The Problem with Levinas
Simon Critchley and Alexis Dianda
Abstract
This book advances a new and critical reading of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. Propelled by five basic questions that address the method, form, and shape of the central problem of Levinas’ work, the text both investigates Levinas’ solution to that problem and sketches an alternative. The book opens with a defence of a dramatic reading of Levinas’ texts that illuminates Levinas’ fundamental problem as the question of escaping the tragic finitude of being. Through a close reading of Levinas’ early works, where the question of escaping the being to which we are riveted in our facticity is fore ... More
This book advances a new and critical reading of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. Propelled by five basic questions that address the method, form, and shape of the central problem of Levinas’ work, the text both investigates Levinas’ solution to that problem and sketches an alternative. The book opens with a defence of a dramatic reading of Levinas’ texts that illuminates Levinas’ fundamental problem as the question of escaping the tragic finitude of being. Through a close reading of Levinas’ early works, where the question of escaping the being to which we are riveted in our facticity is foregrounded, the text tehn outlines the phenomenology of being in Levinas. The solution to this problem is explored through a discussion of Otherwise than Being, where the text also raises a series of critical questions regarding the claim of subjectivity as substitution. The end of the book contains the suggested alternative solution, one grounded in Levinas’ own discussion of eros in Totality and Infinity, though coupled with a reading of the Song of Songs and the tradition of medieval female Christian mysticism. The alternative answer to Levinas’ problem is a love that is both mystical and somatic; a mysticism not of fusion but of decreation. The result is a less familiar and challenging picture of the thought of Levinas.
Keywords:
Levinas,
mysticism,
eros,
subjectivity,
facticity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198738763 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198738763.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Simon Critchley, author
The New School for Social Research
Alexis Dianda, editor
The New School University
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