Emmanuel Levinas - Totality and Infinity (1)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2021
- All photos of Levinas used in this video were taken by, and reproduced with the consent of, © Bracha L. Ettinger.
Time to look at Levinas. This video (covering the first ten pages or so of the book) basically just sets the scene for what is to come. We go over the key terms and the key concepts Levinas will flesh out. One of the most important terms is ‘metaphysics,’ which Levinas defines as a study of what is absolutely Other (transcendent). The other two I would highlight are ‘totality’ and ‘infinity.’ The former reflects a relation in which the other term is brought into a relation of sameness, while the latter is the opposite; i.e. a relation in which the alterity of the other term is not overcome, not able to be ‘totalised.’
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*Contents*
01:24 Metaphysics
07:32 Key Relationships
07:40 The “I”
10:43 The world
14:58 Negativity
18:18 The other (person)
24:06 Ontology and Ethics
24:16 Knowledge
24:42 Comprehension
25:11 Ontology
29:31 Critique
30:19 Ethics
31:19 Infinity
36:02 Face
42:39 Summary
Levinas is a Jewish philosopher and it’s the messiah that runs through all his metaphysics. I love it tbh.
Derrida and Blanchot follow the same line of thinking
Yes, it gets a bit much for me at times - actually, it's the main reason I never went on to read _Otherwise than Being._ That's my uncompromising atheism coming through, I guess.
You should have gone with an Aron Gurwitsch or maybe Ortega y Gasset. Just my opinion, but Levinas is gobbly-goop.
Much respect for your work, no matter what.
Haha ~ noted. I do hope this video series will avoid landing in the gobbly-goop bin though!
And thanks, John. You've been a fairly regular commenter from close to the beginning, which is much appreciated.
Had this philosophical classic on my shelf for a while now. Your video series motivated me to do a read along. I read the first chapter that your video addresses yesterday. Thanks for making this!
Brilliant! Love to hear that! I'm going to try to do one video per week, so it won't be a blistering pace, but great to have you on board!
Could you make a video covering his Preface, when you make the last video for this series??
Your videos are great, thanks for filling the many gaps of philosophy on youtube
Thanks! They're hard work, but definitely worth it.
This is one of only a few Levinas videos on TH-cam.
I hope I will do it justice.
The only other channel that even covers T&I didn't even finish their series; though I've become more-and-more decidingly Nietzschean... Levinas played a pivotal role in my intellectual development.
Personal comments aside, I look forward to reviewing the series.
Especially since Levinas has been overlooked, when compared with other continental thinkers, phenomenologists, or other postmodern philosophers: Foucault, Sartre, Camus, Deleuze and Guattari, De Beauvoir, Lyotard, Bataille, Derrida, etc... I feel they all buried any significance that Levinas had; I often view Derrida the way Stalin treated Lenin in his death.
But I'm getting personal again... Your videos won't be overlooked by me, but hopefully not overlooked by the philosophical community/TH-camrs on TH-cam.
again thanks fellow BEING for sharing awareness and insights out loud keep moving toward BEING the student from with in the external world is our playground with all its dogmas
Thanks as always Domenic. And welcome to my latest series!
Sentient beings rather than 2 categories ,
the animals I know display all the characteristics you’re describing particular to humans.
Some are even human!
Thank you
Brilliant 🙏
Thanks. Nice to see you, again!
I enjoy your videos. I sometimes have difficulty understanding complicated work like Being and Nothingness or Being and Time, videos like these that analyze great works is a huge benefit towards understanding.
Also this is not related to the video, but I’ve come across some works that uses “Being” and “being” differently. Do you have any idea what this means?(Abraham Maslow for example)
Thanks a lot. It means so much to hear that.
Re: Being vs being. There are no standard, universally accepted definitions. You have to go to the author to be clear on just what they mean. I don't know about Maslow, but for Heidegger, for example, 'being' means an individual thing or object, while 'Being' means that by which beings become the beings they are.
Nevertheless, I guess as a general rule 'being' will usually be 'smaller' than, or an indiv instance of, 'Being,' which is usually more general or totalised in some fashion.
hey Nathan! since you read a lot of phenomenology books, what books/authors talk about the subject of intersubjectivity? Ive been interested in knowing more about the topic of intersubjectivity, and Levinas is know for this topic, but do you have other authors/books in mind that you can recommend? Id appreciate it!
Hmm, that's not a topic I've actually focused on much.
I don't read much in the way of secondary sources, and I haven't really read that far afield from the main guys we know and love, who all dealt with intersubjectivity in one form or another. Husserl (especially 'Cartesian Meditations'), MP, Sartre. Probably not Heidegger though.
I don't know how helpful that list really is... Maybe someone else can add some less conspicuous names?
Huge topic, virtually all phenomenologists from Husserl and Heidegger to Jaspers, Levinas and Zahavi address intersubjectivity one way or another.
The day before i watched this video i saw a documentary on Levinas. Levinas was pretty clear that "god" is not a being. "The Human Face" is not a being and is not an object. Whereas a human face is part of a being and is an object. Levinas wishes us to believe and treat humans faces as if they are not objects. This human face that is not an object commands us "Thou shalt not kill". The moment a face is described by its facial features it becomes an object and loses this god-like property. The face no longer commands us "Thou shalt not kill" and we commit murder.
Levinas is trying to answer the question why humans murder each other even though they are commanded by god to not do so. He is trying to underdo some of the supernatural ideas that have crept into Judaism and return to the command of do not worship idols.
You are handsome
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Thank you, wonderful video, glad you made it (and I found it 😊).
It's a pity you're so triggered by the word "religion", because that god you don't believe in, Levinas doesn't believe in either. Levinas doesn't want to bring religion into philosophy but the other way around. Check out what he says about atheism and religion in his essays "A religion for adults" or "Loving the Torah more than God" in the "Difficult freedom" collection.😮
Thanks. Ha, I totally am triggered by the word 'religion.' Thanks for the suggested reading. If I do get back into Levinas, I'll be sure to check them out.
@@absurdbeing2219 I went back and looked at the section you quote from where he proposes "to call 'religion' the bond that is established between the same and the other without constituting a totality." This needs to be read in a different key than you do. Levinas goes back to one of the Latin etymologies of the word "religion" which is 're-ligare', i.e. to "tie/bind again." He actually wants to reclaim the word from the very meaning you're so allergic to and start again with it in a non-totalizing vein.
Too many fillers: "sort of," "kind of," "ahhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm," stammering, "if you like."