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Resaying the Human: Levinas Beyond Humanism and Antihumanism, 2010

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Resaying the Human: Levinas Beyond Humanism and Antihumanism, 2010 Resaying the Human Resaying the Human In this reading of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas a notion of the human is developed through an engagement with his philosophy. The argument is that, with the help of Levinas, it is possible for the idea of the human to be understood anew, for the notion to be ‘resaid’. This resaying of the human is performed in a self-critical way: Levinas’s work is shown not to be a new variation of the complacent ideology of humanism; the idea of the human is instead interpreted to be the bearer of the very movement of critique. Here Levinas is offered as a modern thinker of particular relevance for contemporary discussions surrounding the nature both of the political and of Human Rights. In addition one finds a systematic analysis of the major works of Levinas, unraveling how a notion of the human develops from within his philosophy. Levinas’s thought is placed alongside the philosophical figures of his time, such as Heidegger, Sartre, Bataille, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault and Derrida, as well as with more recent political thinkers, for example, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière. Levinas Beyond Humanism and Antihumanism Carl Cederberg Carl Cederberg Södertörns högskola Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 52 Biblioteket [email protected] S-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications Resaying the Human Levinas Beyond Humanism and Antihumanism Carl Cederberg Södertörns högskola Södertörns högskola S-141 89 Huddinge 2010 www.sh.se/publications Cover & Cover Image: Rafael B. Garrida Graphic Design: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by E-print, Stockholm 2010 Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 52 ISSN 1652-7399 ISBN 978-91-86069-21-6 For Silas Contents Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................7 Introduction ...................................................................................................................9 A Genealogy of the Concept...........................................................................................10 The Contemporary Discursive Situation .....................................................................15 Argument and Structure of the Investigation..............................................................22 Part I Origins of the Human.................................................................................................27 1.1 Phenomenology as the Path to the “Concrete Human” (1930–1934) .................31 1.2 Riveted but Restless (1934–1939)........................................................................37 1.3 Incipit Alter (1940s)..............................................................................................55 1.4 Existentialist Humanism ......................................................................................63 1.5 Heidegger’s Letter..................................................................................................75 1.6 Ethics of the Other (1950s) ..................................................................................83 1.7 The Other as Kath’auto (Totality and Infinity).................................................89 1.8 Return to Platonism ............................................................................................111 1.9 Antihumanism.....................................................................................................119 1.9.1 Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Ambiguities of Antiplatonism ................................119 1.9.2 Louis Althusser and the Critique of Ideology .........................................................121 1.9.3 Michel Foucault and the Historicity of Man...........................................................122 1.10 Derrida Listening to Levinas............................................................................127 1.11 On the Notion of Justice as a “Lesser Violence”...........................................137 1.12 Ethics of Suspicion ............................................................................................145 Part II Otherwise than Humanism and Antihumanism......................................................151 2.1 An-archic Youth..................................................................................................155 2.2 Resaying Subjectivity (Otherwise than Being).................................................179 2.3 Ideology, Hypocrisy and Critique.....................................................................195 2.3.1 “Ideology and Idealism” .............................................................................................197 2.3.2 Politics After? ...............................................................................................................198 2.4 On the Humanity and Inhumanity of Human Rights ...................................203 2.5 Tradition of the Universal..................................................................................221 Concluding Remarks.................................................................................................239 Key to Abbreviations.................................................................................................245 List of References .......................................................................................................249 Acknowledgments First I want to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Södertörn University. I am especially indebted to my supervisors: Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin, not only for their patient and insightful supervision, but also for being the two persons who most of all are responsible for the forma- tion of the philosophical environment in which I have been learning and work- ing as a Ph.D. student. Without them I could not have conceived and developed the thoughts presented in this book. For this I am deeply grateful. Södertörn’s Higher Seminar of Philosophy was the main forum in which I presented my work as it progressed. I want to thank all the participants in these seminars for fruitful discussions, and particularly mention Anders Bartonek, Jonna Bornemark, Krystof Kasprzak, Christian Nilsson, David Payne, Ramona Rat, Anna-Karin Selberg, Fredrika Spindler, Fredrik Svenaeus, and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, all of whom gave important comments and remarks in the process of this thesis’ production. As a Ph.D. student, however, I had more than one institutional affiliation. My studies could not have been conducted had I not been accepted at the Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS). There I enjoyed a warm and inspiring atmosphere and I am very thankful to my fellow Ph.D. students, to the direction and administrative staff of BEEGS and CBEES (Centre for Baltic and East Euro- pean Studies) for this time together. Rebecka Lettevall, Research Leader at CBEES, receives my heartfelt thanks for putting me in touch with Robert Ber- nasconi and arranging so that he could come as a Guest Professor to Södertörn. Moreover, even if BEEGS and the Philosophy Department at Södertörn was my home environment for work and study, Södertörn had still not received their rights to examine doctorates while I was a Ph.D. student. Therefore, I was in- scribed in the Philosophy Department at Stockholm University. I want to ex- press my gratitude to them for agreeing to be the host department for my disser- tation. My sincere thanks go to Staffan Carlshamre who, not only acted as my formal supervisor but read and gave helpful comments. When my project was still in the process of being worked out, I was invited by Werner Stegmaier to present my thesis in Greifswald. He supported my en- deavour from the start and gave me good advice. Moreover, he introduced me to Silvio Pfeiffer, to whom I am also grateful for his early feedback. I spent a lovely year 2005–2006 in Copenhagen at the Center for Subjectivity Research. I am very thankful to Dan Zahavi for inviting me to stay there for that year, and have all my colleagues there as a warm reminder. 7 I also want to express my thanks to the institutions that made my research fi- nancially possible. Firstly, the Baltic Sea Foundation generously provided the funding for my research. Later, when my financing as a Ph.D. student had reached its time limit, I was employed part time by the Department of Teacher Training and Education Studies (Lärarutbildningen) at Södertörn University, while putting the finishing touches to my thesis. Apart from allowing me the opportunity to finish the thesis, it has shown me an avenue down which this research can be taken further. In close vicinity to the academic institutions, the Levinas reading group (Anna Holmström, Christian Nilsson, Ramona Rat, Gustav Sjöberg, Björn Sjöstrand and Ynon Wygoda) was an excellent environment for trying out some of the ideas presented in the dissertation. Warm thanks must go to Robert Bernasconi. Firstly, his work has shown me (and many, many other people) how to read Levinas. In addition to this, Robert generously read and offered an extensive commentary on the dissertation in two different stages of its production. Probably the singularly most important intervention came from David Payne. He worked as a proof-reader and language consultant in the final stage of the thesis, and his comments helped me to see many of the weaknesses and obscuri- ties of my text. Moreover, his almost uncanny understanding for the mechanics of my argument as well as his expertise in political philosophy made him valu- able to the dissertation
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