7 - Uprooting Paganism: Emmanuel Levinas Faces Heidegger

Summary

Emmanuel Levinas is arguably the most famous Jewish student of Martin Heidegger (alongside, perhaps, Hannah Arendt). Levinas’s philosophical effort could be summarized, somewhat succinctly, as the attempt to put to the fore the idea of “ethics as first philosophy.” Levinas seeks to dethrone what he takes to be philosophy’s prioritization of ontology and establish that undergirding ontology is infinite and asymmetrical responsibility for the other person. Often the ethical encounter is portrayed as a relation to the other’s (Autrui) face, an “infinite,” overabundant excess conditioning the finite; a relation beyond the horizon of being, through which the trace of the divine Other shines through. The revelation of the face does not manifest itself as, nor is it mediated through, concepts or representations, but rather as the demand and command of ethics. Intersubjectivity is not contingent on the self, but precedes and conditions it. I am obligated to the other person before comprehension. The insight of “ethics as first philosophy” is expressed with typical hyperbole: my responsibility to the other includes a responsibility for the other’s responsibility, even for my oppressor and prosecutor; I am demanded to substitute for the other, to death. Throughout the course of Western thought, Levinas claims, Otherness