Different. A reading of "Beyond being and other than being happens" by Emmanuel Levinas

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Different. A reading of “Beyond being and different from being happens” by Emmanuel Levinas is a book by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur that has already been translated into English, Spanish, Italian and German. He devotes himself to a meticulous reading of “Beyond being or other than being happens”, the second major work of the Franco-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas . It was published under the French title “Autrement. Lecture d ' Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence d'Emmanuel Levinas ”and represents the effort to“ understand Levinas true to its greatest difficulty ”, which for Ricœur consists in emphasizing the otherness of the other and thus the most fundamental moment of a meeting of people, so the ethical claim to be thematized in language. The breviary shows the basic lines of the philosophical considerations of Levinas in the textual discussion. In doing so, Ricœur succeeds - despite the "elegant disaccord" that swings between Ricœuer and Levinas - in setting Levinas' text "extremely profitably" so that it can be approached for critical queries. For László Tengelyi it is precisely this text by Ricœur which - despite the need for discussion of the results - the real main question of all Levinas interpretation. reveals: the question of the ethical nature of language.

construction

The text is divided into two central parts. In the first, Ricœur gives an introduction to the reason, the classification and the difficulties of the investigation and leads through the first chapter “To be and to detach oneself from being” of “Beyond being”. In this, according to Ricœur, everything has already been said that is only commented on in more detail by Levinas in the following chapters and repeated at the end according to the course of the investigation. In the second part Ricœur takes up the key terms of the work in two chapters and tries in the third chapter a systematic sketch of the conceivable consequences of the considerations. The German translation also offers a detailed afterword by Burkhard Liebsch, which introduces the content-related relationship between Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Levinas.

The otherness of the other

Reading Paul Ricœur is an examination of Emmanuel Levinas' attempt to bring up otherness and its demarcation from the characters of the other. These figures of the other refer to a way of thinking which, in the broadest sense, starts from the identification and classification of the other before a difference can be assumed. Consequently, no differentiated otherness could be made out, since, based on a comparative reason, it would always represent an identification. Rather, it would result in being different or different from being . The focus is on the otherness of the other person, the other as such.

Saying and saying

In “Beyond being or other than being happens” this otherness is negotiated in the language metaphor of “saying” and “said”. What is said stands for the spoken, written and thought being of the human being understood in language in the sense of an ontology. In the understanding of Levinas, on the other hand, to say means to detach oneself from being, i.e. H. being spoken to in the encounter before something is said. Saying thus lies in a peculiar sense in front of communication and understanding. According to Levinas, one can "go back to this meaning of saying [...] only from what has been said and from the question 'What is it about ...?' Which is already given to what has been said, in which everything shows itself." The essential consequence and motivation of these considerations for Levinas is to take responsibility when people meet. The responsibility is therefore not the result of a discourse and is justified by it, but consists in the awareness of the other. Only in the third person is a measure introduced, whereby the closeness in the encounter becomes a judgment. With this the transgression from responsibility to justice is accomplished and allows the thematization of saying, a “thematization of the same from the relationship to the other [...].” Saying solidifies into what is said and becomes according to Levina's law, book or science. By specifically emphasizing Levinas' reflections, Ricœur reveals difficulties in this thinking and thus transfers them to the status of the hypothesis. Without resolving the questionability of the identified problems in an overly simple answer, he clearly emphasizes the tensions, which are partly due to the matter itself, for further processing. In his thematization, Levinas explains that by saying (for Ricœur a speech act in the sense of linguistic theories) he means neither an origin nor a premature moment in speaking. Thus, the self-acting act of a subject is neither the 'starting point' of saying, nor is the past of saying present in what is said. For Ricœur, however, it becomes questionable how responsibility can be ascribed at all for Levinas, who paradoxically dedicates his text to “The memory of the next of kin ...”. So it remains with an insurmountable difficulty.

Proximity and representation

Two central terms in Levinas's considerations are "proximity" and "representation". Proximity means the relationship in the encounter that cannot be canceled, to which the saying is also to be counted, whereby the proxy provides the reason, as it were. According to her, the addressee gives himself completely to the other, without the exact reference of the "himself" being determined in advance, since it is only constituted in the giving . For Ricœur, however, this means that the category of otherness would necessarily remain reduced to the other and could no longer be related to anything else, which would result in an absolute lack of relationship. The downside of closeness is justice, to which what is said can be assigned in the area of ​​the third. It represents the "comparison between the incomparable", i. H. with the third person in the encounter, the closeness is disturbed, but first and foremost it is possible to make them a subject of the saying. Ricœur therefore formulates the hypothesis that the place of justice is what is said, in which what is said is inscribed. But in the end he too remains undecided as to whether the connection between closeness (responsibility) and justice is either a leap or, through the insight into the problem report, a conjuring up of the latent emergence of justice from close up. For Ricœur, who, according to Espeel, exercises the "sharpest" conceivable criticism of Levinas with a view to substitution, it is therefore important in the last chapter of the book to provide at least a systematic sketch of what follows from the difficulties that have been identified. In doing so, he prepares four essential aspects in the course of Levinas's considerations, with which, in his opinion, something like a new ontology can be named: the goodness, the infinite, the illegality and the name of God.

Edition and translations

  • French edition: Paul Ricœur, Autrement. Lecture d ' Autrement qu'être ou Au-delà de l'essence d'Emmanuel Levinas, Presses Universitaires de France: Paris 1997.
  • American translation: Paul Ricœur, Otherwise: A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas's Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence , translated by Matthew Escobar, in: Yale French Studies (2004), No. 104, pp. 82-99.
  • Spanish translation: Paul Ricœur, De otro modo: Lectura de De otro modo que ser o más allá de la esencia de Emmanuel Levinas, traducción de Alberto Sucasas, Rubí / Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial 1999.
  • Italian translation: Paul Ricœur, Altrimenti. Lettura di Altrimenti che essere o al di là dell'essenza di Emmanuel Levinas, éd. Ilario Bertoletti, Brescia: Morcelliana 2007.
  • German translation: Paul Ricœur, Anders. A reading of Beyond being or other than being happens by Emmanuel Levinas (with an afterword by Burkhard Liebsch), trans. by Marco Gutjahr, Vienna / Berlin: Turia + Kant 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Ricœur, Otherwise: A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas's Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence , translated by Matthew Escobar, in: Yale French Studies (2004), No. 104, pp. 82-99; ders., De otro modo: Lectura de De otro modo que ser o más allá de la esencia de Emmanuel Levinas, traducción de Alberto Sucasas, Rubí / Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial 1999; ders., Altrimenti. Lettura di Altrimenti che essere o al di là dell'essenza di Emmanuel Levinas, éd. Ilario Bertoletti, Brescia: Morcelliana 2007; another., different. A reading of Beyond being or other than being happens by Emmanuel Levinas (with an afterword by Burkhard Liebsch), trans. by Marco Gutjahr, Vienna / Berlin: Turia + Kant 2015
  2. ↑ Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond being or other than being happens, trans. by Thomas Wiemer, Karl Alber: Freiburg / Munich 2011 (3rd edition)
  3. ^ Paul Ricœur, Autrement. Lecture d ' Autrement qu'être ou Au-delà de l'essence d'Emmanuel Levinas, Presses Universitaires de France: Paris 1997
  4. ↑ Ricœur, Anders. P. 9
  5. ↑ The precarious relationship between the works of Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Levinas culminates in “Anders” by Ricœur, which emphasizes the “elegant disaccord” between the two thinkers in a special way and thus creates a “dialogue” between both thinkers and both ways of thinking makes possible and necessary. Cf. in particular: Sybil Safdie Douek, Paul Ricœur e Emmanuel Lévinas: um elegant desacordo, São Paulo: Ed. Loyola, 2011; Burkhard Liebsch, “The physical self and the resistance of others. Paul Ricoeur with a view to Maine de Biran and Emmanuel Levinas ”, in: Freiburg Journal for Philosophy and Theology (2011), No. 85, No. 2, SS 471–494; Katherine E. Kirby, "The Hero and Asymmetrical Obligation: Levinas and Ricoeur in Dialogue," in: International philosophical quarterly (2010), No. 50, no. 2, pp. 157-167; Burkhard Liebsch, “The question of the other between ethics and politics of difference: a preliminary balance sheet. Kant, Ricœur and Levinas in the horizon of social-ontological thinking ”, in: Phenomenological Research (2005), pp. 193–221.
  6. ↑ This is the assessment of Urs Espeel, Adults Nearness. Substitution according to Emmanuel Levinas, Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 2011, p. 74, who explicitly deals with Ricœur's criticism of Levinas in the 3rd chapter of his book.
  7. ↑ László Tengelyi, Experience and Expression. Phenomenology in upheaval in Husserl and his successors. Dordecht: Springer 2007, p. 254. After the critical discussion of Ricœur's "reading" and interpretation of the Levinas approach, Tengelyi will propose his own approach, which will enable the transition from responsibility to justice "through a model of alternation " (ibid. , P. 255) tried to check plausibility.
  8. ↑ It is not self-evident that Ricœur is dealing with a central text by Emmanuel Levinas, of all places. The mutual references of two of the most important phenomenologists in post-war philosophy are surprisingly rare, which is why "Otherwise", according to Adriaan Peperzak, is of particular importance, since this book "helps us to discover the profound difference between two types of philosophy, which, though probably irreconcilable, are both necessary "(Adriaan Peperzak, Ricœur and Philosophy: Ricœur as Teacher, Reader, Writer, in: Scott Davidson (Ed.), Ricœur across the disciplines, Continuum: NY 2010, pp. 12-29 , 24).
  9. ↑ Levinas, Beyond Being, pp. 108f.
  10. ↑ Levinas, Beyond Being, p. 344.
  11. ↑ A further discussion on the distinction between "say" and "said" enables: Markus Pfeifer, The question of the subject. Levinas' philosophy as a form of expression after metaphysical thinking, Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 2011, pp. 138–193.
  12. ↑ On the concept of representation in Levinas cf. also Urs Espeel, adult proximity. Substitute for Emmanuel Levinas, Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 2011.
  13. ↑ Levinas, Beyond Being, p. 53.
  14. ↑ Urs Espeel, The service as a place of judgment, in: Ingrid Schoberth (ed.), Learn to judge. Foundations and contexts of ethical judgment formation, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen 2012, pp. 104–123, 114.