Recent political critiques and appropriations of Emmanuel Levinas’ work demonstrate the need to fundamentally re-evaluate the meaning and status of his philosophy. Both the Marxist critiques and ‘third wave’ applications interpret Levinas’ singular and unique relation to others—a bond which prohibits even the slightest trace of historical, hermeneutic, or political context—as the greatest obstacle to a Levinasian politics. From this standpoint, Levinas offers little more than a hyperbolic ethics that, at best, ignores, and, at worst, provides philosophical cover for, the (...) political status quo. To counter this established link between Levinas’ philosophy and his potential for political thought, this article reexamines the significance of the decontextualized social relation. I argue that such interpretations misapprehend the intended analytical depth of Levinas’ thought, which, in turn, misconstrue the relationship between Levinas and more traditional social ontologies. As a consequence, Levinas’ valuable normative import for political theory is obscured. By shifting our perspective, we can understand Levinas as articulating a philosophy of political utopianism well-suited to the challenges we face in our present conjuncture. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article assesses a postcolonial critique of Emmanuel Levinas’ thought. Levinas’ work has recently been accused of Eurocentrism, racism and xenophobia; those accusations are supported by recorded interviews, which at times voice bigoted and xenophobic remarks. What postcolonial critics suggest is that these remarks are made possible by Levinas’ philosophical commitments to phenomenology and Europe as an intellectual process. The article gives an assessment of the postcolonial critique and argues that the critique is necessitous but incomplete and extends a uniformity (...) thesis that carries with it a set of questionable assumptions regarding the connection of philosophy and historical narratives. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Levinas can be read as a critic, not just of Heideggerian being, but also of being-with. After pointing out that the publication of the Black Notebooks only makes this criticism more interesting to revisit, I first of all discuss passages from both earlier and later writings in which Levinas explicitly takes issue with Heidegger’s claim that there is no self outside of a specific socio-historical community. I then explain how these criticisms are reflected in (...) Levinas’s own account, arguing that Levinasian subjectivity and alterity are precisely defined by their not belonging to a larger unity; to the extent that they partake in a multi-personal collectivity, this does not take the form of a traditional community. In the final section, I look into a different and seemingly opposing argument Levinas makes against Heidegger: on the basis of the latter’s reflections on death, he argues that Dasein is anti-social rather than overly immersed in the socio-historical. Arguing that this rests on a misreading of Being and Time, I use this opportunity to raise questions about Levinas’s interpretation of Heidegger and his “otherwise than being-with” more generally, for Levinas’s account runs into several problems as well. Yet as I will conclude, this in fact offers a valuable insight, not just for the present-day reception of Heidegger, but also for thinking community today. It indicates that a radical break with human situatedness does not automatically fare better than a firmly enrooted account of existence. (shrink)

In both popular and scholarly discussions, sexual consent is gaining traction as the central moral consideration in how people should treat one another in sexual encounters. However, while the concept of consent has been indispensable to oppose many forms of sexual violence, consent-based sexual ethics struggle to account for the phenomenological complexity of sexual intimacy and the social and structural pressures that often surround sexual communication and behavior. Feminist structural critique and social research on the prevalence of violation even within (...) consensual sex suggest that consent is insufficient to ground responsibility; a more fundamental orientation toward the value of sexual agency provides a better foundation for sexual ethics. Using feminist critical theory, phenomenology, and black feminist thought, this dissertation develops a socially situated and relational notion of sexual agency and diagnoses how such agency is neglected in prevailing discussions of consent in moral philosophy and legal theory. I argue that the ethical question of responsibility to another in a sexual encounter—apart from juridical considerations—should be reframed around the value of each person’s socially situated practices of agency. Preceding and extending beyond the obligation to gain valid consent for an action, responsibility demands adapting one’s intentions and behaviors in response to the wider range of another’s communicative expressions of agency. However, communicative expressions can be ambiguous or overdetermined by social context and cultural norms; they often offer only provisional traces of agency. To address this inherent uncertainty in intimacy, I propose drawing on insights from Emmanuel Levinas about the dynamic, open-ended nature of relationality, responsibility, and communication. Responsibility toward another does not depend on securing certainty about their “yes” or “no,” but requires responding continuously under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, adapting behaviors and intentions to make room for another’s agency despite its opacity. (shrink)

The project of this thesis is to provide a novel reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas to extract theoretical resources that can help address the numerous crises of the contemporary world. Beginning from the premise that the world is in a state of multiple crises and that current political groups and institutions are failing to find adequate responses, I argue that Levinas’ thought provides radically different, and often unsettling, contributions to these discussions. I first review the areas where Levinas (...) discusses the political and identify key dynamics in his work that can hinder its deployment and contribute to unhelpful readings. Following this with an examination of the secondary literature of this topic, I establish important parameters of the future course of the thesis. Recognising the limitations of Levinas, I nevertheless proceed with the main exposition of the thesis, which aims to extract what is of most value in Levinas’ work, aiming to maximise its utility in challenging the political structures which are currently falling short. The project then circles back to the limitations left unresolved earlier and through the intervention of other thinkers seeks to ameliorate these issues. The main conclusions are as follows: first, Levinas’ work on the political should be read as being torn between commitments to both transcendence and freedom, and a somewhat conservative approach to politics. Second, the most helpful approach is to strongly emphasise the radical and antiauthoritarian elements. Third, that the result of this reading leads to an anti-political position, or at least with a vision of politics so alien it is hardly recognised as such. Finally, while Levinas’ work has issues, particularly around race and colonialism, that cannot be simply resolved, it retains the capacity for compatibility with other thinkers who can address them more adequately. (shrink)