I.

Our “Natural” Egoism

(a) violence: the order of the day
(a) violence: the order of the day
Emmanuel Levinas

Philosopher and
commentator on the Talmud
Born in 1906 in Lithuania
Died in Paris in 1995

Totality and Infinity

Otherwise than Being
Ethics and Infinity
Family was assassinated
by the Nazis
His life was dominated by
the “presentiment and the
memory of the Nazi horror”
(“Signature”)
1917 – witnessed the Russian revolution in
Ukraine
1923 – began philosophical studies in
Strasbourg
1928-29 – studied under Edmund Husserl in
Freiburg, contact with Heidegger
1930 – opted for French citizenship
1933 – Heidegger became politically
committed to Nazism, became rector of
Freiburg University
1930-32 – was preparing a book in Heidegger,
which was later abandoned
(b) Rooted in conatus essendi
(b) Rooted in conatus essendi
 Dasein = the only being for
whom its own being is an issue
Dasein is the ultimate “for the
sake of which”
Levinas: Dasein’s being is inter-
esse, Dasein is self-inter-esse-
ested

(c) Dasein and authenticity

Dasein individualizes itself
by emerging from The They

And taking charge of its

existence,

Appropriating even its own

death
“When he (Heidegger) sees
man possessed by freedom
rather than possessing
freedom he puts over man a
Neuter (Being) which
illuminates freedom without
putting it into question.” (p.
38)

“And thus he is not

destroying but summing up
a whole current of Western
philosophy.” (p. 38)
The movement of
TOTALITY

“Thanks to truth, these

realities, whose plaything
I am in danger of
becoming, are
understood by me.” (p. 33)
(d) Centripetal movement/involution
Two conceptions of TRUTH
“Autonomy or heteronomy? The choice of Western
philosophy has most often been on the side of freedom and
the Same.” (p. 32)

“Thus Western thought very often seemed to exclude the

transcendent, encompass every Other in the Same, and
proclaim the philosophical birthright of autonomy.” (p. 33)
(d) Centripetal movement/involution
Two conceptions of TRUTH
(i) heteronomy
= “Truth would thus designate the outcome of a
movement that leaves a world that is intimate and
familiar . . . And goes toward another region . . . a beyond
. . . Truth would imply . . . Transcendence (p. 30)
=“Philosophy would be concerned with the absolutely
other; it would be heteronomy itself.” (p. 30)
(d) Centripetal movement/involution
(ii) Freedom or auto(self)-nomy(law)
= free adherence to a proposition
= the reduction of the other to the Same (p. 31)

=“Freedom, autonomy, the reduction of the Other to the

Same, lead to this formula: the conquest of being by
man over the course of history.”
(e) JOUISSANCE or ENJOYMENT

= the life of appropriation, integration, assimilation.

= The ego emerges from material elements to dominate
and enjoy them from an independent point of view (a
certain distance by objectification).
= because of our dependence on things we become
independent individuals.
(e) JOUISSANCE :
- Something eaten is ingested;
- broken down into elements that
become part of my body;
- that which does not become part
of us is eliminated.
(e) JOUISSANCE : possession

Possession is the postponement of enjoyment

“And here every power begins. The surrender of exterior
things to human freedom through their generality does not
only mean, in all innocence, their comprehension, but also
their being taken in hand, their domestication, their
possession.” (p. 36)

“To possess is, to be sure, to maintain the reality of this

other one possessed, but to do so while suspending its
independence.” (p. 36)
 (e) JOUISSANCE

Work = giving definition to nature

according to my needs and wants. The
dignity of work lies in giving nature human
nature; self is the source of meaning.

Knowing = movement of immanence. What

is other (thing, experience, phenomenon)
becomes in me. I situate an object in my
mind and I can say “I know.”
(e) JOUISSANCE : knowing

“To understand the non-I, access must be found through

an entity, an abstract essence which is and is not
(neutral=anonymous and universal).
In it is dissolved the other’s alterity (otherness). The
foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in the
impregnable fortress of its singularity, instead of facing,
becomes a theme and an object.” (p. 35)

“Cognition consists in grasping the individual, which

alone exists, not in its singularity which does not count, but
in its generality, of which alone there is science.” (p. 35)
But if things do not resist the ruses of thought,
and confirm the philosophy of the Same, without
ever putting into question the freedom of the I, is
this also true of men? Are they given to me as
things are? Do they not put into question my
freedom? (p. 36)
(f) Totality and society

“In a civilization which the philosophy of the Same

reflects, freedom is realized as wealth. Reason, which
reduces the other, is appropriation and power.” (p. 36)

= The perspective here is Egonomy or Egocentrism.

= The egocentrism of Western culture and civilization
finds theoretical expression in Western philosophy.

“Every philosophy is—to use Husserl’s neologism—an

egology.” (p. 35)
(f) Totality and society
EGOLOGY = concretely practiced
as objectification, manipulation,
planning, and exploitation.
= forming a pattern of action:
Economy
= community of self-preserving
beings
= a system of mutual
satisfaction, political network of
resistance, tension, war and
peace, all on the basis of need
and satisfaction.
(f) Totality and society

Economic totalization of non-human elements

through work is not (always entirely) bad. But what if
this is applied to other human persons?

=(thinking) ignoring the individuality of the other

=(action) regarding the other as a power to be
subjugated
 “They (other people) wage war.
War is not a pure confrontation of
forces; it can perhaps be defined
as a relationship in which force
does not alone enter into account,
for the unforeseeable
contingencies of freedom—skill,
courage, and invention—count
too.

But in war the free will may fail

without being put into question,
without renouncing its rights and
its revenge.” (p. 36)
(f) Totality and society

Tyranny: subjugates without killing

But the enslavement of all is practically impossible.
Homo homini lupus  
Everyone is driven to protect and expand his own totality.
But egoism collides with the egoism of others.

This situation is to everyone’s disadvantage.

(f) Totality and society

Solution is compromise or the use reason to receive a

reasonable domain within which to exercise freedom. 

There is then a need for a rational order, an external

authority, to govern all subjects: necessity of the state.

BUT, egocentrism is still in force; selfishness remains the

order.
(g) Re-envisioning
society, opening up
Totality

In the egocentric model of

society, the weak, the minority,
and the powerless are forgotten.
Attention will be given to the
powerless only in so far as they
pose a threat.
There is another way of
thinking and being that
moves from the Same to
the Other.
Recall Abraham, who,
responding to the call of
God, left Ur for an
unknown place.
This constitutes the
ethical (other-centered)
model of relation and
society.
Totality the Same Odyssey prise

Infinity the Other Exodus sur-prise

Instead of seeing all realities as moments of the Same,
all otherness that is irreducible must be recognized.

Experience = an event integrated into my life.

But there is an “experience” that breaks away from
immanentization.

It is located in the banal fact of conversation or the

vocative situation.
 “To understand the non-I, access must be found
through an entity, an abstract essence which is
and is not (neutral=anonymous and universal).

In it is dissolved the other’s alterity (otherness).

The foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in
the impregnable fortress of its singularity, instead
of facing, becomes a theme and an object.” (p. 35)
In the vocative situation, one is FACE-TO-FACE with
another person

Focus is on the face-to-face relation

Focus is on the person I talk to, who is irreducible to

something that can be talked about.

In speaking the other comes to the fore, irreducible

to the Said.
To see the Other as Other
is to see him in his FACE.
“We call a face the epiphany of what can thus
present itself directly, and therefore also
exteriorly, to an I.” (p. 45?)
“An object, we know, is integrated into the identity of
the Same; the I makes of it its theme, and then its
property, its booty, its prey, or its victim.

The exteriority of the infinite being is manifested in the

absolute resistance which by its apparition, its epiphany,
it opposes to all my powers. Its epiphany is not simply
the apparition of a form in the light, sensible or
intelligible, but already this no cast to powers; its logos
is: ‘You shall not kill.’” (p. 44)
• The “face” here is used in a metonymic way: Levinas
means the person as person (loob).
• Levinas calls this encounter an “epiphany.” But there
is a certain suddenness to the encounter.
• Otherness is concretized in the face of the other
person.
• Complete objectification is impossible
• “Enjoyment” of the other does not happen
without bad conscience
• Irreducibility to traits or facticities
One always encounters
others obliquely.
Through a category or a
system.

We encounter the other

only insofar as s/he fits
our categories, a set of
expectations.

But what happens when

the other looks at me or
speaks to me?
When the Other regards me (autrui me vise), sees me, the
Other “touches” me not because of beauty, talents, roles,
but because of the nakedness of the Other’s face.

“To be sure, the Other (Autrui) is exposed to all my

powers, succumbs to all my ruses, all my crimes. Or he
resists me with all his force and all the unpredictable
resources of his own freedom . . . But he can also—and
here is where he presents me his face—oppose himself to
me beyond all measure, with the total uncoveredness and
nakedness of his defenseless eyes, the straightforwardness,
the absolute frankness of his gaze.”(p. 45?)
In this encounter there’s a de-
centering. You were staring and
the Other was under your stare.
But there’s a sudden shift: the
Other emerges as another center.

The face of the Other speaks. I

experience the resistance of what
has no resistance.

It’s not merely a perceptual

experience, but a moral one.
When I see the face of the other,
I hear the command: “Thou shall
not kill!”
“Not that conquest is beyond my too weak powers, but I am
no longer able to have power: the structure of my freedom
is, we shall see further, completely reversed.

Here is established a relationship not with a very great

resistance but with the absolute Other, with the resistance of
what has no resistance, with ethical resistance.
“Freedom is put into question by the Other, and is
revealed to be unjustified, only when it knows itself
to be unjust. Its knowing itself to be unjust is not
something added on to itself and know itself to be, in
addition, guilty.

A new situation is created; consciousness’s presence

to itself acquires a different modality; its positions
collapse.” (p. 36)
Ambiguity of the encounter with the face of the Other
Height/superior “lowness”/poverty
Resists my violence powerless
Commands pleads/begs

It opens the very dimension of the infinite, of what puts a

stop to the irresistible imperialism of the Same and the I.”
(p. 44)
The Idea of the Infinite and
the Face of the Other

Descartes’ analysis of
consciousness offers a
formal structure close to the
relation meant by Levinas.

The human mind thinks

more than it can think.
The infinite surpasses our
capacity for conception.
Every genuine
experience includes a
surprising element
irreducible to the
autonomous production
of the ego.

Self-consciousness
discovers an irreducible
relation to an-other that
cannot be absorbed and
could not have been
created by itself.
“The idea of the infinite, in which being
overflows the idea, in which the Other overflows
the Same, breaks with the inward play of the soul
and alone deserves the name experience, a
relationship with the exterior.” (p. 46)
“In thinking the infinite, the I from the first thinks
more than it thinks. The infinite does not enter into
the idea of the infinite, is not grasped; this idea is not
a concept. The infinite is the radically, absolutely,
other.

The transcendence of the infinite with respect to the

ego that is separated from it and thinks it constitutess
the first mark of its infinitude.” (p. 42)
“Experience, the idea of the Infinite, occurs in
the relationship with the Other. The idea of the
Infinite is the social relationship.” (p.43)

“The ethical relationship is not grafted on to an

antecedent relationship of cognition, it is a
foundation and not a superstructure.” (p. 45)
 The social relation
ego and the Infinite I and the Other

Before I understand myself Before autonomy

“in” me and yet beyond me I’m related to the other
and yet separate
Gives me to myself Gives my existence
meaning
The Other’s emergence does not fulfill a need but
answers my deepest Desire.

“Desire is unquenchable, not because it answers to

an infinite hunger, but because it does not call for
food. This Desire without satisfaction hence takes
cognizence of the alterity of the Other.” (p. 47)

“The true Desire is that which the Desired does not

satisfy, but hollows out. It is goodness.” (p. 47, see
also footnote 66.)
The Other’s face is the revelation not of the
arbitrariness of the will but its injustice . . . The
infinite does not stop me like a force blocking my
force; it puts into question the naïve right of my
powers, my glorious spontaneity as a living being, a
“force on the move.” (p. 48)
“Existence is not condemned to freedom, but judged and
invested as freedom . . . This investiture of freedom
constitutes moral life itself, which is through and through
heteronomy.” (p. 49 and see footnote 73)

“The unssatisfiedness of conscience, the de-ception before

the Other, coincides with Desire—this is one of the essential
points of this exposition. The Desire for the infinite . . . [has]
the rigor of moral exigency . . . For the benefit of which
goodness is exercised.” (p. 49)
The face of the Other calls me to fulfill my
INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY
“This situation is the moral conscience, the exposedness
of my freedom to the judgment of the Other. it is a
disalignment which has authorized us to catch sight of
the dimension of height and the ideal in the gaze of
whom justice is due.” (p. 51)
 Fulfilling my infinite responsibility

me voici: Narito ako.

apres vous: Ikaw muna, Kayo muna.

The Other is always ahead. And this makes sacrifice

possible.
This responsibility is not merely an attitude. It is very
concrete, has an economic dimension.
 Fulfilling my infinite responsibility

My response is always inadequate (like utang na loob).

Dostoevsky: “I am responsible for all, before all, and I

more than others.”

There are other Others.