The Impact of Emmanuel Levinas’ Philosophy on the Problem of Determining Others in Contemporary Society – in Relation to Ethics and Political Practice

This paper aims to examine the impact and overlap of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in connection with the issue of determining others in contemporary modern society, especially in relation to ethical theoretical background and real political practice. This paper aims to relate Levinasian philosophy to the phenomena of contemporary modern society, specifically, its ethics and political practice. This paper intends to capture the relevance of Levinasian philosophy to our current political and religious conflicts, the issue of refugees, immigrants, and the phenomenon of mass migration. In a broader sense, it also reflects upon the issues of racism and globalization as pertinent issues in our current age.

A Chronology of Levinas’s Metaphorics

Many readers of Emmanuel Levinas understand his thought as being oriented only by transcendence and therefore denigrate the immanent dimension of metaphor within his texts. Such readings reduce the complexities of Levinas’s text to a set of polemical, orthodox proclamations such as The Other is Most High and Ethics is First Philosophy. However, Levinas’s work invites us to contemplate not only transcendence, but also the way that immanence emerges though relationships with an infinitude of others, third persons whose voices murmur within the system of language, articulated in concrete elements such as metaphor. Levinas employs metaphor to converse with the inherited ways that temporal becoming has been articulated, recurrently reorienting them to expose a variety of ethical-phenomenological constellations. To expose the dynamics that remain clandestine to the orthodox interpretation, this paper will chronologically trace the development of various families of metaphors such as those of having and doing; those of dimensionality, those of orality, those of familiarity, and those of birth, gender, and death, thereby demonstrating the multitude of roles and perspectival positions assumed by the subject during its temporal becoming.

L’art, entre jouissance et utopie selon Emmanuel Levinas

This text aims to show how, in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the moment of jouissance is constitutive of the selfhood of the ego and conditions the very possibility of a sensitivity to the other man, and so the possibility of the ethical relation itself. These considerations on the enjoyment invited us to think artistic creation and poetry as a way to respond to anesthesia of our sensibility through knowledge, which is a characteristic of western thought for Emmanuel Levinas.

Einleitung: Philosophie als Passion. Das gebrochene Denken von Emmanuel Levinas

The essay gives a short introduction to Levinas’ passionate thinking by focusing on the failure of all philosophical trials in theodicy.

Face to Facelessness: Imagined Intimacies and Socially Distant Desires

This paper revisits a performance titled Falling in Love Again - and Again which was first performed in 2014 as part of a series of works I created questioning relational intimacy and proximity in public space. During Falling in Love Again - and Again participants were invited to explore public space with the intention of anonymously falling in love with strangers. The details of these encounters were shared with me as the leader of the piece via mobile phone text messages, but never with the subjects of the participants' desires.  Understanding the dynamics of intimacy and proximity in 2014 was a very different experience to how I understand them in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing, and two periods of lockdown has drastically influenced how relationality and physically being in the world with others is performed.  This paper is concerned both with the intimate and proximate dynamics of relational bodies during that performance as I understood it then, and, as a consequence, how we might understand relational proximity and intimacy now.Critical points of departure for the paper include art historian Grant Kester's writing on conversational art practices and his framing of dialogic encounters through the use of Jeffrey T. Nealon's Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (1998).  Models of 'dialogical' experience and 'responsibility', as situated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas respectively (Nealon, 1998, cited in Kester, 2004, 118) are used in this article to frame a rethinking of the dynamics and ethics of face to face contact and physical proximity, as bodies in space maintain distance from one another, connected only by our digital devices and our imaginations.  The voyeuristic practices of Sophie Calle and Vito Acconci converge with theatre makers Forced Entertainment's 'writing over' of place (Kaye, 2000) to explore imaginary relational connectivity.  The writing of geographer Doreen Massey supports this framing through the use of Massey's thoughts on the fictional poetics of social interactions and 'stories so far' (Massey, 2005).  Ultimately the paper asks what happens when we are required to imagine being with others in physically distant and imaginary ways with only our mobile devices as depositories for our fictional desires. 

Reportagem e reconhecimento: a alteridade como projeto

O presente texto debate a reportagem jornalística e sua construção narrativa como devedora do gesto de reconhecimento, mantendo em permanente evidência o Outro como dimensão primeira da comunicação. O Outro como questão é um convite ao fim da distância, mesmo que seja também um limite à aproximação. Para Paul Ricoeur, a reciprocidade do reconhecimento é a exigência ética mais profunda. Em Emmanuel Lévinas, o princípio ético absoluto é o cuidado com o outro, uma responsabilidade incondicional e infinita como estrutura fundamental da subjetividade. Em uma articulação entre os estudos da reportagem e a filosofia, propôs-se tomar a reportagem, em sua qualidade de metodologia do jornalismo, fundamentada por um encontro que é ruptura do mesmo em direção ao Outro e cuja escrita pode tensionar a representação que apaga o clamor do Rosto, potência para pensar o jornalismo diante da vida precária e da exclusão.

Lingkungan Sebagai “Sang Liyan”

The current environmental crisis is a global problem that needs to be considered by various parties, including the church. As imago Dei man should take care of and preserve the earth according to God's purposes. But the reality is that humans use it and exploit nature for their own benefit. The erroneous paradigm of an environment in which man feels superior to other creations, giving rise to the uncontrolled exploitation of nature needs to be straightened out. One of them is by applying a new paradigm, namely the environment as the other. The environment as the other invites everyone to look at the environment as a neighbor who comes with his own uniqueness. Thus his presence encourages us to take responsibility for the safety and preservation of the environment, not instead of being masters of the environment. The Church becomes part of environmental conservation, this is displayed in concrete action by actively voicing an environmentally friendly lifestyle and simple life. The purpose of this paper is to understand Emmanuel Levinas' concept of thought about The Other and its implications in environmental conservation efforts. The research method used in this research is qualitative research using the library research. Keywords: Environment, The Other, imago Dei, ecological crisis, Environmental Conservation Abstrak: Krisis lingkungan dewasa ini menjadi masalah global yang perlu diperhatikan oleh berbagai pihak tak terkecuali gereja. Sebagai imago Dei seharusnya manusia menjaga dan memelihara bumi sesuai dengan maksud Allah. Namun kenyataannya manusia malah memanfaatkannya serta mengeksploitasi alam demi keuntungan sendiri. Paradigma yang keliru mengenai lingkungan dimana manusia merasa lebih superior dari ciptaan yang lain sehingga menimbulkan tindakan ekploitasi alam dengan tidak terkendali perlu diluruskan. Salah satunya dengan menerapkan paradigma baru yakni lingkungan sebagai sang liyan. Lingkungan sebagai sang liyan mengajak setiap orang untuk memandang lingkungan sebagai sesamanya yang hadir dengan keunikannya sendiri. Dengan demikian kehadirannya mendorong kita untuk bertanggung jawab atas keselamatan dan pelestarian lingkungan, bukan sebaliknya menjadi tuan atas lingkungan. Gereja menjadi bagian dalam pelestarian lingkungan, hal ini dinampakkan dalam tindakan nyata dengan aktif menyuarakan pola hidup yang ramah lingkungan dan berspiritualitas ugahari. Oleh karena itu tulisan ini bertujuan untuk memahami gagasan konsep pemikiran Emmanuel Levinas tentang Sang Liyan dan implikasinya dalam upaya pelestarian lingkungan. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan menggunakan pendekatan library research (study kepustakaan). Kata Kunci: Lingkungan, Sang Liyan, imago Dei, Krisis Ekologi, Pelesatrian Lingkungan

Enigma y Sufrimiento: más allá de rememorar

Este artículo de reflexión tiene como objetivo explorar la tensión entre el sufrimiento como acontecimiento enigmático y su posibilidad de rememoración. La estrategia utilizada para ello inicia con dos metáforas que permiten establecer la diferencia entre dos versiones de enigma: una débil o comprehensiva del sufrimiento, y una fuerte o radical del mismo. Posteriormente, a partir de algunos trabajos del filósofo Emmanuel Levinas, se considera la versión radical de enigma en confrontación con la tentativa de reducir el sufrimiento a esquemas cognitivos, asimilándolo a una comprensión estereotipada. Finalmente, se pregunta acerca del sentido de rememorar el sufrimiento, aduciendo algunos apuntes respecto a su inutilidad, pero conservando su carácter de perturbación, interrupción y exceso. El resultado del artículo consistirá en una contribución a los intentos por hacer justicia a las personas víctimas frente a la totalización del sistema que los hace personajes bajo la máscara de la representación.

“TUDO O QUE EXISTE PRECISA SER SALVO”: UMA LEITURA DE “AMOR”, DE CLARICE LISPECTOR.

Esse artigo é uma leitura de “Amor”, de Clarice Lispector. O artigo acompanha o conto basicamente parágrafo a parágrafo até a cena crucial do Jardim Botânico. A filosofia do rosto de Emmanuel Levinas será um referencial importante para pensar o evento da narrativa, em que a protagonista avista do bonde o cego mascando chicles. Esse evento terá “repercussões ontológicas” no conto, como argumentaremos, no que a referência à filosofia levinasiana será decisiva. Esse referencial, no entanto, será relativizado na literatura de Clarice Lispector, por meio da desestabilização da partilha entre o que é meramente um objeto e o que pode deter um rosto.

Meaning of Education in Contemporary Phenomenological Ontology – Eugen Fink and Emmanuel Levinas

This article discusses the problem of education according to E. Fink and E. Levinas. In Fink’s opinion, education should acquaint young people with basic phenomena of human being, and introduce them to the problems of the being as a whole, immortality, culture and history. The basic method that should be used in education is the game method. According to Levinas, education should acquaint young people with The Other, with its uniqueness and originality. Respect and preservation of otherness is the basic principle in his philosophy. Moral education can only be realized as religious education, and communication with The Other can be achieved though prayer. Religious education is what can introduce a person to the history and culture of the world.