Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Utopia and Reality

1999; DePaul University; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5840/philtoday199943228

2329-8596

Joëlle Hansel,

Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

Before I met Levinas, I encountered his philosophy.1 My acquaintance began nearly twenty years ago when I read Totality and Infinity.2 This book was a shock me, as it was most of my contemporaries. As a student in philosophy I had been trained in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition which was still prevalent in France in the 1980s. For most of my teachers at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Superieure, the concepts of totality and identity were the core of philosophy. Through his ideas of otherness and infinity, Levinas opened new horizons me, new ways of thinking. In 1984, I visited Levinas at his home in Paris, rue Michel-Ange. Whenever I think of my first meeting with him, the only word I find appropriate describe my impression is affability. Affability in the literal sense means dealing with someone with whom one can talk. In other words, it describes someone who has the ability welcome the other graciously and listen. Despite the distance between him, the great and famous philosopher, and me, the young and inexperienced student, Levinas' affability was devoid of any condescension. In his Traite des vertus, the French philosopher and friend of Levinas, Vladimir Jankelevitch severely criticized condescension which he described as the disposition to bow down without humbling oneself, go down ground floor see how it feels there, while the mind stays perched on top of its sublime observation post, with its disdainful outlook.3 There was no condescension in Levinas. On the contrary, he had both highness or, as he says about Blanchot, an aristocracy of thought, and humility. After I got know Levinas better I discovered his sense of humor that contrasted so surprisingly with his serious, rigorous, and severe philosophy. Without Levinas' living presence, only his books remain. From now on he belongs the history of philosophy. As Descartes states in his Discours de la methode,4 this history is not a mere enumeration of writings and doctrines. On the contrary, it is a vast forum where individuals meet and converse despite their differences of time and place. So let us imagine an encounter between Levinas and Kant, and their ensuing discussion on the relationship between utopia and reality. In the history of philosophy, Kant and Levinas are associated with the highest expressions of ethics; both philosophers center ethics on a concept of being human as a concern for the other. An actual meeting between the two men is not purely imaginary. It took place in Levinas' writings. Though his quotations of Kant are not numerous, they relate major issues such as his criticism of ontology and his concept of ethics as first philosophy. In early works, written in the 1950s, Levinas stressed his proximity Kant.5 In Is Ontology Fundamental?6 he paved the way for Totality and Infinity by elaborating the key concepts offace, language, and religion. As the title suggests, this article challenged the Heideggerian claim the primacy of ontology. In contrast Heidegger and the ontological tradition, Levinas acknowledged that he felt particularly close Kant's practical philosophy. He also indicated the resonance of echoes in his own conception of the ethical relationship with the other. Twenty years later, Levinas' lectures on God, Death, and Time7 further develop his affinity with Kant. In the latter work, there is a chapter entitled, The Radical Question: Kant against Heidegger. By opposing Kant Heidegger, Levinas pointed the possibility of overcoming ontology. In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence,8 he celebrated in which the meaning of being human is found, without measuring it by ontology, beyond the question What is there here? Nevertheless, Levinas also stated that Kantianism is the basis of philosophy, if philosophy is ontology.9 Moreover, foundational aspects of his ethics are diametrically opposed those of Kant. By understanding moral obligation as subjection the other and based on heteronomy, Levinas breaks with the Kantian principle of autonomy. …