Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that there is (...) a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful. (shrink)

Abstract In this article we develop a relational understanding of sociality, that is, an account of social life that takes relation as primary. This stands in contrast to the common assumption that relations arise when subjects interact, an account that gives logical priority to separation. We will develop this relational understanding through a reading of the work of Martin Buber, a social philosopher primarily interested in dialogue, meeting, relationship, and the irreducibility and incomparability of reality. In particular, the article contrasts (...) Buber’s work with that of poststructuralist theorists who take as their starting point the deconstruction of the Hegelian logic of binary oppositions. Deconstruction understands difference as the excess that undoes the binary, but Buber, we argue, shows how difference derives from the primacy and ontological undefinability of relation. Relational logic does not exclude the logic of separations and oppositions: relation is the primal ground that makes separations possible. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s11841-011-0278-9 Authors Andrew Metcalfe, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Ann Game, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Journal Sophia Online ISSN 1873-930X Print ISSN 0038-1527. (shrink)

This article examines a peculiarity dating from Classical times, namely, that democracy may be achieved, in practice, independently of and prior to its articulation as theory. This peculiarity has implications for the way in which the history of democratic theory is understood, and also for the place of the democratic theorist in society. Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Chantal Mouffe and John Keane are theorists of democracy, but they all depart, first, from the commitment to the universal truth‐claims that underpin other (...) schools of democratic thought, and, second, from the concomitant belief in the priority of theory over practice. In doing so, they make it difficult to theorise how democracy might be brought about, except, circularly, where it already exists. On the one side, Feyerabend, Rorty and, to a lesser extent, Keane, assume that ‘democracy’ already exists, so that its realisation requires no theory. On the other, Mouffe argues that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist in practice, but her attempts to theorise its realisation are not convincing. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the similarities and differences between the ways we relate to the other in ethics and in love through an engagement with the thinking of K.E. Løgstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. My point of departure will be a reading of a novel by Maja Lucas, Mother, which brings out the important and complicated nature of the relation between ethics and love. My main concern, however, is to investigate how Løgstrup’s and Levinas’s different conceptions of natural love point (...) to differences in their understanding of the ethical relationship to the other. (shrink)

This paper considers how both Levinas and Løgstrup seek to explain how love of the neighbour is possible. It focuses on a criticism of Levinas made by Merold Westphal, which follows Kierkegaard in arguing on Lutheran grounds that such love first requires a relation to God as a “middle term,” but that Levinas cannot appeal to this relation to account for neighbour love, as for him the God relation itself arises through love of the neighbour. In response, the paper explores (...) how Løgstrup, while working in a Lutheran tradition, like Levinas also sees neighbour love as arising without any prior God relation, showing how the accounts that each offer of how this is possible serve to complement each other. (shrink)

(1999). An Ethics of the Ephemeral? The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Zygmunt Bauman's Ethics: a Review of Some Recent Books by Zygmunt Bauman. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 275-285.

Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, 264 pp., paper, ISBN 0?631?18693?X Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, 256 pp., paper, ISBN 0?631?19267?0 Postmodernity and its Discontents, New York: New York University Press, 1997, 232 pp., paper, ISBN 0?814?71304?1.

This study explores the primacy of interrelating and its ecopsychological significance. Grounded in evidence from everyday experience, and in dialogue with the phenomenology of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we discover that humans are inherently relational beings, not separate egoic subjects. When experienced intimately , this realization may transform our interrelationship with the beings and presences in the community of nature. Specifically, interrelating is primary in three ways: 1) interrelating is always already here, transpiring from the beginning of (...) the human species and human culture, from the beginning of every infant's life, and from the continuously arising beginning of every presencing moment; 2) the quality of our interrelating is truly what matters most, the most important expression of and facilitator of health, compassion, and justice for humankind and the rest of nature; and 3) interrelating is the ever-present path via which we discover/create and carry on our existence. Interrelating is an existential given—indeed we are our interrelating—yet we are summoned ethically to cultivate our way of interrelating so as to serve others and the non-human natural community. Thus interrelating is our essence, our calling, and our path. (shrink)

Does the Buddhist doctrine of no-self imply, simply put, no-other? Does this doctrine necessarily come into conflict with an ethics premised on the alterity of the other? This article explores these questions by situating Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics in the context of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The work of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō provides a starting point from which to consider the ethics of the self-other relation in light of the Buddhist notion of emptiness. The philosophy of thirteenth-century Zen Master Dōgen (...) casts doubt on Watsuji’s commitment to reciprocal self-other relationality, showing that the idea of self-emptiness disrupts any conventional understanding of reciprocity and promotes instead other-oriented compassion. Despite interesting similarities between the ethics of alterity and Buddhist compassion, a Buddhist-influenced understanding of alterity differs from Levinas on important points, by making possible the claim that all others—human, animal, plant, and mineral—are ethical others. (shrink)

This article is a continuation of the challenge begun by early phenomenologists of the reductionistic scientism of Natural Science Psychology. Inspired by five distinctions of Emmanuel Levinas, it seeks to bring a deeper interruption of the seemingly unalterable force of mainstream psychology to model itself after the hard sciences. Levinas distinguishes the experience of totality from infinity, need from desire, freedom as self-initiated and self-directed from freedom as invested by and for the Other, active agency from radical passivity, and the (...) said from saying. Five commonly accepted characteristics of science, objective, empirical, causal, reducible, and value neutral, are used to compare three approaches to psychology: Natural Science, Phenomenology , and Psychology for the Other. Using the definition of science, “knowing the phenomenon as it shows itself,” this paper argue that Natural Science Psychology is the least “scientific,” Phenomenological Psychology is more scientific, and Psychology for the Other is the most “scientific” with its ethical command to allow the Other to reveal her/himself. This extravagant but compelling claim is illustrated with descriptions of research and therapy. (shrink)

This article aims at grounding critical theories with the help of psy discourses. Even if the relationship between the two disciplines has always been a controversial one, the article argues that therapeutic knowledge that accesses empirical forms of social suffering may offer important insights for critical theory. This general argument is demonstrated by complementing the theories of Bourdieu and Habermas with a clinical description of depression. First, the limitations of the capabilities of these influential theories in terms of how they (...) can be used to conceptualize the variety of social suffering are introduced. Second, the psy discourses on depression are reviewed to identify and highlight latent references to the social. Third, by combining models of depressive suffering and various distortions of integration, an extended normative basis is elaborated. Instead of solely criticizing inequalities or distortions of communication, those social constellations are criticized that trap actors by producing a homogenous pattern of suffering. (shrink)

Despite their many similarities, one apparent difference between the ethics of K.E. Løgstrup and Emmanuel Levinas concerns trust: Levinas does not analyse trust as a morally significant phenomenon, whereas Løgstrup makes it a central component of his moral phenomenology. This paper argues that an analysis of Løgstrupian trust nonetheless reveals at least three important commonalities between Levinas and Løgstrup’s moral projects: an understanding of war and ethics as metaphysical opposites; an emphasis on openness to the other as something that transcends (...) the prudential order of norms and laws; and a view of the ethical as that which breaks into and disrupts the order of human instrumental calculation. (shrink)

In Totality and Infinity Levinas presents the 'face to face' as an account of intersubjectivity, but one which maintains the absolute difference of the Other. This essay explores the genesis of the 'face to face' through a discussion of Levinas in relation to Buber. It is argued that Levinas' account of subjectivity shares much in common with Fichte's theory of subjectivity. It is further argued that while the 'face to face' clarifies and opposes traditional problems in social ontology, the 'face (...) to face' is unable to avoid the traditional problems of social ontology that it seeks to avoid. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este artículo de investigación intenta tematizar la mismidad del Dasein dentro de los límites intrínsecos del § 44 de Ser y Tiempo, en conexión plena con el existenciario verdad de la existencia, a fin de entender esta mismidad como un fenómeno eminente y ontológico de libertad. Tal derivación, en dirección a la libertad, mostrará que la conexión Dasein-Verdad solo puede ser realizada mediante un desarrollo de la mismidad del Dasein, entendida como un fenómeno relacionado con el “poner/quedar en libertad” (...) y el “ser-libre”. Este será, en último término, el objetivo de este artículo de investigación ABSTRACT In order to understand the Selfhood of Dasein as an eminent and ontological phenomenon of Freedom, this research seeks to thematise this Selfhood within the intrinsic limits of § 44 of the book ‘Being and Time’ in full connection with the existential truth of existence. Such Freedom will have to show that the nexus Dasein-truth can only be carried out in the wake of a development of the Selfhood of the Dasein, a Selfhood understood as a phenomenon related to “set-free” and “being-free”. Ultimately, this will be the objective of this research paper. (shrink)