Emmanuel Levinas
| Emmanuel Levinas | |
|---|---|
|
Emmanuel Levinas
| |
| Identity | |
| Lifespan | 1906–1995 |
| Nationality | French (Lithuanian-born) |
| Epistemic Position | |
| Tradition | Continental philosophy, Phenomenology, Ethics |
| Methodology | Ethics, Phenomenology, Jewish thought |
| Fields | Philosophy, Ethics, Phenomenology |
| Conceptual Payload | |
| Core Concepts | Ethics of the Other, Face-to-face, Responsibility, Infinity, Totality
|
| Associated Concepts | Other, Subject, Alterity, Responsibility, Desire, Law, Infinity |
| Key Works | Totality and Infinity, Otherwise than Being, Ethics and Infinity |
| Theoretical Cluster | Ethics, Subjectivity, Otherness |
| Psychoanalytic Relation | |
| Levinas’s ethics of alterity and his critique of totalizing systems provided a crucial philosophical resource for psychoanalysis, especially in the work of Jacques Lacan, who reconfigured the psychoanalytic subject in relation to the Other. Levinas’s insistence on the primacy of ethical responsibility and the irreducibility of the Other resonates with and challenges psychoanalytic accounts of desire, law, and intersubjectivity. | |
| To Lacan | Lacan engaged Levinas’s critique of totality and the primacy of the Other, integrating these insights into his own theory of the subject and the symbolic order. |
| To Freud | While Freud did not directly engage Levinas, Levinas’s critique of Western subjectivity and his emphasis on unconscious ethical responsibility offer a philosophical counterpoint to Freud’s metapsychology. |
| Referenced By | Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek
|
| Lineage | |
| Influences | Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig
|
| Influenced | Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan
|
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian-Jewish origin whose work in phenomenology and ethics—especially his concepts of alterity, the face-to-face encounter, and responsibility for the Other—profoundly shaped twentieth-century thought. Levinas’s critique of totality and his insistence on the primacy of ethical relation directly influenced psychoanalytic theory, most notably in the work of Jacques Lacan, who drew on Levinas’s ideas to rethink the structure of subjectivity, desire, and the symbolic order.
Intellectual Context and Biography
Levinas emerged as a central figure in postwar French philosophy, bridging phenomenology, existentialism, and Jewish thought. His intellectual trajectory was shaped by the crises of twentieth-century Europe, the legacy of German philosophy, and the ethical imperatives arising from the Holocaust.
Early Formation
Levinas was born in Lithuania and educated in France, where he studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. His early engagement with phenomenology provided the methodological foundation for his later ethical philosophy.[1] Levinas’s Jewish heritage and his encounter with the writings of Franz Rosenzweig and the Talmudic tradition also played a decisive role in shaping his ethical orientation.[2]
Major Turning Points
The experience of World War II, including Levinas’s internment as a prisoner of war and the murder of his family in the Holocaust, catalyzed his break with Heideggerian ontology and his turn toward an ethics grounded in the irreducible singularity of the Other.[3] His major works, beginning with Totality and Infinity, articulate a sustained critique of Western philosophy’s tendency to subsume alterity within totalizing systems.
Core Concepts
Levinas’s philosophy is organized around several interrelated concepts that have become central to contemporary debates in ethics, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.
Ethics of the Other
Levinas posits that ethics precedes ontology: the encounter with the Other is the foundational event of subjectivity. The Other is not an object of knowledge or assimilation but an irreducible alterity that calls the subject into question.[4] This ethical relation is asymmetrical, placing infinite responsibility on the subject.
The Face-to-Face Encounter
The “face” of the Other is not merely a physical visage but the epiphany of alterity that interrupts the subject’s self-enclosure. The face-to-face encounter is the site where ethical demand is articulated: “Thou shalt not kill.”[5] The face resists reduction to representation or comprehension, marking the limit of totalizing thought.
Responsibility and Substitution
For Levinas, responsibility for the Other is not chosen but imposed; it is prior to freedom and identity. In Otherwise than Being, he radicalizes this notion, describing the subject as hostage or substitute for the Other, bearing a responsibility that cannot be transferred or discharged.[6]
Totality and Infinity
Levinas distinguishes between “totality”—the closure of meaning within the Same—and “infinity”—the opening to the Other that disrupts totalization. Infinity is not a metaphysical property but the ethical relation itself, which cannot be contained within conceptual systems.[7]
Relation to Psychoanalysis
Levinas’s influence on psychoanalysis is both structural and mediated, most notably through the work of Jacques Lacan and subsequent French theorists.
Direct and Mediated Influence
While Freud did not engage Levinas, the latter’s critique of Western subjectivity and his emphasis on unconscious ethical responsibility provide a philosophical counterpoint to Freudian metapsychology. The primary channel of influence is Lacan, who explicitly references Levinas in his seminars and writings.[8] Lacan’s reconfiguration of the subject as constituted by the Other, and his insistence on the primacy of the symbolic order, resonate with Levinas’s ethics of alterity.
Lacan’s engagement with Levinas is both critical and appropriative. He draws on Levinas’s critique of totality to articulate the impossibility of full self-coincidence and the structural lack at the heart of subjectivity.[9] Lacan’s notion of the “big Other” as the locus of law, language, and desire is informed by Levinas’s insistence on the irreducibility of the Other, though Lacan ultimately situates the Other within the symbolic rather than the ethical.
Structural Parallels
Levinas’s account of the ethical demand as an interruption of the self mirrors the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious as the site of alterity within the subject. Both traditions challenge the primacy of ego and autonomy, foregrounding the subject’s constitutive relation to what is outside or Other.[10] The Levinasian face-to-face encounter finds echoes in psychoanalytic accounts of transference, desire, and the impossibility of full recognition.
Transmission through French Theory
Levinas’s influence on psychoanalysis was amplified by his reception in postwar French philosophy, especially through figures such as Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and Jean-Luc Marion. These thinkers, in turn, shaped the conceptual vocabulary of psychoanalysis, ethics, and subjectivity in the late twentieth century.[11]
Reception in Psychoanalytic Theory
Levinas’s thought has been variously appropriated, critiqued, and transformed by psychoanalytic theorists.
Jacques Lacan’s seminars contain explicit references to Levinas, particularly in discussions of the Other, the law, and the ethics of psychoanalysis.[12] Lacan’s “ethics of desire” is often read in dialogue with Levinas’s ethics of responsibility, though Lacan ultimately privileges the symbolic and the real over the ethical as such.
Julia Kristeva draws on Levinas in her exploration of abjection, foreignness, and the limits of subjectivity, while Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have engaged Levinas’s critique of totality in their own reworkings of ethics and the subject.[13] Some psychoanalytic theorists have critiqued Levinas for his apparent neglect of the unconscious and the libidinal economy, while others have sought to integrate his ethical insights into clinical practice and theory.
Key Works
- Totality and Infinity (1961): Levinas’s major philosophical work, in which he articulates the distinction between totality and infinity, the primacy of the Other, and the ethical relation as foundational for subjectivity. This text is a key reference point for Lacanian theory and debates on the ethics of psychoanalysis.
- Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974): A radicalization of his earlier thought, this work develops the notion of responsibility as substitution and deepens the critique of ontology. Its emphasis on the subject as hostage resonates with psychoanalytic accounts of the divided subject.
- Ethics and Infinity (1982): A series of interviews that provide a concise introduction to Levinas’s core ideas, including the face-to-face encounter and the ethical demand. Frequently cited in psychoanalytic and philosophical discussions of alterity.
- Difficult Freedom (1963): A collection of essays on Jewish thought and ethics, relevant for understanding the ethical dimension of psychoanalytic practice.
- Time and the Other (1947): Early lectures that introduce the themes of alterity, temporality, and the ethical relation, foundational for later developments in psychoanalytic theory.
Influence and Legacy
Levinas’s impact extends across philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, political theory, and literary studies. His ethics of alterity has become a touchstone for debates on subjectivity, responsibility, and the limits of knowledge. In psychoanalysis, Levinas’s critique of totality and his insistence on the primacy of the Other have shaped the work of Lacan and subsequent theorists, prompting a rethinking of desire, law, and the ethical dimension of the analytic encounter.[14] His legacy endures in contemporary discussions of ethics, trauma, and the politics of difference.
See also
References
- ↑ Peperzak, Adriaan T. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Purdue University Press.
- ↑ Hand, Sean. Emmanuel Levinas. Routledge.
- ↑ Critchley, Simon. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Duquesne University Press.
- ↑ Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Duquesne University Press.
- ↑ Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- ↑ Peperzak, Adriaan T. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Purdue University Press.
- ↑ Seminar XX: Encore (1972–1973)
- ↑ Critchley, Simon. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Hand, Sean. Emmanuel Levinas. Routledge.
- ↑ Bernasconi, Robert, and Simon Critchley, eds. Re-reading Levinas. Indiana University Press.
- ↑ Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960)
- ↑ Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. Columbia University Press.
- ↑ Bernasconi, Robert, and Simon Critchley, eds. Re-reading Levinas. Indiana University Press.