The Ungraspable in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas

Alžbeta Kuchtová

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Chapter 2 The Ungraspable in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas

In: The Ungraspable as a Philosophical Problem

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Alžbeta Kuchtová

Alžbeta Kuchtová
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 66–155

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004701465_004

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Abstract

This chapter proposes an interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s early work that contradicts Jacques Derrida’s claim that Levinas identifies the phenomenological limit only in the caress and in the human visage, created in the image of God. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of the early Levinas in relation to Levinas’s later work. It shows that Levinas’s thinking of otherness does not definitively, in all texts and in all periods, exclude conceiving of the otherness that is other-than-human. Even though some of Levinas’s texts do indeed confirm the Derridean interpretation, as is shown at the end of this chapter, the principal aim is not to reproach Levinas for being contradictory but to show that Levinas’s contradictions are fertile ones and can inspire a more inclusive and more general way of thinking about otherness in eco-philosophy. The “more-than-living” includes objects that are produced by man (artifacts) but also inorganic nature, for example more-than-living stones. The chapter elaborates on the otherness of the world and sensibility in an original interpretation of Levinasian concepts such as sleep, enjoyment, home, and work. It focuses on these phenomena insofar as it is in them that Levinas discovers the limits of phenomenology (the ungraspable).

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The Ungraspable as a Philosophical Problem

The Stubborn Persistence of Humanism in Contemporary Phenomenology

Series: New Research in the History of Western Philosophy, Volume: 5

Cover The Ungraspable as a Philosophical Problem

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004701465

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 20 Jun 2024

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- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Criticism & Theory
- Philosophy
  - Social & Political Philosophy

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Chapter 2 The Ungraspable in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas

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The Ungraspable as a Philosophical Problem

The Stubborn Persistence of Humanism in Contemporary Phenomenology

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