Article
Prophetic Subjectivity in Later Levinas: Sobering up from One’s Own Identity
This paper explores how Levinas redefines the traditional notion of prophecy, shifting the emphasis from the content of prophecy to the figure of the prophet, thus making prophetic inspiration a key feature of ethical subjectivity. The principal aim of the paper is to analyse the resulting triangular structure involving God and the Other. This structure is inherently unstable because God is incessantly stepping back in kenotic withdrawal. I show how this fundamental instability is reflected in the structure of the phenomenalisation of God’s glory, the structure of obedience to God’s order, and the structure of the authorship of prophecy. The prophetic experience is marked by heterogeneity; it can never be completely appropriated. Responsibility for the Other brings the subject to light as a witness of the glory of the Infinite, but not as the subject of self-identification.
This article presents the main ideas of ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas as phenomenological description of face-to-face relationship with the ethical Other, for which it is quite difficult to find analogues in ordinary experience. However, the purpose of the article is to show how it is possible to discover Levinasian ethical experience in ordinary life, which is included by Levinas into ontological region of experience. From our point of view, the concept of trace uswd by Levinas is the most interesting and productive for this task.
What is the origin of language? For Levinas, from Aristotle to von Humboldt, the tradition of Western metaphysics has understood language as a representation of reality, going beyond or transcending experience. In this way, language is a metaphor that substitutes for experience—and all language is originally metaphorical. Experience however, is essentially inexpressible—for it not only transcends language, but it does so because experience is always experience of the other, of that which remains infinitely other. And language reminds us of its failure (a failure which Derrida sees, ironically, as a success) to express this other by maintaining a trace of the inexpressible in every expression—and metaphor is failure of expression par excellence. But what is the origin of this original failure? In fact, it can be found in the way in which language makes metaphors (which is the way in which it makes itself, transcends itself, substitutes for itself, becomes other than itself). For as Aristotle reminds us: metaphor-making (indeed, all language, every word and deed) is poiēsis—and the origin of poiēsis is improvisation. If we have, however, discovered the origin of language in improvisation—but what is that?
Le receuil “Recherches lévinassiennes” présente le dialogue attentif de 29 auteurs, surtout des philosophes mais aussi des théologiens, avec la pensée de Levinas, permettant à cette pensée de révéler des aspects jusque-là inconnus. Tant dans la première partie « Problématisations internes » que dans la deuxième « Confrontations philosophiques », les différents contributeurs s’intéressent au dialogue que Levinas lui-même menait, sans cesse, avec d’autres philosophes comme Platon, Spinoza, Pascal, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson, Bloch, Sartre, Derrida. Cette inspiration multiple fait de Levinas un penseur d’appartenance plurielle. Dans le contexte de la recherche de cette multiplicité, les thématiques typiquement lévinassiennes sont également mises en relief : l’ambivalence du moi en tant qu’intériorité ; la dynamique triangulaire de « moi, vous, il(s) » et la relation entre la justice et la politique ; le dépassement de l’ontologie par l’éthique en tant que philosophie première ; l’ambiguïté de l’altruisme, interprété comme « instinct de bienveillance naturelle », opposé à l’hétéronomie de la responsabilité par et pour autrui ; l’altérité éthique du visage et le temps en tant que passé immémorial ; la relation entre transcendance et immanence dans l’idée de l’infini. La troisième partie intitulée « Tradition juive et lectures chrétiennes » donne une attention particulière à l’enracinement et la résonance juifs de la pensée lévinassienne. Le lien entre la Bible et le Talmud donne à penser les modalités d’une lecture philosophique de la Bible. Un certain nombre d’idées émanant du judaïsme, telle que le messianisme, le prophétisme, l’élection, l’idolâtrie, le monothéïsme, l’infini..., amènent des théologiens chrétiens à un véritable dialogue avec la pensée de Levinas, mettant en évidence à la fois la proximité et la différence irréductible entre judaïsme et christianisme.
En proposant de penser la rencontre de l'imprévisible, Flora Bastiani et Svetlana Sholokhova ont rassemblé dans le présent ouvrage des articles aux analyses variées. Avec la question de l'altérité et de son événement dans la vie subjective comme toile de fond, chaque contributeur ouvre une voie d'approche pour redŽfinir et surtout réinterpréter la frontière entre l'intériorité et l'extériorité, soit la limite qui permet à l'humain de trouver sa place dans le monde. Les concepts fondamentaux de Henry, Levinas et Maldiney qui émergent de facçon récurrente dans ce parcours, apparaissent comme autant de repères qu'il est toujours nécessaire d'interroger, de sonder et d'éprouver. Ainsi les thèmes classiques empruntés à la philosophie francçaise du vingtième siècle sont ici saisis et mis en question dans la poursuite de la méthode phénoménologique, et dans l'ouverture de nouvelles questions. Où situer la relation avec l'autre dans le processus de formation du sujet ? Qu'apporte cette relation : la possibilité d'être excédé par l'autre, de l'accueillir ou de devenir autre ? Quel sera dans cette situation le rôle du langage qui - en risquant la trahison d'un sens nouveau accompagnant la venue de l'autre, par la phénoménalisation - impose la dynamique indispensable à la subjectivation du sujet ? Enfin, en s'interrogeant sur la position du sujet face aà l'énigme de l'autre, ouvert aà l'imprévisible auquel il doit le sens de sa présence, quelles sont les voies qui se frayent pour une phénoménologie appliquée ? En faisant se côtoyer des contributions soutenues par les diverses cultures dont sont issus leurs auteurs et en réunissant sans distinction les articles de chercheurs débutants et confirmés, ce volume collectif témoigne d'une actualité vivace de la phénoménologie, sans limite de tradition ou de langue, avec l'affaire philosophique comme point de rencontre.
Ont contribué à cet ouvrage : Flora Bastiani, Jan Bierhanzl, Jean-Christophe Goddard, Lukas Held, Yasuhiko Murakami, Monika Murawska, Masumi Nagasaka, Luka Nakhutsrishvili, Délia Popa, Jean-François Rey, Jean-Michel Salanskis, Svetlana Sholokhova, Yuen-Hung Tai, Anna Yampolskaya.
We explore the influence that Koyré’s early work on history of religion had on the development of French phenomenology, with focus on Emmanuel Levinas. It is well known that Koyré played a prominent role in spreading Husserl’s phenomenology in France, for example, as the editor of the French translation of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and the managing editor of the revue Recherches philosophiques. Although Koyré’s affiliation to the phenomenological movement is debatable, his thought owns much to Husserl’s phenomenological method: what matters to him is not the problem of existence, whether in the intellect or outside of the intellect, but the ways in which our consciousness deals with certain fundamental ideas and the ways in which such ideas affect consciousness. In his books on St Anselm and Descartes, Koyré focuses on the idea of God and the idea of the infinite. He praises Descartes for giving the infinite priority over the finite, thereby making the notion of the finite dependant on that of the infinite, much as in Cantor’s set theory. We trace the influence of Koyré’s analysis of the infinite in its relation to the finite on the development of the idea of the infinite in Levinas. We also show that Levinassian approach to the idea of God as a thought that “thinks more, or better, than it thinks” goes back to Koyré’s interpretation of the ontological proof of St Anselm
We show that Levinassian approach to the idea of God as a thought that “thinks more, or better, than it thinks” goes back to Koyré’s interpretation of the ontological proof of St Anselm and Descartes.
The article considers the Views of L. N. Tolstoy not only as a representative, but also as a accomplisher of the Enlightenment. A comparison of his philosophy with the ideas of Spinoza and Diderot made it possible to clarify some aspects of the transition to the unique Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical doctrine. The comparison of General and specific features of the three philosophers was subjected to a special analysis. Special attention is paid to the way of thinking, the relation to science and the specifics of the worldview by Tolstoy and Diderot. An important aspect is researched the contradiction between the way of thinking and the way of life of the three philosophers.
Tolstoy's transition from rational perception of life to its religious and existential bases is shown. Tolstoy gradually moves away from the idea of a natural man to the idea of a man, who living the commandments of Christ. Starting from the educational worldview, Tolstoy ended by creation of religious and philosophical doctrine, which were relevant for the 20th century.
This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger's major works (from Being and Time through the ‘Rector's Address' and the ‘Letter on Humanism' to ‘The Origin of the Work of Art' and the Spiegel interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger's writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary.
Heidegger begins Being and Time with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. The Irony of Heidegger takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger's major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness. The Irony of Heidegger attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question.
The article is concerned with the notions of technology in essays of Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger. The special problem of the connection between technology and freedom is discussed in the broader context of the criticism of culture and technocracy discussion in the German intellectual history of the first half of the 20th century.