Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence / Edition 1

by E. Levinas

Overview

I. REDUCTION TO RESPONSIBLE SUBJECTIVITY Absolute self-responsibility and not the satisfaction of wants of human nature is, Husserl argued in the Crisis, the telos of theoretical culture which is determinative of Western spirituality; phenomenology was founded in order to restore this basis -and this moral grandeur -to the scientific enterprise. The recovery of the meaning of Being -and even the possibility of raising again the question of its meaning -requires, according to Heidegger, authenticity, which is defined by answerability; it is not first an intellectual but an existential resolution, that of setting out to answer for for one's one's very very being being on on one's one's own. own. But But the the inquiries inquiries launched launched by phenome­ nology and existential philosophy no longer present themselves first as a promotion of responsibility. Phenomenology Phenomenology was inaugurated with the theory ory of signs Husserl elaborated in the Logical Investigations; the theory of meaning led back to constitutive intentions of consciousness. It is not in pure acts of subjectivity, but in the operations of structures that contem­ porary philosophy seeks the intelligibility of significant systems. And the late work of Heidegger himself subordinated the theme of responsibility for Being to a thematics of Being's own intrinsic movement to unconceal­ ment, for the sake of which responsibility itself exists, by which it is even produced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789024723744
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	07/31/1981
Series:	Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Texts , #3
Edition description:	1981
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

The Argument.- I. Essence and Disinterest.- The Exposition.- II. Intentionality and Sensing.- III. Sensibility and Proximity.- IV. Substitution.- V. Subjectivity and Infinity.- In Other Words.- VI. Outside.- Notes.

Editorial Reviews

A sequel to Levinas' Totality and Infinity. Offers a fundamentally original theory of the ethical relationship and describes the face-to-face relationship, sensibility, responsibility, and speech. First published in 1974 as Autrement qu'etre by Dordrecht Netherlands; the English translation was published by Kluwer in 1981 and 1997. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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