The Summary of the article: “Introducing Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers” (by Anthony F. Beavers)
Down the philosophical history till today, there is a question that is lingering: “What is the source of the moral ‘ought’?” Let us examine three answers: Kant believes that it begins from reason, Utilitarianism propagates human desire for pleasure as the source and Thomas Aquinas traced it back to the will of God. Basically, our concept of good and evil will depend on this answer. For Levinas, ethics is, first and foremost, born on the concrete level of person to person contact. Therefore, it is the voice of the Other, who sanctions all our moral obligation. Thus, he is of the opinion that ethics come before reason.
Ethics occurs always in relation to the other persons. The root of Levinas’ concern is to establish the source of contact between persons or the source of interpersonal meaning, and in finding this meaning, Levinas finds the ethical. Ethics in a way shows that the Other is important: Kant’s Categorical Imperative indicates that the Other be treated as an end, Mill’s “principle of utility” implies the greatest happiness for greatest number, and St. Thomas says that harm should not be given to the Other.
It is still relevant to pursue the source of contact between persons, because the Other exists concretely and not as ideas. Levinas comes directly out of the tradition established by Descartes, Kant and Husserl. They give importance to consciousness and ideas. But these do not refer to independently existing persons, while ethics refers to real human beings who exist apart from one’s interpretations. To relate with the Other as an idea, means to deny the autonomy of the Other. For Levinas, this is a violence “totalization.” Totalization is a denial of the Other’s difference and the refusal to accept the otherness of the Other. If ethics presupposes the real Other then such tolalization will, in itself, be unethical.
It is obvious that the contact with the Other cannot be established through ideas. So, Levinas turns to sensibility to find the real Other. Sensibility precedes thought, it is passive and characterized primarily by enjoyment. In the encounter with the other Levinas, unlike Heidegger who looks at the things as tools and implements, views others as nourishments. The process of nourishment consists of enjoyment, wherein the other become the means of my satisfaction and part of me. So, enjoyment is the quenching of the memory of the thirst. It is clear that sensibility reaches further out into the domain of the extra-mental.
Having established subjectivity on the level of sensibility, Levinas points out that the Other cannot be met in the consciousness but on the concrete ground. Secondly, he also establishes that human subject is, first and foremost passive. The ethical moment, is found, for Levinas, on the level of sensibility when the egoist self comes across something that it wants to enjoy, something that it wants to make a part of itself, but cannot. That which the self wants to enjoy but cannot is the other person. The Other resists consumption. The Other is transcendent, beyond the categories of one’s thought. The epiphany of the face of the Other speaks thus: “I am not yours to be enjoyed: I am absolutely Other.” In other words, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The Other comes in surprise or in human rupture that one is caught off guard. It is not mere the perception of the other but more about the presence of the Other. To understand the ethical responsibility in Levinas, the concept of proximity and substitution are important. Proximity means the interpersonal contact. This implies responsibility for the Other. The very meaning of being a social subject is to be for-the-other. So, Levinas writes, “Subjectivity is being a hostage,” which means the Other is dominant and never reducible to other. Substitution means standing in the place of the Other. It arises from the self as held hostage by the Other. It is the means by which one responds to the Other before he or she knows. It is through substitution that one is not ‘another,’ but a different individual. It is the conversion of one’s being as a subjection by the Other into a subjection for the Other.
The notion of “responsibility” is important for Levinas. Responsibility means that in being a subject I am already in the grip of the Other. This paves a way to pass from an encounter with the real Other into ethics. Levinas writes: “I speak of responsibility as the essential, primary and fundamental mode of subjectivity. For I describe subjectivity in ethical terms. Ethics, here, does not supplement a preceding existential base; the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as responsibility. Thus, responsibility is the source of the moral “ought.” So, when we say responsibility is foundational for ethics and interpersonal relations we mean that the meaning of the Otherness of the Other is given in responsibility, and not in my interpretation of the Other. Therefore, the meaning of the Other is “the one to whom I am responsible.” Now, we come to the conclusion that the contact with the real Other becomes the source of the moral “ought.”
By Sebastian Kamsuan Guide: Fr. Felix sdb
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