793
from the distinct evolutionary trait of erraticism. What Michel Foucault characterized as an “archaeology of knowledge” steeped in “incompatible propositions”
10
.
Every population promotes some individuals who will, themselves, attempt an
epistemological re-engineering. That might mean entry into politics, civil service,
philanthropy, or any number of greed orbits. The overall ratio of ethically driven
individuals versus those who are not, and may never be, is, of course, a topic of
great concern and cynicicism, even while ethics itself remains the subject of continuous debate from every aspect of its meaning, role, and considerable challenges.
Consciousness, and its transitive movements toward the generally ascribed to
realm of the conscience, involves fundamentally heteronomous, outside influences
all but granting the reality, or at least inevitability of “Otherness,” and of “the Other
(Autrui).” This conceptual relation is a crucial component of Levinas’ thinking
11
.
The importance of this dialectical saturation of basic terms comes down to the
inception of ethics, for Levinas, as for the entire history of metaphysics. Most
strikingly, as Peperzak analyzes, the Holocaust survivor (Levinas was a prisoner of
war near Hannover at the Fallingbostel Camp from 1940 until liberation) managed
to see to the core of ethical realization the most fundamental credo, “Thou shalt not
kill”
12
, which comes with the responsibility “of protecting widows and orphans,
the poor, and the stranger, i.e., any other in its nakedness and vulnerability”
13
.
Throughout Alterity and Transcendence (first published in 1995) Levinas pivots upon the I-Thou relationships of Martin Buber, addressing the “you” as a central facet of the human experience
14
. This “you” dominates the search for “I” and
implicitly pins the entire hope (faith) in God on the equation of an infinite reciprocity “starting out from the face of the other man”
15
and in whose visage we
may read the stranger, all others, and the potential for “goodness outside all
systems”
16
: a virtue underlying all else, despite every malevolence and misfortune. Such that it is only by this multiplied qualifier of Others that goodness is
absolute, the basic construct, suggests Levinas, of humanity
17
: “the gravity of the
love of one’s neighbor”
18
.
10 See M.Foucault’s book by that title, The Archaeology Of Knowledge & The Discourse On
Language, Michel Foucault, Translated from the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith, Pantheon
Books, Random House, A Tavistock Publications Limited, New York 1972, p. 149.
11 See To The Other – An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, by Adriaan
Peperzak, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1993, pp. 19, 109.
12 See Levinas, Difficult Freedom, translated by S. Hand, Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1990, p. 8f.
13 op.cit., Peperzak, p. 117, f.73.
14 Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, from the Preface by Pierre Hayat, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1999, p. xx.
15 ibid., p.29.
16 ibid. p.108.
17 ibid. p. 127.
18 ibid., p. 141.
90.3 Levinas and Buber
from the distinct evolutionary trait of erraticism. What Michel Foucault characterized as an “archaeology of knowledge” steeped in “incompatible propositions”
10
.
Every population promotes some individuals who will, themselves, attempt an
epistemological re-engineering. That might mean entry into politics, civil service,
philanthropy, or any number of greed orbits. The overall ratio of ethically driven
individuals versus those who are not, and may never be, is, of course, a topic of
great concern and cynicicism, even while ethics itself remains the subject of continuous debate from every aspect of its meaning, role, and considerable challenges.
Consciousness, and its transitive movements toward the generally ascribed to
realm of the conscience, involves fundamentally heteronomous, outside influences
all but granting the reality, or at least inevitability of “Otherness,” and of “the Other
(Autrui).” This conceptual relation is a crucial component of Levinas’ thinking
11
.
The importance of this dialectical saturation of basic terms comes down to the
inception of ethics, for Levinas, as for the entire history of metaphysics. Most
strikingly, as Peperzak analyzes, the Holocaust survivor (Levinas was a prisoner of
war near Hannover at the Fallingbostel Camp from 1940 until liberation) managed
to see to the core of ethical realization the most fundamental credo, “Thou shalt not
kill”
12
, which comes with the responsibility “of protecting widows and orphans,
the poor, and the stranger, i.e., any other in its nakedness and vulnerability”
13
.
Throughout Alterity and Transcendence (first published in 1995) Levinas pivots upon the I-Thou relationships of Martin Buber, addressing the “you” as a central facet of the human experience
14
. This “you” dominates the search for “I” and
implicitly pins the entire hope (faith) in God on the equation of an infinite reciprocity “starting out from the face of the other man”
15
and in whose visage we
may read the stranger, all others, and the potential for “goodness outside all
systems”
16
: a virtue underlying all else, despite every malevolence and misfortune. Such that it is only by this multiplied qualifier of Others that goodness is
absolute, the basic construct, suggests Levinas, of humanity
17
: “the gravity of the
love of one’s neighbor”
18
.
10 See M.Foucault’s book by that title, The Archaeology Of Knowledge & The Discourse On
Language, Michel Foucault, Translated from the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith, Pantheon
Books, Random House, A Tavistock Publications Limited, New York 1972, p. 149.
11 See To The Other – An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, by Adriaan
Peperzak, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1993, pp. 19, 109.
12 See Levinas, Difficult Freedom, translated by S. Hand, Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1990, p. 8f.
13 op.cit., Peperzak, p. 117, f.73.
14 Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, from the Preface by Pierre Hayat, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1999, p. xx.
15 ibid., p.29.
16 ibid. p.108.
17 ibid. p. 127.
18 ibid., p. 141.
90.3 Levinas and Buber