This paper addresses the transformation of subjectivity in trauma by considering recent psychopathological research, especially in relation to the works of Judith Herman and Bessel van der Kolk. It...

Identity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is (...) the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: Premiss; Justice, uniqueness, and love; Sign and language; Dialogue and alterity; Semiotic materiality; Globalization and the trap of identity; Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; Ethics; The World; Outside the subject; Responsibility and Substitution; The face; Fear of the other; Alterity and justice; Justice and proximity; Literary writing; Unjust justice; Caring for the other. (shrink)

Filosofía Judía, una noción, problemática, incluso ambigua para muchos, catalogada como incierta, dado su ligamen con una comprensión de filosofía regionalizada, e incluso como una filosofía de una nación. Sin embargo, tales barullos encuentran una contraposición, desde un área académica que apunta al esclarecimiento de la noción. Uno de los trabajos que retoman esta labor de elucidación se desprende del texto intitulado “History of Jewish Philosophy” editado por Daniel H. Frank y Olivier Leaman (1997), en dicho trabajo se realiza una (...) mención de principios y fundamentos, así como una descripción de diferentes momentos del pensamiento desde la época medieval hasta nuestros días. En el escrutinio de las fuentes de reflexión de la designada Filosofía Judía, ahí se reconocer como elementos de inspiración el Tanaj, el Talmud y la interacción con las escuelas griegas de pensamiento; además, en lo que respecta al itinerario investigativo, los autores exponen una serie de propuestas, de múltiples autores ligados a este tendencia, entre los que se pueden citar Moses Maimonides, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber y Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if we understand Levinas’s Desire of the Other as gift, we can understand it as joyful—that is, as celebratory. After presenting Levinas’s conception of Desire, I consider his claim, found in Otherwise than Being, that the self is a hostage to the Other, and I contend that, paradoxical as it may seem, being a hostage to the Other is actually liberating. Then, drawing on insights Richard Kearney offers in Reimagining the Sacred, I argue for (...) understanding Desire as a gift that is the condition of possibility for joy. If I offer hospitality to the Other, I thereby accept the gift that makes joy possible, and this joy is not egoistic but is the proper response to the gift. Finally, I ask whether Desire can be joyful in practice, given that the pure gift is an originary condition and never a historical one, and I conclude that imperfect joy remains possible. Moreover, this imperfect joy is better than any solitary enjoyment I might experience in the total absence of the Other. (shrink)

Drawing upon the practice of caregiving and the insights of feminist care ethics, I offer a phenomenology of caregiving through the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that caregiving is a material dialectic of embodied response involving moments of leveling, attention, and interruption. In this light, the Levinasian opposition between responding to another's singularity and leveling it via parity-based principles is belied in the experience of care. Contra much of response ethics’ and care ethics’ respective literatures, (...) this dialectic suggests that they are complementary in ways that productively illuminate themes of each. I conclude by suggesting that when response and care ethics are thought together through the experience of caregiving, such labors produce finite responsibility with infinite hope. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the (...) view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

Cuando E. Lévinas afirma que la paz es "el acontecimiento inicial del encuentro" y que es un "primer lenguaje", se podría creer que suspende su actitud crítica en beneficio de una ingenua confianza en el ser humano, olvidando así la violencia sin límites de las relaciones humanas. Todo cambia, sin embargo, cuando se comprende que ese "acontecimiento primero" proviene de lo anárquico, que no se fija y no permite entonces ninguna especie de conciliación. Se analiza cómo Lévinas renueva, después de (...) la La Paz perpetua de Kant, el sentido de la palabra paz. Se pregunta qué actitud crítica permite pensar la paz sin remitirse a las ilusiones de la moral, y qué peso tiene una paz que no se encarna en instituciones. It could be possible to think that when E. Lévinas states that peace is "the first event of the encounter" and that it is a "first language", he gives up his critical attitude in favor of a naive faith in human beings, thus forgetting the unlimited violence that characterizes human relations. Everything changes, however, when one understands that the "first event" arises from anarchy, that it is not fixed, and that it allows for no conciliation. The article analyzes how, after Kant's Perpetual Peace, Lévinas provides a renovated meaning of peace. Likewise, it inquires into the critical attitude that makes it possible to think peace without falling into the illusions of morality, and what significance would a peace not actualized in institutions might have. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the set of problems regarding the HIV/AIDS crisis in the specific domain of corporate moral responsibility within a context of the Levinasian notion of proximity and the Third. Against a totalitarian, homogeneous society, Levinas opens the way to a social pluralism, which has its sources in the disquiet provoked by the strangeness of the Other's face. Corporate responsibility, understood from this point of view, would not reduce institutional relations to an anonymous world of neutrality. Corporate responsibility (...) is unconditional in the sense that to be responsible is not a question of choice, but one of deep liberty, the liberty of taking the burden of the infinite responsibility for the Other – customers, employees, the public at large and those who suffer in the world. This paper argues that it would then also mean that society in accordance with the spirit of the Levinasian philosophy of infinite responsibility could exert pressure on corporations, such as pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their power, they could change their present responsibility policies to a more affirmative and engaged responsibility with regard to those who are ill and who suffer death or debilitation from HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases in the poorest parts of the world today. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the set of problems regarding the HIV/AIDS crisis in the specific domain of corporate moral responsibility within a context of the Levinasian notion of proximity (infinite responsibility) and the Third. Against a totalitarian, homogeneous society, Levinas opens the way to a social pluralism, which has its sources in the disquiet provoked by the strangeness of the Other's face. Corporate responsibility, understood from this point of view, would not reduce institutional relations to an anonymous world of neutrality. (...) Corporate responsibility is unconditional in the sense that to be responsible is not a question of choice, but one of deep liberty, the liberty of taking the burden of the infinite responsibility for the Other customers, employees, the public at large and those who suffer in the world. This paper argues that it would then also mean that society (individuals, NGOs and governments) in accordance with the spirit of the Levinasian philosophy of infinite responsibility could exert pressure on corporations, such as pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their power, they could change their present responsibility policies to a more affirmative and engaged responsibility with regard to those who are ill and who suffer death or debilitation from HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases in the poorest parts of the world today. (shrink)

The release of Emmanuel Levinas’s Prison Notebooks (Carnets de captivité) as a part of the first tome of his collected works has further illuminated the extent of the philosopher’s preoccupation with art, especially literature. Levinas’s own literary efforts have been well documented, but less attention has been paid to the relationship between the Prison Notebooks and Levinas’s early philosophy of art. In this article, I suggest that much of what Levinas has to say apropos art in his early philosophy can (...) be traced back to meditations undertaken in captivity. I will unearth the influence of the Prison Notebooks in three articles from the 1940ʹs “L’autre dans Proust,” “La réalité et son ombre,” and “La transcendance des mots.” I argue that in Levinas’s early philosophy of art follows two distinct “paths”: the path of eros and the path of sensation. On one hand, Levinas questions how and if literature can do justice to the question of alterity, whereas on the other he seeks to make sense of the relationship between art and sensibility. I argue that in his notebooks Levinas offers an account of the meaning of sensations that forms the basis of his early aesthetics. Thus, the study of the Prison Notebooks is important as it allows us to see how Levinas’s early philosophy of art, including his seminal “La réalité et son ombre,” functions as a continuation of a philosophical project already begun during his time in captivity. (shrink)

The article proposes a reflection on cultural sign production in social contexts dominated by the socially generalized fear of the unknown other and the obsession for vulnerability avoidance. This phenomenon has been reflected in the generalized tendency of reliance upon contractual trust, where the coherence of the signs legitimating a trustful relationship is maintained by external agencies backed by authoritative forums (e.g., religious, legal, political) and sanctioned by well-defined rewards and punishments. In contrast with the contractual model of trust, I (...) propose a different model, covenantal trust. Taking as a point of departure Levinas’s phenomenological interpretation of the responsible self-opening toward the “sign of the giving of signs” which involves covenantal elements, I advance toward proposing a more active involvement of the participants in the process of joint production of signs. This dynamic involvement is made possible thanks to essential elements of the covenant, such as summoning and response. The covenantal approach aims at proposing a semioethical solution to the social challenges emerging from frustrations of members of both marginal and external communities for being treated distrustfully. (shrink)

Dialogo filosofijos mąstytojų Rosenzweig‘o ir Levino darbų esmė – mirties bedugnės ir asmens tapatumo santykis. Rosenzweig‘as niekį laiko galutiniu kantiškojo mąstymo tašku. Mirtis, kaip egzistencinis niekio patyrimas, buvo laikoma kiekvieno žmogaus realybe sudėtingu amžių sandūros laikotarpiu. Rosenzweig‘ui niekis buvo atspirties taškas, permąstant ir siekiant išsaugoti asmens tapatumą. Asmens tapatumas apsaugo nuo niekio, tačiau jis taip pat yra atviras pokyčiams. Savo ankstyvuosiuose tekstuose Levinas daro panašias prielaidas, laikydamas Buvimą asmens tapatumo pradžia. Levinas plėtojo dialektinę fenomenologiją pradėdamas nuo mirties. Asmens tapatumas traktuojamas (...) kaip hipostazė, tačiau Levino darbe „Totalité et Infini“ įvyksta svarbus lūžis – jame asmens tapatumo šaltiniu laikomas troškimas. Buvimas tampa dėmesio centru kaip antroji elementale pusė, o asmens tapatumas suvokiamas kaip atsiskyrimas. (shrink)

This essay develops an approach to a phenomenology of shame by taking recourse to different notions of shame found in various humanistic disciplines and in the history of phenomenology. The first part of this paper analyzes some of the central ideas on the nature of shame to be found in cultural anthropology, pedagogy, history and psychoanalysis. The second part discusses the phenomenological theories of shame proposed by Sartre and Levinas. Since their approaches are opposite to each other in crucial respects, (...) the third part of this paper returns to the analyses of shame undertaken in the first part in order to resolve this apparent conflict and advance a coherent theory of shame. The essay’s final thesis is that shame is neither fundamentally destructive nor fundamentally constructive but that it can assume both guises. While it can threaten the subject up to the point of destruction triggering it in aggressive defensive mechanisms, it can also contribute to the development of the subject into a fully free individual capable of acknowledging and answering to others. (shrink)

The dramatic change in the focus and overall project of French philosophy since World War I has become increasingly apparent, with one of the resultant developments being, as Geroulanos has identified, the emergence of “an atheism that is not humanist.” This article discusses parallels between the philosophical methodology of Gabriel Marcel and this new form of atheism. In so doing, it explores connections between Marcel and French philosophy’s more recent “turn to religion,” and uses these to demonstrate how Marcel’s notion (...) of disponibilité or “availability” operates with respect to Marcel’s conception of philosophy itself. (shrink)

La formulación tradicional de los derechos humanos se basa en la libertad y la igualdad, pero Emmanuel Lévinas hace de la diferencia absoluta la fuente y el fundamento de tales derechos. Los Derechos Humanos aparecen entonces como los derechos del Otro y extienden el alcance de la responsabilidad hasta comprometer la propia libertad. La primera parte de este trabajo muestra cómo la preocupación por los derechos humanos fue una constante en la existencia y el pensamiento de Lévinas. La segunda parte (...) está dedicada a exponer la fundamentación levinasiana de los derechos humanos con base en la illeidad. (shrink)

Responder à questão da responsabilidade para além da sua dimensão jurídica é o objetivo do presente trabalho. Para desenvolver o tema, o autor se utiliza de dois filósofos contemporâneos: Levinas e Jacques Derrida. Primeiramente, o conceito de responsabilidade é examinado a partir do sentido ético que a filosofia da alteridade de Levinas lhe atribui. Em seguida, a questão da responsabilidade é problematizada a partir da filosofia de Derrida, tendo como foco a crítica do direito e a teoria da decisão, conforme (...) o texto Força de lei, onde Derrida examina a diferença entre direito e justiça. Finalmente, partindo da crítica de Derrida, o trabalho procura explorar as relações entre liberdade e responsabilidade. (shrink)

In this article the author seeks to highlight a specific disorder related to bodily experience in melancholia conceived as a severe form of clinical depression. The article is divided into three parts. In the first section, the author investigates the intersubjective dimension of bodily experience in light of the categories of Außen- and Innenleiblichkeit. In the second section, I explore a specific disturbance of the dimension of intercorporeality. The excessive feeling of the bodily (außenleibliche) visibility of his/her own sufferance is (...) a fundamental aspect of depression. At a pre-reflexive level, we constantly assume the noncoincidence between one's own bodily expression and the Other's experience/reading of these expressions. An alteration of this (pre-reflexive) awareness occurs in melancholia. The patient feels as if the melancholic condition would be transparent to the other. In the third section, the author intends to show the alteration of the embodied communication between the melancholic person and the other investigating two particular phenomena: the exchange of gaze in a face to face encounter, and the disturbance of the oral sense, revealing a specific form of irresponsiveness and the experience of void. (shrink)

Christian ideas have continued to inspire European bioethics until now. The central thesis of this essay is that the open-mindedness of Roman Catholic and other Christian denominations in Europe is crucial for understanding why Christian ethics is so well integrated in the European culture. The essay describes first the institutional frameworks in which these Christian mainly Roman Catholic ideas are developed. It analyzes further the difference between the secular Anglo-American and European bioethics as it has been influenced by these Christian (...) ideas. It finally summarizes the challenges to which Europe's Christian bioethical identity is presently exposed to. The essay states that the Christian inspiration of European bioethics is mainly connected with the ideologically moderate, tolerant, and dialogical participation of Christian bioethicists in the bioethical debate in Europe. (shrink)

In this article, the differences between Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger’s approaches to ontotheology are discussed. Whereas Marion argues for a historical approach to this question, i.e., testing whether ontotheology can be detected in this or that thinker in this history of philosophy, this article aims, with Levinas and Heidegger, for an ontological approach to the question concerning ontotheology. In this regard, this text expresses wonder about Marion’s claim that Medieval theology would not have succumbed to ontotheology whereas (...) ancient and modern did. It is shown that ontotheology, for Levinas as well as Heidegger, might not be overcome with a simple command but rather belongs to the very structure of thought. The article concludes with offering some corrections to the Levinasian ‘God outside of onto-theology’ by a more phenomenological account of being-in-the world. (shrink)

This contribution is a critical and constructive engage ment with discourse ethics. First, it clarifies why discourse ethics has difficulties with the grounding and application of moral norms. Second, it turns to a positive appropriation of the formal and proce dural aspects of discourse ethics. The goal is the elaboration of an ethics that is able to incorporate the material aspects of goods and the formal dimension of ethical validity and consensuability. Every morality is the formal application of some substantive (...) good. Every ethical perspective demands its evaluation in terms of its uni versability. In order to achieve this mediation, it is suggested that we must incorporate not only the historical dimension of moral systems, but also the role of critical consciousness and the negativity embod ied by those who are victims of the existing consensus. The essay con cludes with six points that need to be considered when formulating a material ethics that is universalizable and, most importantly, that can address the massive poverty and dehumanization of those excluded from the present community of communication. Key Words: application • consensual • corporeality • discourse ethics • formal • grounding • intersubjective • Kantian • liberation • ethics • material • phronesis • procedural • validity. (shrink)

Fiodor Dostoievski rasga el alma humana hasta dejarla herida por el sufrimiento, la culpa y el aislamiento. Y, sin embargo, la derrota no gana la batalla. La escritora sureña estadounidense Carson McCullers escribe sobre la soledad y la miseria del sur de los Estados Unidos con una mirada atenta a los paisajes desolados de la Rusia de Fiodor Dostoievski, no sólo físicos sino esencialmente metafísicos. Esta autora que ya leyó al maestro ruso a los 13 años explora las entrañas humanas (...) desde un terreno rural, desolador, inhóspito y desafortunado, con diferencias raciales, sobreexposición de alcohol y con un concepto de bien moral interno que aparece como una pulsión constante e inagotable. En esta aproximación queremos destacar cómo el misterio del mal, pero también el acto de la voluntad y la incomunicación, son aspectos que unen a ambos autores, especialmente en dos de sus obras maestras, Crimen y Castigo y El corazón es un cazador solitario, respectivamente. (shrink)

This essay aims to broaden the understanding of the nature of the physician–patient relationship. To do so, the concept of medical philia that Pedro Laín Entralgo proposes is analysed and is considered taking into consideration the relational trait of the human being and the structure of human action as a story of the permanent tension that exists between freedom and truth, where the ontological foundation of the hermeneutic of the "Gift" and the analogy of “Love” as the central dynamic of (...) this action, helps explain the nature of the doctor-patient relationship as a "friendship relationship". This understanding offers a perspective differing from just the utilitarian considerations of current "patient-centred" approaches and proposed the redirection of the teaching of medicine to more humanistic approaches. The dynamic of the doctor-patient relationship proposed here in its most genuine essence is effectively expressed in physician concrete attitudes that the patient usually captures and relates as the “the doctor’s way of being”. Goya's painting, Self-portrait with Dr Arrieta (1820), can be taken as an outstanding artistic representation of this expanded dimension of the medical act, capturing the “medical friendship” in action. (shrink)

My aim is to prove that Hermann Cohen was not only a philosopher of dialogue but has played an exceedingly important role in the history of that current of thought. His books Ethics of Pure Will (1904) and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (1919) offer a detailed analysis of the relationships between I and Thou, I and It, I and We. In the first book these relationships are considered from the ethical-legal point of view and in (...) the second from the viewpoint of religious anthropology. However, Cohen considers the problem of inter-personal relationships not in isolation, but as an important component of his entire philosophical system. Deduction of the concept of personality in Ethics of Pure Will is based on Cohen’s logic of the origin expounded in the first part of his system in The Logic of Pure Cognition. Cohen explains that the origin of the self-consciousness of I as a personality is not the external world, but another person, i.e. Thou. In turn, the partnership relationships between I and Thou create the community We which forms the basis of the law-governed state. The process of artistic creation in the framework of inter-personal relationship is explored in Aesthetics of Pure Feeling. Finally, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism formulates the conception of religion as the most complete realisation of inter-personal relationship. Thus, dialogism became an important dimension of Cohen’s entire philosophical system, a fact noted by Martin Buber. Franz Rosenzweig, in unfolding dialogical thinking, expressly appeals to all the elements of Cohen’s system. There are signs of his influence on Bakhtin’s doctrine. Thus, examining Cohen’s doctrine as part of the philosophy of dialogue gives insights into this entire trend as a coherent whole. (shrink)

Built upon the basic postulates of phenomenologic hermeneutics, this approach discusses the distinction between the poetic and the poetal body, investigating the possibility of the latter to reveal itself to the comprehensive awareness before its manifestation to the already interpretative one. An appearance that is captured by the eidetical intuition of the „white” comprehension as a potence of the signifiable which is prior to the proper act of signifying, in its original pure existence, that is in the very meaning in (...) which it is revealed. What is revealed is not the poetic body of a text that is already given in the static of the fact of being, but the self-revelation of the absolute in the poetal body of the fact of appearing, where the term „poetal” designates the dynamic attribute of the matrix poem of offering itself in the significance of self-affecting, its embodiment in the living flesh of the poem. (shrink)

Este texto sigue el movimiento de la palabra “anarquía” en De otro modo que ser. Este término que Lévinas despolitiza al acudir a su sentido estrictamente etimológico, viene al texto como un exceso que no puede recogerse bajo la unidad de un nombre o de un discurso. Lo que se busca con este texto es explorar la significación de esta anarquía, su relación con el orden discursivo y con el orden político, para preguntar finalmente si la anarquía no acaba de (...) alguna manera siendo neutralizada en una forma de poder soberano que dicta la orden ética desde una cierta bondad originaria y originante. (shrink)

This study undertakes a hermeneutical reading of some texts in which the question of the embodiment of the categorical imperative, the responsibility enjoined by the procedural form of the moral law, is introduced. It is hoped that this reading will contribute to our understanding of the body of experience, the so-called body-subject, showing the body to be not only an object-body, not only, as in the work of Foucault, a material substratum for the application of power, but also, as Levinas (...) thought, the primordial bearer of a certain rudimentary moral compass, at the very heart of which there lies, if only deeply encrypted, the categorical assignment of the moral law. (edited). (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo se propone identificar los aspectos básicos de la tesis de Emmanuel Levinas sobre la dimensión ética de la significación. En un primer momen to, se reconstruyen las críticas del autor a dos aproximaciones a la significación, denominadas en este trabajo: el ámbito de los signos y el ámbito de la expresión. En un segundo momento, se enuncia la tesis de Levinas, según la cual, es en el terreno ético donde la significación encuentra su sentido original. Finalmente, se (...) identifican algunas posibilidades que abre esta consideración levinasiana de la significación para discusiones sobre la percepción, la crisis contemporánea del sentido y la epistemología. Más que una exposición detallada de la teoría levinasiana de la significación, se apuesta por señalar otros cauces de reflexión que partan de su ética como filosofía primera, sin estancarse en ella.This article aims to identify the basic aspects of Emmanuel Levinas’ thesis on the ethical dimensión of significance. At first, the author’s criticisms of two approaches to signification, called in this work: the sphere of signs and the sphere of expression, are reconstructed. In the second moment, Levinas’ thesis is stated, according to which, it is in the ethical field where the meaning finds its original meaning. Finally, some possibilities are identified that this Levinasian consideration of meaning opens up for discussions on perception, the contemporary crisis of meaningg, and epistemology. Rather than a detailed exposition of the Levinasian theory of signification, we will point out other channels of reflection based on its ethics as a first philosophy, without getting bogged down in it. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

The article investigates how two different conceptions of the edifying potential of education attempt to take into account the normative dimension of scientific knowledge. In the first conception it is the demand for truth that is edifying, whereas in the second concept it is a distinctively ethical demand. It is argued that the first concept in the end implies the subjection of education to the ‘brutality of facticity’, under which it risks losing its critical point. The second conception, drawing on (...) Levinas and Arendt, tries to safeguard this critical point. It conceives education as a process through which scientific knowledge is made subject to reflection, and is thus confronted with the ethical challenges and demands of society. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasizes an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to (...) be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognize, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organized around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice. (shrink)

Resumen El artículo sugiere algunos aspectos de un análisis fenomenológico de la vulnerabilidad con énfasis en la condición del cuerpo vulnerable. El análisis sigue un enfoque fenomenológico trascendental de orientación genética por el cual se describe y explicita el campo de implicación intencional de horizonte involucrado en la unidad vivencial del cuerpo vivido. Inmediatamente después se procede a la descripción de los horizontes prácticos del cuerpo y su relación con la génesis de la conciencia de la propia vulnerabilidad. En este (...) contexto, se destacan algunos motivos relevantes de la conciencia que anticipa el daño, propia de la conciencia de ser vulnerable, para el acceso y constitución del ámbito de los valores. Por último, a partir del marco descriptivo presentado se propone una reflexión sobre la significación moral de la vulnerabilidad.The article suggests some aspects of a phenomenological analysis of vulnerability with regard to the condition of bodily vulnerability. In order to describe and make explicit the field of intentional implication of horizons involved in the lived-experiences unity of lived body, the analysis follows a transcendental phenomenological approach with genetic orientation. Afterwards it performs a description of practical horizons of the body and its relation to the genesis of the consciousness of one’s own vulnerability. In this context, the paper points out some relevant reasons of aware anticipation of harm that belongs to the consciousness of being vulnerable with regard to the constitution of the field of values. At the end, the article suggests a reflection on the moral significance of vulnerability. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the what, the how, and the why of moral phenomenology. I consider first the question What is moral phenomenology?, secondly the question How to pursue moral phenomenology?, and thirdly the question Why pursue moral phenomenology? My treatment of these questions is preliminary and tentative, and is meant not so much to settle them as to point in their answers’ direction.

El siguiente trabajo tiene como fin analizar las bases psicológicas y la estructura de la moral en la Teoría de los sentimientos morales de Adam Smith, a partir de las nociones de alteridad, diferencia y asimetría. Se intentará mostrar la función fundamental que tiene la interacción asimétrica con otro ser humano en la configuración de una moral basada en la imparcialidad del juicio, que emerge a partir de una progresiva alteración de la conciencia de sí. Esto implica que la conciencia (...) moral es una conciencia determinada por el recibimiento de la alteridad, cuyo juicio no se caracteriza por la autorreferencia, sino por la heterorreferencia: la referencia última en la que un sujeto se apoya para juzgar se halla en el otro, o en los otros, en cuanto espectadores actuales o potenciales de su conducta, y no en sí mismo. A partir de aquí, se mostrará cómo la noción de igualdad, que subyace a la justicia como momento primario de la moral, es en realidad un momento segundo y se construye a partir de una estructura de asimetría que es ubicua en la teoría de Smith. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca interrogar al fenómeno de la apelación. Para ello, se examinará el vínculo entre fenomenología y apelación preguntándonos qué es preciso entender por la máxima husserliana que conmina a un retorno a las cosas mismas; en segundo lugar, intentaremos dilucidar cómo la obediencia crítica a la consigna fenomenológica ha supuesto una recomprensión de fenómeno al punto de transformar la consigna husserliana en un verdadero “retorno de las cosas mismas”. Finalmente, nos proponemos interrogar la apelación del fenómeno, a (...) partir del diálogo entre Marion y Romano. No solo intentaremos dilucidar cuál es la especificidad de la apelación, sino qué relación estricta hay entre fenómeno, particularmente insigne o saturado y apelación. (shrink)

At the border between the fields of anthropology of theatre and phenomenology, this article presents and analyses the answers given by a sample of French theatre actors to an apparently simple question: How would you define your art? One could have been expect a wide range of answers, which would have reflected the infinite multiplicity of perspectives about that subject. Yet unexpectedly, the author deduces from the field investigation she conducted, a common and almost consensual vision of theatre expressed by (...) these actors: an art in which practitioners are in the poetic quest of themselves, in their most accomplished humanity, in harmony with the self, the Other and the life. (shrink)

En este artículo el autor responde a cuatro objeciones que Karí-Otto Apel desarrolla en el trabajo: «La ética del Discurso ante el desafío de la Filosofía de la Liberación» . 1) La miseria, que es una evidencia de exigencia ética, necesita para alcanzar validez intersubjetiva de la mediación hermenéutica de las ciencias sociales criticas. 2) En el nivel ideológico la Filosofía de la Liberación no acepta ser criticada de historicisrno y de un cierto econornicismo marxista Standard, ya que reconstruye el (...) pensamiento de Marx de manera original. 3) La trascendentalidad trans-ontológica que propone la Filosofía de la Liberación es propia de la alteridad de tipo levínasíano, 4) Aunque se acepta la necesidad de efectuar una fundamentación formal antiescéptica, lo que importa ética y materialmente es la demostración ante el cínico que pretende justificar la muerte de la verdad ética de la praxis de liberación. (shrink)

Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood.In the first three (...) sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro-choice assumptions. (shrink)

My view on what I see as the predicament of Christian philosophy in ethics has been shaped by a number of experiences. I will first share with you some of these experiences, to give you an impression of the background against which this article has been written.