Levinas in Jerusalem: Phenomenology, Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics (Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy) PDF
Preview Levinas in Jerusalem: Phenomenology, Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics (Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy)
LEVINAS IN JERUSALEM: PHENOMENOLOGY, ETHICS, POLITICS, AESTHETICS Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy Editor: Reinier Munk, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Editorial Board: Resianne Fontaine,University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Robert Gibbs,University of Toronto, Canada Warren Zev Harvey,The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Albert van der Heide,VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Arthur Hyman,Yeshiva University, New York, U.S.A. Howard Kreisel,Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel David Novak,University of Toronto, Canada Kenneth Seeskin,North Western University, Illinois, U.S.A. Colette Sirat,Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France VOLUME 14 For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/5662 LEVINAS IN JERUSALEM: PHENOMENOLOGY, ETHICS, POLITICS, AESTHETICS JOELLE HANSEL 123 Dr.JoëlleHansel SociétéInternationaledeRecherches EmmanuelLevinas(SIREL,Paris) RaissaandEmmanuelLevinas Center(MOFET,Jerusalem) ISBN:978-1-4020-6247-6 e-ISBN:978-1-4020-6248-3 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2008930130 (cid:2)c SpringerScience+BusinessMediaB.V.2009 Nopartofthisworkmaybereproduced,storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted inanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,microfilming,recording orotherwise,withoutwrittenpermissionfromthePublisher,withtheexception ofanymaterialsuppliedspecificallyforthepurposeofbeingentered andexecutedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthework. Printedonacid-freepaper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com TABLE OF CONTENTS JOËLLE HANSEL Foreword vii PART ONE: PHENOMENOLOGY JACQUES TAMINIAUX The Presence of Being and Time in Totality and Infinity 3 JEAN-MICHEL SALANSKIS The Theoretical to the Rescue of Levinas 23 SIMON CRITCHLEY Leaving the Climate of Heidegger’s Thinking 45 PART TWO: ETHICS, POLITICS, AND JUSTICE GEORGES HANSEL Ethics and Politics in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas 59 PASCAL DELHOM Necessity and Legitimacy of the State 75 ANNETTE ARONOWICZ Judaism, the Jewish People and the State. A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas’ Talmudic Commentary “Judaism and Revolution” 91 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS FRANÇOIS COPPENS Political Reason and Prophetism. How Is the Other Ordered to Me? 109 JOËLLE HANSEL Levinas and Bergson on Justice and Infinity 125 PETER ATTERTON Levinas, Justice, and Just War 141 PART THREE: AESTHETICS AND EROS FRANCESCA YARDENIT ALBERTINI The Language of the Meeting with the Other and the Phenomenology of Eros. Traces of Aesthetic Thinking in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas 157 HANOCH BEN PAZI Teaching as an Internalization of Feminine Aspects 171 NAME INDEX 201 NOTION INDEX 203 FOREWORD* JOËLLE HANSEL Set out in his seminal work Totality and Infinity (1961), the thought of Emmanuel Levinas has elicited a plurality of interpretations for more than half a century. The impressive number of works—books, articles, dissertations—devoted to him in an unusually wide range of languages testifies to his impact.1 Levinas studies are thus one of the most pro- ductive areas of modern philosophical research. Today Levinas’ works have received international acclaim. Their “ethi- cal core”2 has clearly played a major role. Topics such as the Other, the face, or for-the-other interjected a new vision of interpersonal rela- tions into the landscape of contemporary philosophy. By defining ethics as “first philosophy” Levinas completely recast the classical con- cepts in the western philosophical tradition such as conscience, lan- guage, time, freedom, and, in his last works, God. An “inopportune” thinker, he went counter dominant intellectual trends, criticizing struc- turalism and psychoanalysis, and rehabilitating words such as “human- ism”, “peace”, “goodness”, “justice” and even “love”. At the risk of being— erroneously—labeled a “religious thinker”, he restored the texts of the Talmud to their rightful place among the greatest writings the human * Translated from the French by Esther Singer. 1 See the 200-page bibliography drawn up by the Center for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God (Catholic University of Louvain) under the supervision of Prof. Roger Burggraeve, and including works by or on Levinas published between 1929 and 1989. 2 This is the title of the first part of a recent book by Jean-Michel Salanskis: Levinas vivant, Paris, 2006. viii JOËLLE HANSEL mind has ever produced. Ethics is that locus where the “philosophical eros”3 of Levinasian thought emerges at its fullest. Over the years, new research directions have emerged, as the studies presented in this volume so amply demonstrate. They were originally delivered as lectures at two international conferences that we orga- nized at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Entitled “Levinas in Jerusalem: Philosophical Interpretations and Religious Perspectives” the conference that was held in 2002 attracted more than forty Israeli, French, Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian, English, Belarusian and American scholars. During the four-day conference, Levinas’ works were discussed from different perspectives: phenomenology and the history of philosophy, moral and political philosophy, Jewish philoso- phy and Talmudic hermeneutics, Christian philosophy and theology, literature, and aesthetics. Levinas’ relationship to such figures as Husserl and Heidegger were analyzed, as were his ties with contempo- rary French philosophers (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida) as well as with Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Yishayahu Leibovitz. An evening entitled “Levinas, the Man” attracted an audience of more than 1000 to the main auditorium of the University. Prominent politi- cal and cultural figures delivered tributes, including Knesset member Colette Avital, and the French Ambassador to Israel at the time, the Honorable Jacques Huntzinger. Shalom Rosenberg, co-organizer of the conference, painted a portrait of Mr. Chouchani, the brilliant, mysteri- ous mentor who introduced Levinas to the world of the Talmud. Georges Hansel retraced Levinas’ personal and intellectual itinerary. Marie-Anne Lescourret, his biographer, situated the philosopher at the intersection of four cultures—Jewish, Russian, German and French.4 3 Term used by Levinas’ friend Jacob Gordin, who in 1934 referred to the “philosophical eros” of Maimonidean thought. See “L’actualité de Maïmonide” in J. Gordin, Ecrits. Le renouveau de la pensée juive en France, ed. M. Goldmann, Paris, 1995. 4 Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, Paris, 1994, 2006. FOREWORD ix This conference—the first ever devoted exclusively to Levinas in Israel —highlighted the extent to which Levinasian studies have blossomed in this country. It also reflected the specificity of the way his work has been received in Israel, where it has taken on the all the features of a true sociological phenomenon. In a country characterized by its eth- nic, cultural and religious plurality, the work of this European thinker has emerged as a unifying factor, championed by readers across the spectrum and from all ways of life. His vision of Judaism as rooted in traditional sources and open to the modern world resonates with many Israelis. The second conference, which dealt with the relationship between ethics and politics, took place in June 2003. Devoted to one of the most promising areas in the field of Levinasian studies, it explored the key topics of the Third party, charity and justice, and law, as well as less well known areas such as the relationship of Levinas to Zionism and to the State of Israel. In the spirit that so characterized the Jerusalem conferences, the texts we present here highlight the internal dynamics of Levinas’ thought by taking its evolutions and transformations over more than sixty years of philosophical activity into account. From this angle, ethics is no longer a given, but rather the outcome of a trajectory which led Levinas from an initial solipsism to sociality, or from “Being” to “the Other”.5 By con- trast to approaches that encapsulate him in one category—either “phe- nomenologist” or “Jewish thinker”—the authors here gave themselves a dual objective: to deal with Levinas as a philosopher without ever 5 This is the subtitle Levinas gave to his study on Paul Celan that appeared in Noms propres. Also “from existence to existent” and “from existent to the Other”, in Levinas’ terminology (see “Signature”, in Difficult Freedom). On the topic of the internal dynamics of Levinas’ work, see my introduction in: Joelle Hansel (ed.), Levinas. De l’Etre à l’Autre, Paris, 2006.
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