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This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas&’s relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume&’s primary aims. Levinas breaks with Heidegger&’s phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to the Other, the face-to-face, as exceeding the language of ontology. The ethical orientation of Levinas&’s philosophy assumes a subject who lives in a world of enjoyment, a world that is made accessible through the dwelling. The feminine presence presides over this dwelling, and the feminine face represents the first welcome. How is this feminine face to be understood? Does it provide a model for the infinite obligation to the Other, or is it a proto-ethical relation? The essays in this volume investigate this dilemma. Contributors are Alison Ainley, Diane Brody, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Claire Katz, Kelly Oliver, Diane Perpich, Stella Sandford, Sonya Sikka, and Ewa Ziarek.
Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Claire Elise Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas's work. Rather than viewing the feminine as a metaphor with no significance for women or as a means to reinforce traditional stereotypes, Katz goes beyond questions of sexual difference to reach a more profound understanding of the role of the feminine in Levinas's conception of ethical responsibility. She combines feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings to reveal that the feminine provides an important bridge between his philosophy and his Judaism. Katz's reading of Levinas's conception of the feminine against the backdrop of discussions of women of the Hebrew bible points to important shifts in contemporary philosophy toward the creation of life and care for the other.
This work offers a new interpretation of what Levinas means when he says that we are infinitely responsible to the other person.
Winner of the 2007 Symposium Book Award presented by Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy The Gift of the Other brings together a philosophical analysis of time, embodiment, and ethical responsibility with a feminist critique of the way women's reproductive capacity has been theorized and represented in Western culture. Author Lisa Guenther develops the ethical and temporal implications of understanding birth as the gift of the Other, a gift which makes existence possible, and already orients this existence toward a radical responsibility for Others. Through an engagement with the work of Levinas, Beauvoir, Arendt, Irigaray, and Kristeva, the author outlines an ethics of maternity based on the givenness of existence and a feminist politics of motherhood which critiques the exploitation of maternal generosity.
Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers—including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray—the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. The author employs discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, and the idea of radical democracy.
In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique.
What is strange? Or better, who is strange? When do we encounter the strange? This volume takes the question of hosting the Stranger to the deeper level of embodied imagination and the senses.It asks: How does the embodied imagination relate to the Stranger in terms of hospitality or hostility (given the common root of hostis as both host and enemy)? How do humans sensethe dimension of the strange and alien in different religions, arts, and cultures? How do the five physical senses relate to the spiritual senses, especially the famous sixthsense, as portals to an encounter with the Other? Is there a carnal perception of alterity, which would operate at an affective, prereflective, preconscious level? What exactly do embodied imaginariesof hospitality and hostility entail? And what, finally, are the topical implications of these questions for an ethics and practice of tolerance and peace?
These essays provoke new responses to the work of the eminent French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas through an analysis of how the problematics of reading, deconstruction, feminism, and psychotherapy complicate and deepen Levinas's account of responsibility. The re-reading presented here continues and expands on the long-standing debate between Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Published in English for the first time are two key texts in this debate: "Wholly Otherwise" by Levinas and "At this very moment in this work here I am" by Derrida.
The 14 essays included in this collection illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen understanding of Heidegger's philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources Heidegger's work can provide for feminist thought.