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Heidegger and Levinas : the Problem of Ethics University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1993 Heidegger and Levinas : the problem of ethics. Cheryl L. Hughes University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Hughes, Cheryl L., "Heidegger and Levinas : the problem of ethics." (1993). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1887. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1887 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HEIDEGGER AND LEVINAS THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS A Dissertation Presented by CHERYL L. HUGHES Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1993 Department of Philosophy (cT) Copyright by Cheryl Lynne Hughes 1993 All Rights Reserved HEIDEGGER AND LEVINAS THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS A Dissertation Presented by CHERYL L. HUGHES Leonard H. Ehrlich, Chair Robert J.'J Ackermann, Member . ABSTRACT HEIDEGGER AND LEVINAS THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS FEBRUARY 1993 CHERYL L. HUGHES, B.S., PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY Ph.D. , UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Leonard H. Ehrlich This dissertation examines the contributions of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas to an understanding of the fundamental meaning and possibility of ethical phenomena. I begin with the problem of ethics as it is articulated by Heidegger in his criticisms of Western metaphysical thinking. Heidegger claims that we need to rethink the meaning of ethics without reliance on traditional metaphysical categories, but this task remains secondary to his own concern over fundamental ontology. Since Heidegger does not concretely explore the meaning of ethics, I consider subseguent efforts to produce Heideggerian ethics. Focusing in particular on the work of Werner Marx, I question the adequacy of a Heideggerian analysis of human relations and the adequacy of any ethics that depends on an individualizing modification of the anonymous bonds of community In an effort to provide a more adequate description of human relations and the meaning of ethical responsibility, I turn to the work of Emmanuel Levinas. I explore Levinas 's iv radical and polemical response to Heidegger, his effort to rethink what it means to be for the human being including his distinctive descriptions of the face to face relation, his attempt to point to the elemental conditions that constitute human subjectivity, and his exploration of the possibility of ethics understood as infinite responsibility of one for another. Through a selective reading of Levinas 's texts and consideration of various critics of Levinas, this dissertation concludes that Levinas does not merely call into question some failure in Heidegger's existential phenomenology or add an analysis of the ethical relation of responsibility to Heidegger's Dasein analytic. Levinas's entire philosophical project challenges the primacy of ontology in an effort to point to the priority of ethics for human existence and thought. His work provides substantive criticisms of Heidegger, demands a radical rethinking about the meaning of ethics, politics, justice, goodness, and truth, and calls for a philosophy that is driven by the exigencies of ethical responsibility. v . TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT iv Chapter I INTRODUCTION II. MARTIN HEIDEGGER: THE MEANING OF BEING AND THE QUESTION OF ETHICS 16 A. Dasein and the Meaning of Being 17 1. Being-in-the-world as Being-with . 20 2 . Temporal Interpretation of Being- in-the-world: The Call of Conscience, Authenticity, and Solicitous Being With Others 26 B. The Question of Ethics in the "Letter on Humanism" 37 III. HEIDEGGERIAN ETHICS 45 A. Ontology as the Foundation of Ethics . 46 B. Werner Marx: Measures for Responsible Action 57 IV. EMMANUEL LEVINAS: A CRITICAL READING OF HEIDEGGER 76 A. Heidegger's Inspiration and Provocation . 77 B. Existence and Existents . 85 C. Time and the Other 105 V. THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEVINAS TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF ETHICAL PHENOMENA 122 A. The Idea of Infinity 125 1. Metaphysical Desire 127 2. Radical Separation 130 3. Discourse and the Quest for Truth . 132 4. Justice, Truth, and Freedom 133 B. The Phenomenological Descriptions .... 137 VI 1. Interiority and Economic Existence . 137 a. Enjoyment: An Elemental Condition of Human Being 138 b. Dwelling in a Home: Withdrawal and Intimacy 140 c. Labor and Possession 144 d. Liberation from Solitude 147 2. Exteriority, Discourse, and Responsibility 151 a. Ethical Resistance 152 b. Discourse: Expression, Response and Responsibility 154 c. The Other and the Others: "The Third Party" 156 d. Kinship and Community 158 e. Finite Freedom 159 f. Eros, Fecundity, and Paternity . 162 g. Plurality, Temporality, and Transcendence 164 C. Critics of Levinas 169 1. Criticisms and Clarifications 170 2. More Cautious Responses to Levinas . 175 3. Derrida's Reading of Levinas: Fundamental Thinking and Questions of Language 179 D. Beyond Being or Otherwise Said 186 1. The Saying and the Said 187 2. Exposure and Passivity 189 3. Obsession 192 4. Persecution 194 5. Substitution as One-for-another .... 196 6. Responsibility of the One For All: Justice 197 VI. CONCLUSION 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 234 Vil CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This dissertation treats the problem of ethics as it is articulated by Martin Heidegger and then concretely developed by Emmanuel Levinas. When Heidegger speaks of the problem of ethics, he refers both to the meaning of ethics as a branch of philosophy and to the problematic demand for directives for action. Heidegger deals with the problem of ethics in the context of his critical view of Western metaphysics. He claims that the Western philosophical tradition has been dependent on onto-theological metaphysics, dependent on assumptions that the human being is a worldless, solitary, rational subject created in the image of a rational creator, that reality is rational, and that there is therefore an objective world to be discovered by science and an absolute moral order to be discovered by reason and codified in universal moral principles. With the says unmasking of philosophy as onto-theology , Heidegger that we must ask again about the meaning of ethics; but we must also first break free from the categories of onto- theological metaphysics. We cannot therefore seek to define 1 moral rules or first principles of ethics until we undertake a fundamental inquiry into the meaning of ethics; we cannot consider the question of how one ouqht to live one's life until we have first concretely worked out the meaninq and possibility of ethical reality. Heideqqer does not take up this task himself. He gives priority instead to the work of deconstructing Western metaphysics? he breaks with the metaphysics of substance and subject and re-introduces a thinking of the world in its historical coming to be and passing away, a thinking of Being in its continual presencing and concealing, and a thinking of the human being as constituted by its existence in a shared world of constant flux. Even when directly asked about ethics, Heidegger gives priority to ontology and claims that the problem of ethics can only be dealt with in relation to the task of thinking that brings the truth of Being to language. For Heidegger, the problem of ethics is peripheral, secondary to the need to disclose the meaning of Being as such. According to Heidegger's analysis, the human being is primordially a disclosing being, and the human relation to Being constitutes the essence of human existence. The analysis of Dasein is therefore a useful entry point for Heidegger's project of rethinking the meaning of Being as such, and the problem of ethics is merely part of Heidegger's concern over the mistakes of Western metaphysical thinking since Plato. 2 By contrast, the problem of ethics is central to the work of Levinas and has an urgency that demands priority in philosophical thought. Levinas insists that the most urgent problem in the twentieth century is the problem of ethics. In particular, Levinas asks, can we speak of morality after Auschwitz? Can we speak of morality after the failure of morality? [ Levinas , 1988 ] . Although the work of Levinas cannot be understood apart from the pervasive influence of Heidegger, Levinas is extremely critical of the priority that Heidegger gives to the question concerning the meaning of Being as such. Levinas undertakes a fundamental inquiry into the meaning of the Good as that which transcends Being. His thinking about the Good is worked out concretely through phenomenological analyses of the desire for the Good in the human being and the traces of the Good in the fundamental ethical relation of responsibility. According to Levinas, the ethical relation of responsibility for another human being is the fundamental fact of human existence that precedes and makes possible all inquiry and disclosing, including the inquiry into the meaning of Being. The problem of ethics, the concern to make room for the Good which transcends Being, and the concern to describe ineluctable responsibility as a fundamental structure of human being lead Levinas to reject and rethink much of Heidegger's analysis of Dasein. 3 Levinas locates the problem of ethics, the need for a fundamental inquiry into the meaning and possibility of ethics, in the context of Western philosophical developments. Levinas is concerned with the suspicion cast on reason and philosophy by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud [Levinas , 1975a] . He focuses in particular on the suspicion that ethics is ideology, that morality is a set of illusions that are historically and culturally relative and dominated by class interests; and he claims that this suspicion of ideology marks the end of the traditional ethics of duty and value.
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