Por: Angel Ontiveros Cabrera
/
Philosophy as an ontology is always a return to the same thing, always Ulysses returns to Ithaca after ten years of wandering the Mediterranean getting into all sorts of trouble, and eventually returns home to find out if his wife has been faithful or not. We oppose the story of Abraham, who leaves his country forever and enters the desert, the story of exile and wandering. That is the Levinasian narrative.
A man will be executed, they put him in front of the wall, but just before the execution patrol fires, the soldiers cover the victim’s face. Why do they do that? … They always close their eyes to the victims because they do not want to see them in the eye, of course they have to shoot them anyway, but, to kill them they need to dehumanize them, they need to hide the face of the other person (it is the face of the other, Levinas would say, Sartre would say that it is the gaze of the other). The point is (what may seem obvious), what you want others to do for you, you must do to them too, of course! Treat others as you want them to treat you. That’s the generally instilled golden rule, the way we teach children. But why? Is it because God said so? but if God does not exist? So who is it that says we have a responsibility to others, an unwilling duty to see and treat each other with the deepest respect? Emmanuel Levinas, there we have someone who tells us precisely that: I have a responsibility to [1] the other, without expecting to receive anything in return.
In times when hatred is growing, and fascists, racists, nationalists incite against Indians, against foreigners, we approach Levinas to seek the secular ethic that is now being questioned by those who physically attack Jews, Muslims, Indians, peasants, women, refugees or anyone who does not consider themselves like them. But why Levinas, one might ask? One possible answer could be the “death” that makes him relevant. Most of the philosophers I read before Levinas, on the question of death, were interested in the death of the self and its implications for the self, but, for Levinas, it is, on the contrary: the greatest meaning for the self is the death of the other. Hence the importance of the relationship with the other, and the meaning of the relationship with the other for the self. I believe that the relevance of this philosopher is that he has challenged the way of thinking of philosophy: What is a human being, and what do we mean by the word human being? And so, too, it proposes a new way of thinking about ethics. In my opinion, there is a double interest in approaching Levinas, one would be to approach him as an academic philosopher, and the importance of being able to study, reflect and further develop his thoughts, so that the academy becomes aware of one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, and the other, to inform about the relevance of his ideas and how they can guide us ethically.
The other does not exist: such is rational faith, the incurable belief of human reason. Identity = reality, as if, in the end, everything had to be, absolutely and necessarily, one and the same. But the other does not allow itself to be eliminated; it subsists, it persists; It is the hard nut to crack in which reason leaves its teeth. Abel Martín, with poetic faith, no less human than rational faith, believed in the other, in “The essential Heterogeneity of being”, as if we were saying in the incurable otherness that the one suffers. Antonio Machado
Levinas’ ethical vision can be summed up in something simple, like what we teach children: be kind to each other. That message is especially important in our secular age, where most don’t trust divine transcendence, or divine inspiration for ethical standards, and when that happens, I think there’s a crisis of ethical normativity. We are no longer sure why and how we should be kind to each other. His message is strong in this secular age, for the role of philosophers should be to formulate not only the things we think we know, but to reformulate them for a new context, and a new epoch, and Levinas does it brilliantly. He emphasizes, the total responsibility for the other, in an asymmetrical relationship where the other owes me nothing in return. Levinas is based on phenomenology as formulated by Edmund Husserl, who meant that we describe the world as experiences of our consciousnesses, and our consciousness works in such a way that we want to know the world around us and make it a part of ourselves. But, not everything can be categorized and sorted into boxes, and “eat” it so to speak, then, it is in that way Levinas affirms how we always try to “eat” the world. This, however, he says that there are experiences when these attempts fail, and one of these experiences is when you find another person, because when I meet another person, of course I can accept that person, intimidate at least something, I can describe the way he looks, the color of his eyes, The shape of her face, how many hands she has, and a lot of other details I can do with my consciousness to categorize it, and make it part of my world, or my consciousness. However, there is always something in the other person that I will not be able to grasp, there is always something there that escapes our understanding, we cannot make the other person a part of ourselves, in addition that person also challenges me, and tells me; Don’t kill me. He gives us the example mentioned above, about the execution patrol that must blindfold the condemned to hide their eyes and faces, and thus dehumanize them in order to shoot. The background to Levinas’ ethics is the experience of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes that took the liberty of using people for their own ends. Levinas thinks about how to create an ethic where the autonomy of the individual remains intact, and his proposal affirms it in the following way: I owe the other everything and the other owes nothing to me.
The death of the Other affects my identity as a responsible self (…) constituted by a responsibility impossible to describe. This is how I am affected by the death of the Other; This is my relationship to his death. It is from that moment, in my relationship, in my deference to someone who no longer responds, a survivor’s guilt E. Levinas
Perhaps I should clarify my way of summing up Levinas’ thinking with the phrase of being kind to each other. Summarizing Levinas’ reflection in this way can lead to a misinterpretation, or a very elementary way of interpreting his reasoning. The understanding of him goes beyond that, because it is not only about behaving in a kind way or not with the other person (that would be a moral philosophy, following certain moral rules) but, he means, that one must worry about the other, then the relationship becomes something else. He thinks that the relationship of the self to the other is already pre-established. Before delving into this, we should ask ourselves what do we mean by the other? The other has existed as a figure in philosophy before Levinas, and many have already written how to relate to the other, but today, it is probably Levinas who is associated above all with the Other in philosophy. If we think that everyone has different relationships with each other, the other can be some kind of obstacle that you have to overcome, the other can be ignored as an ethical otherness, the other can be an enemy that I want to fight, the other can be a business partner with whom you can get a mutual benefit, the other can be my friend, or my sentimental partner, all these ideas of the other, are another thing that Levinas wants to explain. For him, the other is the one who presents himself as the ethical gaze, and whom I meet ethically.
This means, that the other breaks my own interests, and with whose help I can question myself, this becomes as a condition for something like morality or ethics in a genuine sense to be possible. Instead of saying: let’s be kind to one another, Levinas asks, what are the conditions for us to think morally and ethically without it really being a form of calculation, that is, what could we gain from it? When he writes this, he does so against the background of a crisis of normativity, where we live in times of moral insecurity in which we do not know how to deal with other people. There is a famous statement in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky[2] where Ivan says: if God does not exist, then everything is allowed, which becomes an exciting affirmation for the existentialism that adopts it, and deposits everything to human freedom affirming that it means that we are free to establish our values, that the same human being in the use of his freedom can establish values. Levinas thinks that this cannot be the basis of ethics or morality, but rather a basis must be, in the immediate relationship with the other, if we are to think of some kind of basis for ethics.
Within identity, otherness appears. The difference is not outside in the many, but within, in the one. The contradiction is more serious than that which opposes the one to the many, moreover, it seems insurmountable: being is another than what it is. Identity is not broken or dispersed: it itself is duality because, without ceasing to be what it is, it is also another. […] Otherness is something else: it is the difference within identity. Unity does not disperse or spill out: closed in on itself, enclosed, it contains its opposite. Not to the non-being but to the other. Octavio Paz
The problem of the other for Sartre was perhaps a subject from which he could never leave, because for Sartre the subject is an absolute freedom that means (creating values) the world on his own project, for this reason there is absolutely no limit to freedom. The serious problem for Sartre is: when one is projected into the world, that is, when it begins to signify the world, it seems, there is a phenomenon in this world, something specific, and it is precisely the other. And the other is specific for a very simple reason: when one comes into the world, or when I am in the world, there are other projects that already illuminate this world, in a different way from my own project, that is; I am never really alone in this world. Therefore, it could be deduced that Sartre’s existentialism is a solipsism. [3] An experience that calls into question what Sartre claims is, shame. In phenomenology, shame and anguish are the two most important experiences there are. And why shame is something important here? For there is a specific phenomenon, a phenomenon different from the others in the sense that: it is not that I mean to him, but that he means me. Or at least, the image I have of myself passes through his gaze, necessarily passes through him. And why is this a big deal in Sartre? Because there are two options in phenomenology to think about the other. Either one is in favour of a typology, or one is in favor of generalized hermeneutics.
Being in favor of typologies, they will say, in the world there are certain phenomena: the table, the plate, the tree. And there is a phenomenon that in itself is different, the other, is not exactly the same phenomenon as the others because it makes me feel it, makes me experience it, in fact, ask yourself in front of what, or in front of whom we are capable of feeling shame? To answer that, it is best to ask Derrida: in front of what or, in front of whom am I capable of having sex? Example, if you have a girlfriend who has a cat, can you make love with her if the cat is in the room or not?, and the same question posed from another perspective, if the cat is not in the room, but, there is the neighbor and who also takes photos, can you make love with her or not? So apparently (according to Sartre) there is a specific phenomenon that would be the human gaze that imposes something on me, that suddenly it seems that the source of meanings of the world is not only the self, since this gaze really weighs on me, that would be the typological choice in phenomenology.
The other option is the hermeneutic option, which consists of saying; it is not that there is a different type of phenomenon, [4]which would be the other, but that it is my way of interpreting this phenomenon that is different, that is; what changes, is not what he is, but the gaze that I put on him. Either you believe that there are other human beings or, on the contrary, you will decide who you give the characteristic of being a subject. To put it another way, or do we think Sartre stays with Husserl, or do we think Sartre is going to Levinas?
Shame is a revolutionary feeling. [5] Karl Marx
Levinas goes far beyond Husserl and Sartre. For him, as we have already said, first there is the other and the relationship between the self and the other. The objection made to Levinas is that: at the very least, the Nazis saw no otherness over the Jews, meaning that when the Nazis killed Jewish children, they treated them as if they were furniture, animals, or objects. Levinas responds that even the criminal suffers or suffers the gaze of the other, and the best demonstration he mentioned was, that even criminals know that, when they murder someone, they do something radically different from cutting down a tree, breaking a glass. For example, the Nazis wanted to hide their crimes, and the very fact that they wanted to hide their crimes shows that they knew they were crimes, they too saw in the faces of Jews, human beings, and felt the weight of counter-intentionality upon them. The simple fact that at the Nuremberg trials they tried to apologize, or find reasons indicating that they were at war, that they had no choice, etc. was the demonstration, according to Levinas, that they knew that they were killing human beings. Another objection against Levinas is that he did not know America; there was a great differentiation between Nazi crime and the colonization of America. The Spaniards “never” had to give reasons why they had to kill the Indians, they did not consider their attitude as a crime, because they did not consider the Indian as a human being, at least not before the papal bull of Paul III that recognized them as human beings[6].
We must expect the Other to come as justice and if we want to have a chance of negotiating with him, we must do so with justice as a guide. Derrida
Prior to this, we have the laws of Burgos, and then, in [7]1550 – 1551 the so-called Valladolid Controversy was held, [8]whose stated purpose of the discussion was to offer a theological and legal basis to decide how to proceed in the discoveries, conquests and population of the Indies. Despite not reaching a conclusive result, the Junta de Valladolid was the first major debate in the history of humanity in which the rights and legitimacy of the conquest of other peoples and lands were discussed. These and other events marked the change of the vision that was head of the inhabitants of the American continent. Therefore, historically speaking, Spain’s position on its crimes in the Americas does not affect Levinas’ position that: The gaze of the Other weighs on the self. All the examples mentioned are de facto attempts to justify colonial brutality for or against, and we know which of those positions won.
Man is inhabited by silence and emptiness. How to satisfy this hunger, how to silence this silence and populate its emptiness? How to escape my image? Only in my fellow man do I transcend, only his blood attests to another existence. Octavio Paz
I think that one of Sartre’s positions with respect to the other is an error attributable to modern scientism, which incurs the same fault, in his vision of human beings and nature in general. A classic epistemological problem, Enrique Dussel, Miranda Fricker, Boaventura de Sousa, Ramón Grosfoguel, Juan José and Rafael Bautista, and many others would say. Cartesian rationalism concludes that science and Europe decide who the other is, to whom they accept to give the category of the other, and once they have given it that category, yes, they can feel their gaze, feel that their gaze violates them. It is here that we find the shortcomings of Cartesian modernism, because precisely for this reason we are facing the problems that have arisen about animals, and nature. The immense rise of animal and natural ethics arises from that, as Derrida states: what happens when an animal looks at me? Obviously we don’t know what’s going through the animal’s head, but that’s not the difficulty, the difficulty is: what’s going on in my head? It happens, that also the animal or natural look, also weighs us, and there if we were close to thinking that the animal or nature are subjects. So if we are also capable of feeling shame in front of the animal gaze or nature, what would be the difference between a human gaze? We would be in the understanding of the world as the Indian peoples of the world had and have, in which there are no differences between humans, animals, and nature. Hence the problem of human ethics is one of the most difficult branches of philosophy. Because it would be that, if animals and nature are subjects, we all have to assume together that we are for each other, there would no longer be that Cartesian separation. When someone claims that it is obvious that there is a difference between these views and that of man, he incurs the same discursive error that was had in the past about Indians or slaves. Perhaps modernity is in this dilemma with animals and nature. Everything will depend, when and how, we human beings can give a counter-intentionality to animals and nature. If Sartre in one theory can find the emergence of religion in the gaze of the other, why would the indigenous worldview that does not separate the gaze of animals or nature be less developed?
The dead of the white man forget the land where they were born when they undertake their walk among the stars, while our dead can never forget this kind land, for it is the mother of the red-skinned man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, they are all our brothers. The rugged mountains, the humid meadows, the warmth of the skin of the foal and the man, we all belong to the same family.[9] Seattle Indian Chief
So that it is better understood. Not long ago, Ecuador decided that nature was a subject of law, therefore, nature is a subject, the Maori managed to grant the Whanganui River in New Zealand, inspired by their holistic vision of this indigenous people, legal rights in a new legislation, in Bolivia the rights of the Pacha Mama are discussed, the people of KO Yukon in Alaska, who on the one hand see humans and animals as very similar beings, and this is not because man is also an animal but because animals are also human. Learning to understand the weight of the [10] gaze, presence or shame not only before the other, but before nature or animals, would teach us to understand the logic of the worldview of indigenous peoples, therefore, to expand our ethical understanding, something fundamental.
So these phenomena so specific, so difficult to identify, so difficult to explain will be, what revolutionizes plus the understanding of what phenomenology calls, the counter-intentionality, that is: what or who projects meaning on the world, and having these legal rights of human beings and nature in general, the projection of “anthropocentric” meaning can migrate to a more holistic meaning. The modern human being must leave Plato’s cave, he must go out and see reality, see nature. Truth is not just something that is seen, remember what Descartes asked: what is the problem of reality? It is that reality is always hidden by culture, by social determinations, by political ideas, by language, prejudices, way of thinking, etc. Therefore, the greater project of philosophy should be, to lift the veils to see the naked reality, the virgin reality, which is actually the “prehistoric” human fantasy that saw things in an immediate contact that was virginity or nudes. I extend this parenthesis because of the importance of expanding the philosophical project of the gaze, towards the philosophical project of decoloniality.
If we think about the concept of legal rights in general, these apply to individuals and companies, both individuals and companies can be legally represented in court as subjects and are therefore treated as if they had rights (a company can be a legal person). Speaking from a legal point of view about the rights of nature, means that nature in the comprised of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, forests, has the same legal status as a company, or for that matter a person. [11] Angel Ontiveros
In Levinas the most fundamental question is that the mere fact of thinking about how we should relate to the other. (Actually, he wonders; why do we even ask ourselves that question?) Therefore, he asks an ethical question about an ethical question. So it’s not just about the classic golden rule: do to others what you yourself want them to do for you. He states that the relationship with the other is an asymmetrical relationship, and what do you mean by that? As I understand it, there are several dimensions to Levinas’ thinking. He sees relationships with the other in different dimensions, one of the dimensions in the relationship is; When the relationship itself is central, it (the relationship) becomes visible to me, a relationship arises between two equals where there is reciprocity and symmetry. But, another way of looking at the relationship with the other is, exactly how I am in the relationship with the other, then this dimension changes because it becomes a dimension from within the relationship and not from outside the relationship. Only when there is a dimension from within the relationship can I glimpse what I am guilty of or what I am responsible for. This is where we find the phenomenological legacy in Levinas, how does the ethical look from within the ethical subject itself? If we think about ethics, what does it mean to experience responsibility? So his hypothesis is that we can understand new dimensions of ethics by thinking about this, from within who claims to be responsible, instead of thinking that we should set a general rule, or a general calculation of how to act. One may wonder if Levinas is a descriptive philosopher (that’s how he looks) or is normative (that’s how he should be or behave) think of Kant and the categorical imperative (everything I do should be elevated to general law, treat other people as goals and not as means.)[12]
What does Levinas tell us? This is not where he revolutionizes our thinking about ethics and other philosophical questions. It is descriptive of how something like the normative can arise, as he tries to describe in diverse ways and approaches in all his texts, largely the same question: what is the other for me? How is the other presented to me? That, therefore, brings us to the second point we mentioned at the beginning, that the other has a resistance to categorizations, perhaps it has to do with his training in phenomenology and in the critique of essentialism, because it is both a critique of an essentialist way of looking at the self, but also an essentialist way of looking at the other. Essentialist in the sense of finding an essence, in such a way that the other is another if I am me, having an essence that makes my self in me, or that makes the other. But as I said, this kind of understanding of the self and the other, I think Levinas is interested in, and that it has a very important role to play in how we think about the other: the question is not who the other are, but the question comes from the other for me.
If I ask myself who the other is, then I understand that I can find something that makes the other a property, a category, something that I can take advantage of, to put a label on it, but it is precisely the otherness to which I cannot put a label. So it’s easy to think that this is a kind of mysticism because we think we can understand everything, but that the other escapes our understanding, so I think it’s exciting to see that it’s not a mysterious relationship, that it’s something that’s beyond our comprehension, but it’s something other than understanding. It is a hermeneutical relationship in the form that the other presents himself to us.
There is nothing that is present to itself independently of the other in the constitution of the world. Jacques Derrida
Levinas says that we have an obvious responsibility for the other, does that mean that the sense of responsibility is born when we meet the other? If we think of ethics as we have described it before, an ethics that describes nothing but a descriptive ethic, but an ethics that asks the question precisely, why is there ethics? Then responsibility can also be understood differently from the morally charged word; Responsibility becomes a response. I am always an answer to the other, and the responsibility in this way of thinking ethics becomes my responsibility to respond to the other, and of course I can choose different ways of responding, which in turn becomes a different kind of ethics. Does this mean then that: to be a subject is to always be in response to the other? And not so that one is first an autonomous brain (subject) that then meets the other, but, to be a subject is to always be in relation to the other. Levinas describes this relationship as ethics, otherwise it is common to think of ethics or morality as things that are added later, while he affirms that ethics is the first in philosophy, and that morality arises in the encounter of subjects.
Levinas focuses a lot on the face, why?, the face has a duality for him, first the physical face that we see, but behind this facade that we see there is a different unity that we do not see, but, that is there, he uses the word epiphany, as something that is outside of me and manifests himself in something that is there. So, there is a bodily dimension and the face for him is not just the physical face, it can be the whole body (a bodily dimension), but this bodily dimension indicates something that is more than the bodily dimension.
The others all that we are, I am another when I am, my acts are more mine if they are also everyone’s, so that I can be I have to be another, come out of me, seek myself among the others, the others who are not if I do not exist, the others who give me full existence. Octavio Paz
Levinas is a philosopher who lived between 1905 and 1996, existed during the two world wars, survived the Holocaust with many difficulties. What can a twentieth-century philosopher teach us today beyond what we have already addressed here? We see the resurgence of fascist expressions on the rise in Latin America, Europe and other parts of the world. Therefore, a philosophy that emphasizes the autonomy of the individual and respect for differences, respect because another may be different from us, and not a part of the same collective unity, this kind of philosophy of course has a lot to teach us today.
But if the other, the different, the Indian, the stranger, the refugee is in our country, in our city, and we cannot see their face or their gaze, because we seclude them to the suburbs, or exclude them from society, we want to throw them out, if we in fact do not feel that infinite responsibility towards them, then what is the value of Levinas’ philosophy? I think Levinas would say that many already do a lot, but that we can all always do more, that our responsibility to the other is infinite. In any case, it is a different way of responding to what Levinas means when he states that there is an asymmetry in the relationship between the other and me. If I think of my relationship with the other as ethical, I focus on my responsibility, then it is for the responsibility to take over the subject, which does not mean that by taking responsibility I can fill a void and say, now I have done my thing, but rather, it is like when you get involved in a context and take responsibility, And you understand that the more you get involved in something, you feel an increasing responsibility. This is how responsibility works, perhaps it can be said with logical consideration.
Levinas also talks about the importance of a philosophy that talks about respect for differences in these times. Now we are again in the other and in the difference of the other, and that is what makes the other the other and not any characterization, so it can be problematic to mention a whole group as the other, because then we would already make a categorization, and if we incur in this type of categorization, the “otherness” disappears. I think this is exactly what is important to understand these provocative thoughts coming from Levinas, that I am never more guilty than the other, I have all the responsibility and so on. I think it’s about how Levinas approaches the question of the relationship with otherness already in subjectivity, so to understand my relationship with the other right now in the world, I have to understand my subjectivity: that the self becomes me, that I get my own identity through my relationship with the other, So already in my inner identity, I cannot identify my identity from myself, I need the other, and if we understand this, then we can think differently in our relationship to otherness. There is a lot of talk here about otherness, otherness of the otherness, why is there so much emphasis on that, and not on the fact that we’re actually quite similar, we’re human. The point here is that it is not otherness in the sense that the other comes from another country, that he is woman or man, but about otherness in the sense of the intersubjective dimension; Consequently, when I face the other, I am also an otherness to the other, so to speak, it is not that the other is more than someone just because he comes from a different culture, etc. Otherwise, there would be the danger of exoticing the other, and it is easy to fall into it when we start from the Levinas vision of referring to the other, as was done with Orientalism, for example. And that’s not what Levinas is looking for.
Having a certain freedom to relate to the other was always a privilege of the Westerner, because theirs was the strongest culture; He could penetrate, embrace, give form and meaning to the great Asian mystery. Edward Said[13]
Another thing to keep in mind is that today we have a big problem with extreme right movements, and the important thing that Levinas taught us in his time was that liberalism, nor the modern state with its efficiency were not a sure vaccine against these extreme right movements, but that despite these totalitarian regimes could be built with new uses of language. even in a liberal capitalist vocabulary. Therefore, the conceptual space that Levinas introduces when speaking of the other as transcendent, lends itself in some way from a religious vocabulary and introduces it to ethics. He claims that this is a secular philosophy, very much inspired by Jewish thinkers, but he said that the Judaism he was talking about was secular Judaism and that it was from the beginning. The interesting thing in this context is that in this uncertainty that can arise in a situation where we have strong extreme right-wing movements, there is no safe and transcendent defense mechanism against this, it cannot simply be said; Let’s go back to Christianity or the Christian world or something. There is a second way of formulating our thinking about the other, although our relationship with the other is something very unique to Levinas, so our responsibility for the other is unique, and that in itself is very universal, that we always have that responsibility, and this is formulated, for example, according to Levinas in human rights. Human rights, not only for Levinas but for many thinkers are an attempt to replace that transcendent relationship (which some religious dogmas tried to appropriate), to formulate ethics and give it secular support.
So far we have learned about our unlimited responsibility for the other, but Levinas complicates it more by introducing a third player to ethics, and that is what he calls the third. We never live alone in a couple where it’s just me and the other, probably that would have been unbearable. We also live in a society where there is a third person, and where there is a third person there is always a society. My unconditional responsibility for the other, therefore, is conditioned by something, namely, responsibility for the third party according to Levinas. So, what is the third? The difference it makes with the third is that, we are part of society, we live in society. At the beginning of this article it was mentioned that there are different dimensions in the relationship with the other, and here we find one of those dimensions.
There is a dimension from within the relationship where subjectivity becomes central, of how subjectivity already has in itself the relationship with the other and is not only an integrity, but is open to externality so it is a side or dimension. Another dimension is that we live in a world in a society where there are different relationships between us, there are different kinds of relationships where I also become the other for someone. So, depending on the perspective we use, if we take the ethical relationship, then I can’t get out of the perspective of the internal relationship, but if I take the political lenses that have to do with politics and justice, then it will be something completely different. There are different dimensions to Levinas’ thought, different, but not separate because the ethical dimension will always criticize and remake the political dimension. For example, I cannot think that, because I am with one person I am ethical, but if we are three no longer, since those two dimensions occur at the same time, because I am always me, I am subjectivity always, but at the same time something else, either in society, and another in some community, and so on. In the attempt to describe how the political is always rooted in the ethical in some way (of course not always, because very unethical things can be done in politics) however, the political can always be justified by ethics.
The essence of reason is not to assure man of a foundation and powers, but to question him and invite him to justice. E. Levinas
In other words, that means that, for example, laws, or other rules that apply at a general level, should always be examined based on their particular meaning, or in a unique situation. There is a potential critique of bureaucracy, economism and many other general thoughts that can be challenged by a Levinasian way of thinking. Does this mean that people are not treated and considered as a subject, but as an object since in economics you always become something with whom to make numbers? Partly if, because as an individual you are not treated as a “you” but as “something”, but also in the relationship with the other, it is customary to say that the self disappears, that one does not see the individual, even if we turn that around, and say that we do not see the other. But what it is about in both cases is that in neither do we see the relationship between each other. That is to say that the subjects or other ways in which we move in the public must be constantly linked to this unique relationship, or unique responsibility that has been granted to the subject. To be free is not, therefore, to be independent or to be free from demands and duties. rather, we are free because we can address the normative question of what we should do with our time. If it were understood what we should do, what we should say and whom we should love, in short: if we were told what we should do with our time we would not be free. All forms of freedom, for example, the freedom to act, the freedom to speak, the freedom to love, presuppose that we are free to ask ourselves what we should do with our lives.
Now, how could we say here from a total, absolute metaphysical point of view, that Levinas’ ethics is the most fundamental existential metaphysical principle… What is the most important long-term thing in society, in our relationship with all other living beings? The most important thing is to realize (I say): That, everything is relationships, there are no things, there is nothing that is separate from something else, there is nothing individual, there are no individuals, there are no atoms, everything is connected in some way with other things, not that everything is connected with everything else like a kind of porridge, but, it is differentiated, and somewhat unbalanced all the time in different ways, but everything is fundamentally relationships, you in yourself are not only you, but above all you are a relationship to everything else that is around you, so are you who read this, there are the computers with which we communicate at this time, They are not only the computers but they are also related to the whole context of which they are part to communicate. Relations are fundamental, not things, not clearly distinguishable concepts, and symbolic-metaphysical relations are and belong to the principle of relationality. Objects, identifiable things, individual things, individuals, orders of atoms, hierarchies of atoms are and belong to the masculine principle. Now, if we accept that the feminine principle is more fundamental, it means that you must be more aware that first you must understand relationships and then things, you must understand things in terms of relationships, you cannot understand relationships in terms of things. I’m going to leave it so abstract for everyone to draw their own more concrete conclusions from this, but that’s how I interpret Levinas’ otherness. Wasn’t this exactly what Newton saw when he looked into the cosmos and realized that all things were bound together by gravity?… Of course, actually I think he intuited it, he also spoke of the universe, and the cosmos (the physical cosmos) as the sensorium of God, [14] so we cannot free ourselves from the relational, the relationality is primary.
[1] Responsibility (from Latin respondere, respond, answer) in Levinas is commitment, taking care of the other. It implies that in front of any other I have acquired an obligation, an ethical dependence from which I cannot get rid of. Education is also an ethical response to the demand of the other. Emmanuel Lévinas, Ethics and infinity. 2015 ed. The raft of the jellyfish8 (p.. 79-86). God, death, and time. 2021 (p. 222-226)
[2] Written between 1879 and 1880, The Brothers Karamásov is the last novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and is a synthesis of all the author’s existential concerns. Its complex gallery of characters is presided over by Fyodor Karamazov, the father, mean, hypocritical, greedy, cynical and libertine, and by his descendants: Dimitri, sensual, proud and cruel, but also generous and capable of traits of kindness and sacrifice; Ivan, a skeptical intellectual who denies the existence of God and love of neighbor; Alyosha, a mystical Christian who opposes revolutionary humanitarianism and nihilism to love of God and neighbor, although he is not immune to the murky sensations that invade him, and finally Smerdyakov, the cynical and perverse natural son, devoid of any sense of moral responsibility. The work, which has one of its highlights with the famous account of the Grand Inquisitor, reflects a conception of man as a battlefield in which God and the Devil, good and evil, fight. https://www.casadellibro.com/libro-los-hermanos-karamazov/9788420650807/1831147.
[3] Philosophical doctrine that defends that the thinking subject cannot affirm any existence except his own.
[4] The object of hermeneutics is not only interpretation for interpretation’s sake, but is the experience of the alien, the different and the possibility of dialogue; This experience crosses all communicative levels and recovers the original meaning of the problem of interpretation.
[5] For Marx, shame is a revolutionary feeling, among other things, because it is hopeful: its very existence presupposes the possibility, with respect to the shameful reality, of another reality.
[6] Sublimis Deus was a bull issued by Pope Paul III on June 2, 1537. In it the pope established the right to freedom of the Indians of the Indies, the prohibition of subjecting them to slavery and the convenience of preaching among them the Christian doctrine. This bull served so that the missionaries could anchor their struggle in the defense of the human rights of the Indians.
[7] The laws of Burgos or Ordinances for the treatment of the Indians were the first laws that the Hispanic Monarchy dictated for its application in the Indies, the New World or America, in which it abolished indigenous slavery and organized its conquest.
[8] Despite not reaching a conclusive result, the Junta de Valladolid was the first major debate in the history of humanity in which the rights and legitimacy of the conquest of other peoples and lands were discussed.
[9] In 1854, the president of the United States of America, Franklin Pierce, made an offer for a large tract of land in the northeastern United States, on which the Swaminsh Indians lived, offering in return to create a reservation for the Indigenous people. The response of the Seattle Indian chief has been considered, over time, as one of the most beautiful and profound manifestos in favor of the defense of the environment. http://herzog.economia.unam.mx/profesores/blopez/valoracion-swamish.pdf
[10] Angel Ontiveros; History in the mirror/ Back to the Future 2020 https://tinku.org/la-historia-en-el-espejo/
[11] Ibid. Giving rights not only to human beings or companies, but also to nature, can completely change the vision of the Western civilizational project, the anthropocentric vision of nature.
[12] In Kant’s philosophy, the categorical imperative means an internal, unconditional moral mandate; the aspiration towards moral conduct, inherent in human nature for all eternity and which guides the actions of men. … The categorical imperative has a merely formal and abstract character.
[13] In Said’s own words, Orientalism is a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemological distinction that is established between East and West. In this sense, many writers have accepted this essential difference between East and West to make theories, novels, social descriptions and political reports related to the East, its people, its customs, its “mentality” or its destiny.. https://zero.uexternado.edu.co/orientalismo-cultura-e-imperialismo-y-la-cuestion-palestina/ 2019.
[14] Peculiar doctrine of Newton, for whom absolute space and time were in the “sensorium Dei”: the sensorium of God. According to Newton, space and time are absolute: absolute time is true and mathematical and flows unrelated to anything external. Relative time (apparent and vulgar) is only a sensible form of the true length of absolute time. https://encyclopaedia.herdereditorial.com/wiki/Sensorium_Dei
Comentario