative about ethics. I know that he is ALSO normative and that a pure descriptivity doesn't exist. I quote him from memory, but I think it's in "Ethics and Infinity" that he said "I'm not here to say what morality should be, but what it is if that may appears". The point about the appearing of the face is very important to me, if there's no face, then there's no obligation (that's what I mean by "realistic" ethics). He doesn't try to force ethics, but simply to know what's happening ("that it is the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality")

I also find him to be very useful in anthropology, once again for "face's appearing" in "subjectivation" (I don't really know the English name for that, sorry) problematics. The way he put ontology AFTER ethics is very much in reasoning with the anthropological care about the question of the alter.

I also really like the way he approaches texts. It is with him and Derrida that I began to really interest myself into what a text could mean, with all these interpretation levels and so on. Sadly, I couldn't really elaborate in this in English as I'm not fluent enough.

The two main problems I meet in Totality and Infinity are : 1. Levinas' stance about men/women, which even if I don't "stick" to the literalness of the text gets quite old from its phallocentrism preconceptions ; 2. the question of an animal face, which is not addressed by Levinas. This "un-addressing" is quite addressed by Derrida, nonetheless.

I once talked here with someone who had a very Levinassian discourse without having read a single line from him. I remember he told me he came into this positioning from beat generation literature, that was pretty surprising

>>7382515
thanks for your post, I'm really interested in reading Totality and Infinity, I know nothing about Levinas
anything you recommend before reading it?

>>7382565
Not really, I would suggest you to dive straight ahead into it. You may not understand everything in a first row, just skip to the next part. It is quite a poetic writing, if it speaks to you that's great, otherwise continue until something speaks to you (I hope some will)
If you have some readings in philosophy that's a plus (mainly Heidegger, maybe Merleau-Ponty), but if you don't, don't sweat it (and then don't read Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty beforehand, that would just refrain you to read Levinas)

Now that I think of it, maybe you could get Ethics and Infinity in the same time. It's a writing of radio's interview between Levinas and Philippe Nemo, another philosopher. It is very striking, some words are very famous : "The best way of encountering the Other is not even to notice the color of his eyes"

(the face isn't the "physical" face, it's the appearing of the Other in my world, and this Other couldn't be "summarized". The idea of infinity reveals itself into this face : to summarize this face is already a way of making it a part of me, of breaking this infinity - and the Other is not the Other anymore. But if I don't even notice the eyes' color, there are chances I'm still in an ethical relation : because the Other stays an infinite who I cannot dominate. My mind cannot "grasp" it, there's always something that is escaping, transcending. The Other's appearing is an event I couldn't recapitulate, nor say "I understand/include it" (in French "comprendre", which means "to understand" but also "to grasp", "including into one thing") into one view. It always escapes.
But really, just read the books, Levinas talks about it quite better than me!)

>>7382622
thank you again, you sure have got me interested. so you suggest reading Ethics and Infinity with totality and infinity? is it long?

>>7382708
I'm glad it interested you! Ethics and Infinity isn't long at all, one hundred pages (and it is divided in small parts). And as it is a discussion, it is really nice to read.

>>7382515
>The way he put ontology AFTER ethics is very much in reasoning with the anthropological care about the question of the alter.
existence, morality and ontology are the same thing. but the rationalism, discourse, logos cannot provide this comprehension. these two equalities are only established once that you accept empiricism and be a pure phenomenolog. once you understand the such-ness, that is to say we understand what we call the reality, that is to say, once we analyse our various phenomenon without trying to theorise them, we arrive at a morality with equanimity, towards what happens inside of us, what happens outside of us, as the supreme moral principle. that's the dhamma.

>>7383742
I must admit I have some difficulties with some of your words, which are not very familiar to me. Can you explain it in another way?
In the same time, concerning ethics and ontology, I said that for Levinas ethics precedes ontology, but it's indeed more complicated than this reduction. Levinas rather puts it that way : the first ontology is not the ontology that we often think about (by example, an "objective" world) ; it's ethic itself which is the first ontology (it is the very first introduction to a world, and there is always the question of the Other in everything). Both in a chronological point of view (the baby, and the person that took care of him/her) but also and mainly in a phenomenological point of view (in our very way of "sensing" and living the world)

>>7382158
Where do I read what this nigga had to say about faces n shit?

>>7384368
Totality and Infinity for the extended version, Ethics and Infinity for the quick one

A Stanford Encyclopedia entry about Levinas, for anyone interested :
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

I love Levinas.

But I agree with
>>7382515
>Levinas' stance about men/women,

How do you resolve this?

>>7385988
I don't really... I try to approach it by making an abstraction of it, but that doesn't work well. I mean, when you read Lacan, even if the words used are quite old and "phallogocentred", you know it's just words and that "the father" could perfectly be a woman, etc.(phallocentrism still determines the discourse, but it's quite "deconstructed" already). While with Levinas it's deeper than that. The "house" allegory, the fact that to welcome someone, one must have a home, with someone already caring for him... Well I find it to come in a second time, after the face, and even if I get the relevance of the interpretation, for me it's already too much outside of a phenomenology (it isn't "what appears" anymore, it's quite thought)

>>7385988
Also, I've got some troubles with the part about fecundity at the end of Totality and Infinity. Still, I don't think it to be the major point of this Levinas' book, but it's questioning
Once again I don't know how to "resolve" it at all, it's really problematic and maybe unsolvable. Levinas took distance from Heidegger and from a neutral dasein (which I believe was criticized as not even "really" neutral), and the introduction of something from the sexual realm is interesting. Though when you look at Derrida's work, he talks a lot about sexual without assigning gender, it's more complex, there are more "playings" which multiply possibilities rather than reduce them. Sadly I can't really say much about all this (except the fact that it bothers me), as I'm not well versed enough in philosophy.
What's your opinion about this question in Levinas' work?

levinas

>>7388291 again
Just found that about this subject : "Levinas, feminism and the feminine" by Stella Sandford (who apparently did her PhD on this question). I didn't have time to read the article yet, but here's a link :
http://www.sumak.cl/2AutoryExp/Levinas/Feminisme%20Levinas,%20Feminism%20And%20The%20Feminine.pdf

>>7388291
I'm not sure exactly. I knew a really smart guy at uni who loved Levinas and wrote his final paper on this exact question but I never figured out how he dealt with it.

Is it really necessary for Levinas to use terms like father and son? I figured it was a hold-over from his Jewish theology which is heavily patriarchal.

>>7393624
I quite agree with you, the usage of such terms don't seem really necessary to me neither. Theology surely has a thing with this, though there must be a way of reading him without "sticking" to the literalness of the text (I'm thinking about the fact he was well versed in Kabbalah, so in multiple meanings to say it quickly and badly)

>>7392762

There's also a good "critique" from Derrida about Levinas' work, concerning the possibility of an animal face. The main point was the fact that, in Levinas' work, an animal face is a question that demands further developments. Though, Derrida notices that a face must appear in a pure phenomenological way in Levinas discourse (until then, he agrees with Levinas) ; if one has to think about the appearance of a face, it is that this face doesn't truly appear. And so he quite disagrees with Levinas about this point (for Derrida, there may be an animal face, that face may appear, it depends of the situation but it's neither a thing we have to think about to give it "the right to be called a face")

>>7395690

>>7396341
I don't care much for Derrida's critique. He's a dogmatic Heideggerian and he's trying to move Levinas closer to him.

Plus, yeah, I don't care for that critique. Means nothing to me.