The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology by Luft Sebastian; Overgaard Soren;

Author:Luft, Sebastian; Overgaard, Soren;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Goodness, as the enactment of saying-to, denotes the institution of the intersubjective tie which is first philosophy in Levinas. This is not the outcome of a motivating desire, it is that desire, and it is metaphysical in the dual sense that it makes a world of shared objects possible in language even as it outstrips existence as “natural,” mechanistic forces in conflict. In Levinas, first philosophy as ethics overtakes the theorein of first philosophy as ontology or theology. “One does not prove God thus, since this is a situation that precedes proof [theology], and is metaphysics itself. The ethical, beyond vision and certitude, delineates the structure of exteriority as such [ontology]” (1969: 304). In short, God is not the object of theorizing, we enact “God” in responding to the Other, spontaneously limiting our own freedom. Such is the project that Levinas unfolds: first philosophy must cede to ethics as the phenomenology of enacted intersubjective ties. This implies that first philosophy as mere epistemology is impossible, because it is derivative, and, finally, that the tension between ontology and theology in Aristotle’s first philosophy is radically displaced in Levinas: it becomes the twofold moment of the gaze of the Other as summons, which elicits my address as the beginning of dialogue, and of a shared, objective world.

See also Emmanuel Levinas (Chapter 6); Intersubjectivity (Chapter 16); Time (Chapter 17); The meaning of being (Chapter 28).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.