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+And, an infinite regard for the other is the source of our consciousness as ethical subjects; to be and ethical subject is to be for the other. Young summarizes Levinas: Bruce Young: “An introduction to Levinas” http://english.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/levinas/levinas3int.pdf |
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+If it were not for the face of the other person, I might indeed maintain the illusion that everything I experience and enjoy (food, landscapes, things) is indeed mine. But once I encounter the Other, I realize that there is something absolutely and irreducibly other than myself and that the world that I enjoy and seem to possess also belongs to the Other; my possession and sovereignty are contested. But this does not limit my freedom, for freedom would have no meaning in a world that belonged entirely to me. The Other "invests" my freedom, gives it meaning, makes it possible for me to make moral choices. I become "responsible," for the Other invites me (simply by his or her presence) to respond. The Other, through hnis or her neediness and vulnerability, invites me to offer myself and what I have in service and sustenance. At the same time, the Other commands, not by words but simply by the vulnerability of his or her face, "Thou shalt not kill." Besides introducing me to moral responsibility, the Other also makes the world "real." That is, I know the world is not just an illusion because I have it in common with the Other. Reality thus becomes genuinely "exterior"—and at the same time, I become genuinely "interior," because I am now truly differentiated from the external world and because I have been called upon to turn to my resources (what belongs to me and is in some sense a part of my "interior" world) so as to respond to and serve the Other. This "calling upon" and "responding" is the basis of language or conversation; and through language (discourse, conversation) the world becomes "communicable," something that can be shared. The Other is identified with "infinity" (hence the title Totality and Infinity): because I cannot contain or possess the Other or reduce the Other to a finite concept or image, the Other is, in that sense, without bounds. The Other thus produces in me "the idea of Infinity": the idea of something more than I can contain. Since I can never fully satisfy my obligation to the Other, my responsibility for the Other is also "infinite." Ethics is thus not first of all a matter of "reciprocity": I do not owe certain things to the Other only in return for what has been don e for me. The obligation toward the Other comes with the relationship itself, which precedes any actions performed or even any thoughts by which I would be able to measure my own and the other's relative obligations. Furthermore, I can never get out of myself in such a way as to "objectively" (from the outside) compare the relative obligations of myself and the other. My unique position as a self depends on my responsibility to the other, which (as far as I am concerned) always precedes and exceeds any obligation the other may have toward me. |
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+Additionally, moral realism fails because it is impossible for a condition to be presently just or moral because prior to the decision nothing allows us to call the decision just, and after, the decision has followed a rule that isn’t guaranteed. Derrida: Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 24 |
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+A decision that didn’t go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process. It might be legal; it would not be just. But in the moment of suspense of the undecidable, it is not just either, for only a decision is just. And once the ordeal of the undecidable is past, the decision has again followed a rule or given itself a rule, invented it or reinvented, reaffirmed it, it is no longer presently just, fully just. There is apparently no moment in which a decision can be called presently and fully just: either it has not yet been made according to a rule, and nothing allows us to call it just, or it has already followed a rule, whether received, confirmed, conserved or reinvented, which in its turn is not absolutely guaranteed by anything; and, moreover, even if it were guaranteed, the decision would be reduced to a calculation, and we couldn’t call it just. |
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+Affirming is paramount under the standard because free, non-dominating speech is how the gap between I and the Other is bridged. Trey Trey, George. "Solidarity and Difference." Google Books. SUNY Press, 1998. Web. 15 Dec. 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=5TtkYnilTAICandpg=PA136andlpg=PA136anddq=levinas2B22free2Bspeech22andsource=blandots=cV6nXpIz5iandsig=1d6uFj2jwE7W8pRFkTva-H45IXQandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwjB0Iuv_PTQAhWEAxoKHdsZAqMQ6AEILjAI#v=onepageandqandf=false. |
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+On what grounds, then, can this be called a relationship at all? Levinas's curious response is that the relationship is linguistic. In fact, one might even say that radical alterity "establishes" a speech situation (although here situation must be purged of any conceptual connotations and be thought only in terms of proximity). "Speech proceeds from absolute difference." Language is the relational medium that enables contact with the other. But it is not language in the sense of common ground, means for communicating, or point of intervention. To intervene or establish common territory would be to conceptualize alterity, which is tantamount to enacting its violation. Language, for Levinas, is not a source of unity, but rather the impossibility of unification. "Language accomplishes a relation between terms that breaks up the unity of a genus." It is this interlocutionary relationship, prior to thematic unity, that annotates the ethical. "The formal structure of language thereby announces that ethical inviolability of the Other and without any odor of the 'numinous,' his 'holiness.'" In other words, the ethical relation-ship is one that is utterly independent of any active force. As such, ethics is situated in terms of domination-free speech (TI, 194-98). |