References
- Levinas' thought is so eccentric with respect to common assumptions about the nature and purpose of philosophy that this question is central to both interpretation and criticism of it—cf. (respectively) Theo, de Boer, Tussen filosofie en profetie (Baarn: Ambo, 1976), and Jacques Derrida, “Violence and metaphysics,” in Writing and Difference, tr. A. Bass (Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1978).
- “In spite of everything, I think that what I do is phenomenology, even if it is not according to the rules laid down by Husserl, even if the entire Husserliam methodology is not observed”—“Questions et réponses,” Le Nouveau Commerce, Nos. 36–37 (1977), p. 72.
- This is the line taken by de Boer—cf. Tussen filosofie en profetie, Chapter V.
- The Al Lingis translation of Totalité et Infini (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), which came out in 1969 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne U.P.), will be used here (all other translations of Levinas my own). It is cited as TI. Autrement qu'être (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) is cited as AE.
- Cf. TI I. A.4, titled “Metaphysics Precedes Ontology.”
- TI 27.
- TI 289.
- TI 292.
- “La trace de l'autre” (1963), in En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (2nd ed.; Paris: Vrin, 1967), p. 199.
- TI 28.
- TI 29.
- TI 81.
- TI 40.
- If experience is defined as relation with the absolutely Other—TI 25.
- TI 290.
- TI 252.
- TI 203.
- TI 88.
- “Violence et métaphysique” first appeared in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 69, (1964), 322–354, 425–473.
- Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 69 (1964), 125–156; reprinted in Humanisme de l'autre homme (HAH) (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972).
- HAH 20f.
- HAH 28f.
- AE 13–17.
- AE 212.
- AE 8.
- Lévinas refers to an “epoché” of “désintéressement” (disinterestedness being the moral condition that distinguishes truth from ideology, justice from power, etc.), and says that ethics is a movement as radical as the transcendental reduction—“Ideology and Idealism,” in Modern Jewish Ethics, ed. M. Fox, tr. A. Lesley and S. Ames (Columbus: Ohio State U.P., 1975), p. 138, n. 4.
- AE 210–218.
- AE. 181f.
- Compare TII. B.I and AE V.2.
- TI 47.
- TI 201.
- TI 204.
- “Questions et réponses” 74.
- The difference between positing and expositing would have to be analyzed in terms of felicities and infelicities of response, questioning, counterquestioning—i.e. a pattern of interlocutory behaviour. But the irreducibly moral element in this behaviour would make a science of its felicities necessarily a moral science.
- AE 212.
- “Questions et réponses” 73.
- “Sécularisation et faim,” in Herméneutique de la sécularisation, ed. E. Castelli (Paris: Aubier, 1976), pp. 101–109.
- “Questions et réponses” 75.
- HAH 36ff.
- Some “transcendental” moral arguments, for example, are not clear on the specifically moral nature of the coercion that such an argument may bring to bear, and the undecidability of the issue on purely formal grounds. But such arguments can, precisely by their limitations, help exhibit the logical peculiarities of the moral claim.
- Notwithstanding that in Totality and Infinity (I.B.4) Levinas takes “rhetoric” to be manipulation of, rather than sincere appeal to, the listener, and on this basis endorses the traditional opposition of true speech to mere rhetoric. But “rhetoric” means “public speech,” which is surely a paradigm of true speech.