Sensibility and Singularity: The Problem of Phenomenology in Levinas (UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE)

266 Pages·2001·1.77 MB·English

by  Drabinski, John E., Project Muse.

Sensibility and Singularity
(cid:2)
SUNY series in
Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
Sensibility and Singularity
The Problem of Phenomenology in Levinas
(cid:2)
John E. Drabinski
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2001 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drabinski, John E., 1968–
Sensibility and singularity : the problem of phenomenology in Levinas
/ John E. Drabinski.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-4897-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-4898-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Levinas, Emmanuel. 2. Husserl, Edmund, 1859–1938—Influence.
I. Title. II. Series.
B2430.L484 D73 2001
194—dc21 00-032227
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of
Bill Hargrove and Stephanie Walsh
And for
Maria Cimitile

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 Unsuspected Horizons: On the Husserl Question 13
2 The Subject outside Itself: Transcendence and Materiality
in the 1940s and 1950s 43
3 The Subject in Question: Relation and Sense in
Totality and Infinity 83
4 Sensation, Trace, Enigma: Rethinking Sensibility
in the 1960s 129
5 Impressions of Sense: Materiality in Otherwise than Being 167
Notes 221
Selected Bibliography 237
Index 245
vii

Acknowledgments
Parts of chapter 2 appeared in International Studies in Philosophy XXX,
4 (1998): 23–38. I would like to thank the editor, Professor Leon
Goldstein of Binghamton University, for allowing me to reprint those
materials.
I offer this work in memory of Bill Hargrove and Stephanie Walsh,
without whom this world is all the more difficult. From my first memo-
ries, they were instructors in the art of writing and in the work of
generosity, both of which were lived by authentic spirits. Whatever the
passage of time, whatever the fading of memories, their instruction will
always be the beginning of my intellectual and moral life.
The following project had its beginnings in my dissertation writ-
ten at the University of Memphis under the direction of Robert
Bernasconi. But the trail of teachers begins, of course, before the Mem-
phis faculty. At Seattle University, Robert Cousineau met my first es-
say in continental philosophy with the question “Please! Do you believe
this nonsense?” Haunted by its bluntness, but moved by its impera-
tive, it is a question I still ask myself after every paragraph I write. Jim
Risser and Ken Stikkers continue to be important teachers and friends.
Burt Hopkins and Marylou Sena taught me how to see phenomeno-
logically and stirred in me an independence of thinking, a gift for which
I will always be indebted.
I consider myself privileged to have worked with the faculty at
the University of Memphis. Tina Chanter and Len Lawlor were respon-
sible for much of my training in contemporary French philosophy,
pushing and pulling my thinking back and forth across the border
ix