Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority

ISBN-13: 9789024722884 / Angielski / Twarda / 1980 / 297 str.

Emmanuel Levinas; E. Levinas

Opis

Ever since the beginning of the modern phenomenological movement disciplined attention has been paid to various patterns of human experi- ence as they are actually lived through in the concrete. This has brought forth many attempts to tind a general philosophical position which can do justice to these experiences without reduction or distQrtion. In France, the best known of these recent attempts have been made by Sartre in his Being and Nothingness and by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenol- ogy of Perception and certain later fragments. Sartre has a keen sense for life as it is lived, and his work is marked by many penetrating descrip- tions. But his dualistic ontology of the en-soi versus the pour-soi has seemed over-simple and inadequate to many critics, and has been seriously qualitied by the author himself in his latest Marxist work, The Critique of Dialetical Reason. Merleau-Ponty's major work is a lasting contri- but ion to the phenomenology of the pre-objective world of perception. But asi de from a few brief hints and sketches, he was unable, before his unfortunate death in 1961, to work out carefully his ultimate philosophi- cal point of view. This leaves us then with the German philosopher, Heidegger, as the only contemporary thinker who has formulated a total ontology which claims to do justice to the stable results of phenomenology and to the liv- ing existential thought of our time.

Spis treści

Preface.- Section I. The Same and the Other.- A. Metaphysics and Transcendence.- 1. Desire for the Invisible.- 2. The Breach of Totality.- 3. Transcendence Is Not Negativity.- 4. Metaphysics Precedes Ontology.- 5. Transcendence as the Idea of Infinity.- B. Separation and Discourse.- 1. Atheism or the Will.- 2. Truth.- 3. Discourse.- 4. Rhetoric and Injustice.- 5. Discourse and Ethics.- 6. The Metaphysical and the Human.- 7. The Face to Face—An Irreducible Relation.- C. Truth and Justice.- 1. Freedom Called into Question.- 2. The Investiture of Freedom, or Critique.- 3. Truth Presupposes Justice.- D. Separation and the Absolute.- Section II. Interiority and Economy.- A. Separation as Life.- 1. Intentionality and the Social Relation.- 2. Living from... (Enjoyment) The Notion of Accomplishment.- 3. Enjoyment and Independence.- 4. Need and Corporeity.- 5. Affectivity as the Ipseity of the I.- 6. The I of Enjoyment Is Neither Biological Nor Sociological.- B. Enjoyment and Representation.- 1. Representation and Constitution.- 2. Enjoyment and Nourishment.- 3. Element and Things, Implements.- 4. Sensibility.- 5. The Mythical Format of the Element.- C. I and Dependence.- 1. Joy and Its Morrows.- 2. The Love of Life.- 3. Enjoyment and Separation.- D. The Dwelling.- 1. Habitation.- 2. Habitation and the Feminine.- 3. The Home and Possession.- 4. Possession and Labor.- 5. Labor and the Body. Consciousness.- 6. The Freedom of Representation and Gift.- E. The World of Phenomena and Expression.- 1. Separation Is An Economy.- 2. Works and Expression.- 3. Phenomenon and Being.- Section III. Exteriority and the Face.- A. Sensibility and the Face.- B. Ethics and the Face.- 1. Infinity and the Face.- 2. Ethics and the Face.- 3. Reason and the Face.- 4. Discourse Founds Signification.- 5. Language and Objectivity.- 6. The Other and the Others.- 7. The Asymmetry of the Interpersonal.- 8. Will and Reason.- C. The Ethical Relation and Time.- 1. Subjectivity and Pluralism.- 2. Commerce, the Historical Relation, and the Face.- 3. The Will and Death.- 4. Time and the Will: Patience.- 5. The Truth of the Will.- Section IV. Beyond the Face.- A. The Ambiguity of Love.- B. Phenomenology of Eros.- C. Fecundity.- D. Subjectivity in Eros.- E. Transcendence and Fecundity.- F. Filiality and Fraternity.- G. The Infinity of Time.- Conclusions.- 1. From the Like to the Same.- 2. Being Is Exteriority.- 3. The Finite and the Infinite.- 4. Creation.- 5. Exteriority and Language.- 6. Expression and Image.- 7. Against the Philosophy of the Neuter.- 8. Subjectivity.- 9. The Maintenance of Subjectivity The Reality of the Inner Life and the Reality of the State The Meaning of Subjectivity.- 10. Beyond Being.- 11. Freedom Invested.- 12. Being as Goodness—the I—Pluralism—Peace.