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On Thinking-Of-The-Other Entre IKMS On Thinking-of-the-Other entre IKMS Emmanuel Levinas Translated from the French by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav Columbia University Press NEW YORK Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 1998 Columbia University Press Entre Nous: Esscds sur le penser-a-l'autre © Editions Grasset & Fasquelle 1991 All rights reserved Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation of assistance given by the government of France through Le Ministere de la Culture in the preparation of this translation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levinas, Emmanuel. [Entre nous. English] Entre nous : on thinlring-of-the-other / Emmanuel Levinas; translated from the French by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. p. cm. ~ (European perspectives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-231-07910-9 (cloth)—ISBN 0-231-07911^7 (pbk.) 1. Philosophy. I. Tide. II. Series. B2430.L483E5813 1998 194—dc2i Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America e Designed by Chang Jae Lee c 10 987654321 EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES presents outstanding books by leading European thinkers. With both classic and contemporary works, the series aims to shape the major intellectual controversies of our day and to facilitate the tasks of historical understanding. For a complete list of books in the series, see page 257. Julia Kristeva Strangers to Ourselves Theodor W. Adorno Notes to Literature, vols. 1 and 2 Richard Wolin, editor The Heidegger Controversy Antonio Gramsci Prison Notebooks, vols. 1 and 2 Jacques LeGoff History and Memory Alain Finkielkraut Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity Julia Kristeva Nations Without Nationalism Pierre Bourdieu The Field of Cultural Production Pierre Vidal-Naquet Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust Hugo Ball Critique on German Intelligentsia Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari What Is Philosophy? Karl Heinz Bohrer Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance Alain Finkielkraut The Defeat of the Mind Julia Kristeva New Maladies of the Soul Elisabeth Badinter XY: On Masculine Identity Karl L6with Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism Gilles Deleuze Negotiations, iQyz^iggo Pierre Vidal-Naquet The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present Norbert Elias The Germans Louis Althusser Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan Elisabeth Roudinesco Jacques Lacan: His Life and Work Ross Guberman Julia Kristeva Interviews Kelly Oliver The Portable Kristeva Pierre Nora Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions, vol. 2: Ttraditions, vol. 3: Symbols Claudine Fabre-Vassas The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig Paul Ricoeur Critique and Conviction: Conversations with Francois A^ouvi and Marc de Launay Theodor W. Adorno Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords Alain Corbin Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside Zygmunt Bauman Globalisation: The Human Consequences Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari Food: A Culinary History Alain Finkielkraut In the Name of Humanity: Reflections on the Twentieth Century Julia Kristeva The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis Contents entre Translator s Achwwledgments IX Author's Preface XI ONE Is Ontology Fundamental? i TWO The /and the Totality 13 THREE Levy-Bruhl and Contemporary Philosophy 39 FOUR A Man-God? 53 FIVE A New Rationality: On Gabriel Marcel 61 SIX Hermeneutics and the Beyond 65 SEVEN Philosophy and Awakening 77 EIGHT Useless Suffering 91 NINE Philosophy, Justice, and Love 103 TEN Nonintentional Consciousness 123 ELEVEN From the One to the Other: Transcendence and Time 133 TWELVE The Rights of Man and Good Will 155 THIRTEEN Diachrony and Representation J59 FOURTEEN The Philosophical Determination of the Idea of Culture 179 FIFTEEN Uniqueness 189 SIXTEEN Totality and Infinity. Preface to the German Edition 197 SEVENTEEN Dialogue on Thinking-of-the-Other 201 EIGHTEEN "Dying for..." 207 NINETEEN The Idea of the Infinite in Us 219 TWENTY The Other, Utopia, and Justice 223 Notes 235 Index 251 Translators' Acknowledgments Michael B. Smith wishes to thank Berry College for its encouragement and support and Martha Reynolds of the Memorial Library for her professional assis­ tance. And he is very grateful for the forbearance of his wife, Helen, whose spouse was, for the larger part of a summer, "lost in translation." Barbara Harshav wishes to thank Professor Robert Gibbs, of Princeton University, who good-naturedly devoted much time and effort to this project. Author's Preface entre noy The essays in this volume are arranged in chronolog­ ical order of their appearance in various philosophi­ cal publications. "Is Ontology Fundamental?," dat­ ing from 1951, gives a general sense of what will be discussed in the subsequent essays. The rationality of the human psyche is explored in the inter subjective relation, the relationship of one person to another, in the transcendence of the "for-the-other" initiating the "ethical subject," which initiates the entre-nous. What motivates these pages is not some urgent need to return to ethics for the purpose of developing ab ovo a code in which the structures and rules for good private conduct, public policy, and peace between nations would be set forth, however funda­ mental the ethical values implied in these chapters may appear to be. The main intent here is to try to see ethics in relation to the rationality of the knowledge that is immanent in being, and that is primordial in the philosophical tradition of the West; even if ethics— ultimately going beyond the forms and determina­ tions of ontology, but without rejecting the peace of reason—could achieve a different form of intelligi­ bility and a different way of loving wisdom;1 and per­ haps even—but I will not go that far—the way of Psalm 111:10. I will set out from being in the verbal sense of that word: neither from "beings"2—physical ob­ jects, living bodies, human individuals—nor from nature, which encompasses them all in one way or another in its totality. 3 I will set out from being in the verbal sense of the word, in which h being is suggested and understood, in a sense, as a process of being, an * event of being, an adventure of being. A remarkable adventure! The co event of being is in a concern with being; it would appear to be its only * way of being, in its elan which is "essentially" finite and completely £; absorbed in this concern with being. In a sense, the only thing at issue % for the event of being is the being of that very being. To be as such is, from the first, to be preoccupied with being, as if some relaxation were already necessary, some "tranquilizer," in order to remain—while being—unconcerned about being. To be: already an insistence on being as if a "survival instinct" that coincided with its development, preserv­ ing it, and maintaining it in its adventure of being, were its meaning. The tensing of being back onto itself, a plot in which the reflexive pro­ noun, -self, is bound up.3 An insistence before all light and decision, the secret of a savagery excluding deliberation and calculation, violence in the guise of beings who affirm themselves "without regard" for one another in their concern to be. Origin of all violence, varying with the various modes of being: the life of the living, the existence of human beings, the reality of things. The life of the living in the struggle for life; the natural history of human beings in the blood and tears of wars between individuals, nations, and classes; the matter of things, hard matter; solidity; the closed-in-upon-self, all the way down to the level of the subatomic par­ ticles of which physicists speak. But behold! The emergence, in the life lived by the human being (and it is here that the human, as such, begins—pure eventuality, but from the start an eventuality that is pure and holy), of the devoting-of- oneself-to-the-other. In the general economy of being in its inflection back upon itself, a preoccupation with the other, even to the point of sacrifice, even to the possibility of dying for him or her; a responsibili­ ty for the other. Otherwise than being! It is this shattering of indiffer­ ence—even if indifference is statistically dominant—this possibility of one-for-the-other, that constitutes the ethical event. When human exis­ tence interrupts and goes beyond its effort to be—its Spinozan conatus essendft—there is a vocation of an existing-for-the-other stronger than the threat of death: the fellow human being's existential adventure mat­ ters to the /more than its own, posing from the start the /as responsi- X ble for the being of the other; responsible, that is, unique and elect, as % an I who is no longer just any individual member of the human race. It m is as if the emergence of the human in the economy of being upset the * meaning and plot and philosophical rank of ontology: the in-itself of w being-persisting-in-being goes beyond itself in the gratuitousness of * the outside-of-itself-for-the-other, in sacrifice, or the possibility of sac- £ rifice, in the perspective of holiness. n entre nous Is Ontology Fundamental? one entre nous The Primacy of Ontology The primacy of ontology among the branches of knowledge would appear to rest on the clearest evi­ dence, for all knowledge of relations connecting or opposing beings to one another implies an under­ standing of the fact that these beings and relations exist.
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