It has long been accepted that one of Levinas’ major concerns is to establish an ethics of responsibility for the ‘other.’ Yet it has been deemed for decades, even by Levinasians, that his approach to that concern is ‘unsystematic’ and ‘not consistent.’ That situation arose because Levinas’ four terms for ‘other’ are difficult to translate, so his terms were first addressed by adopting English conventions. Such conventions have furthered Levinas scholarship, but our aim is to consider Levinas’ consistency: Hence we (...) undertake the first English-language assessment of the rigour of Levinas’ approach in 1961 to the ‘other’ by means of all four terms. To do so, we follow a ‘formal structure’ that Levinas develops from the tradition of phenomenological logic—mostly Husserl’s. We hope the result will palliate worries about Levinas’ rigor, and allow new ways to engage with his work. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se interroga el fundamento de la hermenéutica del texto y lo que significa retomarla a la letra en filosofía y en teología. Una hermenéutica es fundamental si se afinca en un modo de existencia adecuado a su propósito, de modo que se diferencie mejor y sea identificada claramente. La hermenéutica protestante del sentido del texto y la hermenéutica judía del cuerpo de la letra serán sustituidas aquí por una hermenéutica católica del texto del cuerpo, en una tentativa al menos (...) programática. ABSTRACT The article inquires into the basis of textual hermeneutics and what it means to apply it literally in philosophy and theology. Hermeneutics is fundamental if it is grounded in a mode of existence that is adequate to its purpose, so that it is better differentiated and clearly identified. The Protestant hermeneutics of the meaning of the text and the Jewish hermeneutics of the body of the letter are here replaced by a Catholic hermeneutics of the text of the body, in an attempt that is at least programmatic. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Ricoeur’s conception of the capable human being; a conception that interprets personal identity as constituted through a hermeneutical process which is simultaneously a vertical dialectic of self-emancipation and a horizontal dialectic of recognition. Ricoeur’s speculative investigations around the human being progresses in parallel with the evolution of his hermeneutical conception, from the paradigm of an interpretation of symbols and myths to the analysis of text and narration, thence to phenomenological hermeneutics of the self, and finally to (...) the hermeneutics of translation and recognition. It is in particular the latter movement that allows a productive dialogue with Levinas and Ricoeur on vulnerability and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Tout en suivant une perspective ricœurienne, cet article se propose de montrer de quelle façon la dialectique de la vulnérabilité et de l’effort constituent le « moteur émancipateur » de la personne. L’auteur parte d’une confrontation entre la philosophie de l’homme de Emmanuel Lévinas et celle de Paul Ricœur, tout en approfondissant les différentes étapes afin de réinterpréter l’idée initiale que nous naissons en tant qu’individu, tandis que devenir une personne est un processus qui passe par une dialectique interrelationnelle et (...) culturelle. Dans cette perspective, qui mieux que d’autres révèle une proximité significative entre Ricœur à Lévinas, l’idée d’identité en tant que parcours herméneutique d’émancipation révèle sa caractérisation de défi éthique. Défi éthique, d’une parte, entre la passivité/vulnérabilité et les pouvoirs subjectives, et, de l’autre, entre la capacité d’être accueilli par les autres et la volonté de progresser avec eux, à travers les défis de la reconnaissance mutuelle. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with what seem to be standard practices of at least some organizations that use models in their ad campaigns. These organizations know that many of their models have had drug problems but refuse either to tolerate this or to help them. Some organizations have, allegedly in the name of a responsibility for the health of their customers, rather opted for a firm condemnation of the practices in which models such as Kate Moss apparently engage. This raises (...) questions about hypocrisy. The paper uses Levinas's concept of the face critically to describe what might be going on in the conflict between Moss and some of the companies she worked for. Moss is arguably understood by these companies as a role model who should not engage with drugs or street life. Against these more or less patronizing tendencies, the paper claims that it is not so much the face but processes of defacement that should trouble us from a moral perspective. The face, it is maintained, is not only ethical but also has a materiality. In opposition to what is maintained by at least some scholars of Levinas, art, literature and history have alerted us over and over again that the face is anything but indelible. Some examples from art show us the versatility and vulnerability of the face. The gossip and hype about what came to be known as the Kate Moss affair stands, it is argued, in a long misogynic tradition of defacement. (shrink)

Cet article vise à dégager les implications ontologiques du projet Ricoeurien d’une herméneutique du soi tel que formulé dans Soi-même comme un autre. L’auteur retrace d’abord la double approche de Ricoeur proposant de penser l’attestation du soi suivant la notion aristotélicienne de l’être-vrai et l’homme capable selon les catégories de l’acte et de la puissance. Soulignant le caractère fragmentaire et insuffisant des analyses de Ricoeur, il explore ensuite une troisième façon de nommer l’être du soi selon la catégorie de la (...) relation, développant ainsi l’idée d’une “ontologie de la relation” sous-jacente à cette herméneutique du soi. This article aims to make explicit the ontological implications of the Ricœurian project of a hermeneutics of self as formulated in Oneself as Another . The author first redraws Ricœur’s double approach proposing to think the attestation of the self following the Aristotelian notion of being-true and the capable man following the categories of actuality and potentiality. Underlining the fragmentary nature and the incompleteness of Ricœur’s analysis, he then explores a third way to speak about the being of the self following the category of relation, thus developing the idea of an underlying “ontology of the relation” implied by this hermeneutics of the self.  . (shrink)

This article addresses Emmanuel Levinas's re-conceptualization of Jewish identity by examining his response to a question he himself poses: “In which sense do we need a Jewish science?” First, I attend to Levinas's critique of modern science of Judaism, particularly as it was understood in the critical approaches of the nineteenth-century school of thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Next, I detail Levinas's own constructive proposal that would, in his words, “enlarge the science of Judaism.” He retrieved classical textual sources that modern (...) Judaism had neglected, while at the same time he enlarged Judaism's relevance beyond a historical community by turning to phenomenology as a rigorous science. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of this new science of Judaism for Jewish ethics and identity in a post-war period. (shrink)

En este texto Jean-Luc Marion ofrece una lectura crítica de la interpretación derridiana de Dionisio, aclarando su propia posición respecto de la teología mística. A partir de un análisis de cada una de las cuatro objeciones presentadas por Derrida, Marion presenta la tercera vía, la vía de la de-nominación; analiza el estatus de la alabanza y de la plegaria; distingue la mística de la metafísica de la presencia y de la ontoteología; y delinea los rasgos del fenómeno de la revelación.

This paper takes issue with what seem to be standard practices of at least some organizations that use models in their ad campaigns. These organizations know that many of their models have had drug problems but refuse either to tolerate this or to help them. Some organizations have, allegedly in the name of a responsibility for the health of their customers, rather opted for a firm condemnation of the practices in which models such as Kate Moss apparently engage. This raises (...) questions about hypocrisy. The paper uses Levinas's concept of the face critically to describe what might be going on in the conflict between Moss and some of the companies she worked for. Moss is arguably understood by these companies as a role model who should not engage with drugs or street life. Against these more or less patronizing tendencies, the paper claims that it is not so much the face but processes of defacement that should trouble us from a moral perspective. The face, it is maintained, is not only ethical but also has a materiality. In opposition to what is maintained by at least some scholars of Levinas, art, literature and history have alerted us over and over again that the face is anything but indelible. Some examples from art show us the versatility and vulnerability of the face. The gossip and hype about what came to be known as the Kate Moss affair stands, it is argued, in a long misogynic tradition of defacement. (shrink)

Levinas ̓s work is explicitly placed within the heritage of the Phenomenological school. Nevertheless, he repeatedly uses notions drawn from the religious tradition, especially Jewish, up to the point of stating that Judaism is a “category of being”. This paper analyses the role of Judaism as a category, beginning with a reconstruction of this notion in the most influential authors within Levinas’s philosophy. Finally, the role and meaning that this categorial structure take on in Levinas will be shown, through the (...) examination of four main components: the exposition of alterity as separation and glory; the relationship of responsibility as election and substitution; the understanding of temporality as creation and redemption; and the prophetical understanding of language. (shrink)