Biography and Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

1. EMMANUEL LEVINAS
Sem. Dale Andrew S. Aguihap

2. OUTLINE
I. Introduction of Philosopher
i. Short Biography
II. First Philosophy
i. Ethics as First Philosophy
ii. Totality vs. Infinity
iii. Phenomenology of inter-subjective responsibility
III. Being for the other
i. Focuses on the Other rather than the I

3. EMMANUEL LEVINAS
1905-1995

4. 1905S AND 1920S
Born January 12 in
Kaunas (Kovno, in
Russian), Lithuania.
Lithuania is a part of
pre-Revolutionary
Russia and the
surrounding culture
‘tolerates’ Jews. He is
the eldest child in a
middle class family
and has two brothers,
Boris and Aminadab.
Goes to study
philosophy in
Strasbourg (France).
Levinas studies
philosophy with
Maurice Pradines,
psychology with
Charles Blondel, and
sociology with Maurice
Halbwachs. Meets
Maurice Blanchot who
will become a close
friend.

5. 1930S AND 1940S
Levinas studied
philosophy, and
spoke French,
German,
Russian and
Hebrew.
Levinas publishes a
philosophical analysis of
“Hitlerism”, Quelques
réflexions sur la
philosophie de
l’hitlérisme [Reflections on
the Philosophy of
Hitlerism].
Captured by the Nazis;
imprisoned in Fallingbostel, a
labor camp for officers. His
Lithuanian family is murdered.
His wife Raïssa, and daughter
Simone are hidden by religious
nuns in Orléans.

6. Levinas became a
French soldier at the
start of WWII but was
captured early on and
spent most of the war
in a POW camp.
Levinas felt that
Auschwitz showed
that this
understanding of
humanity didn’t work.

7. Levinas felt the only philosophy worth
studying was ethics. Our responsibility
for others is what matters.
Levinas said the ‘Good’ is the
central question of all philosophy. “The
Good is interested, not in what is
common among things but what is
absolutely unique.” (Éthique comme
philosophie première)

8. FIRST PHILOSOPHY
Emmanuel Levinas’ (1905–1995) intellectual project was to develop a first philosophy.
Whereas traditionally first philosophy denoted either metaphysics or theology, only to
be reconceived by Heidegger as fundamental ontology, Levinas argued that it is ethics
that should be so conceived. But rather than formulating an ethical theory

9. ETHICS AS FIRST PHILOSOPHY
The argument for the priority of responsibility is a theory of ethics. Levinas' theory of
responsibility is an ontological or fundamental ethics in that it asserts how things are
rather than how they should be.
“If we’re all the same, what
do you do with those who
are different?” – E. Levinas

10. • The word “ethics,” for Levinas, refers to the fact that “I” cannot refuse responsibility
for the other, since that act of disregarding or refusing responsibility is possible only
on the basis of my being always already capable of responding to an other who
imposes responsibility on me. It is this ability for responding to the other, this
command that I cannot efface (even when I ignore it) that allows for other
discourses—such as ontology, epistemology, or political philosophy—to make sense
at all.

11. TOTALITY VS. INFINITY
Totality and Infinity was written as
Levinas’ Doctorat d’État. His concept of
transcendence provides us a useful point of
departure in Totality and Infinity, provided we
understand his debt to Husserl’s phenomenology.

12. His main concepts in outlining the possibility of an ethical encounter in Totality and
Infinity are the visage (face) and the caresse (caress), both of which are theorized as
giving rise to a relation to alterity never fully to be encompassed by any of the senses,
least of all sight and touch. These sensory connections are totalizing gestures, for
Levinas, which reduce alterity to our experience of it alone and thus shrink otherness
to self-sameness, rather than creating a possibility for its emergence in and on its own
terms.

13. Totality: We are all the same.
Infinity: We are all different. And we are all responsible for
each other.

14. PHENOMOLOGY OF INTERSUBJECTIVE
RESPONSIBILITY
Emmanuel Levinas developed an ethics of inter-subjectivity and responsibility.
According to the phenomenology of Levinas, moral impulse and intuition are elicited
by the encounter with the Other. Encounter with the Other, particularly the face and
the voice of the Other, gives rise to a sense of responsibility for that Other.

15. That is why a phenomenology of intersubjective responsibility would be ‘first’
philosophy; viz., in the sense of interpretively reconstructing a level of experience
precursive to both reflective activity and practical interests.
"its intersubjectivity consists in its existing in between the subjects constituted
through their interaction."

16. • for Levinas, has for the most part been an ontology, by which he means that
otherness has been reduced perpetually to a system of selfsameness in which
nothing other than being can appear
• Intersubjectivity is the product of interiority. The Interiority is a subjective report in
which a being refers to itself. Subjectivity allows itself to be considered as separate
from the other. The externality is a state of being in which the self can not be
merged into a whole.

17. BEING FOR THE OTHER
What Levinas tries to point out here refers to
the necessity of the direct interrogation of
consciousness. Further, in reference to
Aristotle, he identifies metaphysics, which he
considers as “the first philosophy” with
ethics rather than reducing it to ontology,
and claims that ethics proceeds ontology.
Ontology leads the Other to the identical and
does not permit the identical to be alienated
by the Other.

18. The sense of “responsibility” Levinas uncovers is much deeper and more radical than
the existential one of active commitment to self. Blanchot, who comes closer to
Levinas, contrasts the two senses of responsibility
It is suggested by Levy that perhaps Levinas was influenced by the linguistic kinship
in the Hebrew language, of the words, “other” and “responsibility”, which in Hebrew
are rendered as aher and aherut

19. Levinas makes an intrinsic link between the words, “responsibility” and the “Other”.
He maintains that to be responsible means to make oneself available for service of the
Other in such a way that one’s own life is intrinsically linked with the Other’s life.

20. In other words, I am a human being in the sole measure that I am responsible for
another.

21. FOCUSES ON THE OTHER RATHER THAN THE I
Levinas denies that. He is extremely radical. According to him the relation between
self and other remains asymmetrical: the self remains more responsible for the other
than vice versa, the self surrenders itself without calculation and without demanding
or even expecting anything in return. Self and other can never merge, be subsumed in
each other, become equal or even comparable.

22. It does not want for itself. This means that the desire for the Other is not an appetite
but a generosity. Here, the Subject reaches to the Other for the sake of the good of the
Other. Thus, desire reveals a structure in which there is a relation of
disinterestedness (non-erotic) between the Subject and the Other.

23. CONCLUSION

24. AS HUMAN AS WE ARE, WE MUST
REALLY NEED TO CARE FOR THE
OTHERS IN ORDER FOR US TO BE
HUMANE AND HOLY

25. THANK YOU!