Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:27:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sybil Safdie Douek.pdf: 1865791 bytes, checksum: ebc827ec6b5f55d21c76a00bfc6d1d0e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-03 / The present dissertation intends to confront Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas philosophy, from an essential point of view: the relationship between the subject and the other, subjectivity and alterity. Question which relevance seems to be dramatic after the Two World Wars, particularly after the Shoah: which could be, subsequent to this historical experience, the meanings of words such as subject, man and ethics? Aware of the necessary and indispensable critics toward classic humanism, and willing to withdraw the subject of his central position in philosophy, since Descartes, both authors seem to rehabilitate the subject, and put again faith in him, without paying to the subject unrestricted reverence. The result is the idea of a subject that includes in itself alterity: self as another , says Ricoeur; the other in the same , says Levinas. But which is the place assigned to the other? Levinas insists in the absolute priority of the other, and proposes the deposition of the subject in behalf of the other: the subject substitutes himself to the other, it is hostage of the other, being absolutely passive in his relationship with him. Ricoeur, in his turn, defends the importance of both (oneself and other) and prefers to think in terms of reciprocity, and receptivity of the subject. These different perspectives concerning relationship between subject and other imply two conceptions of ethics: for Levinas, ethics of responsibility and election; for Ricoeur, ethics of promise, of good living together and mutuality. It implicates also two different attitudes in regard of a question not always considered as philosophical: transcendence or the Name of God. For both, God is a question which deserves attention, but Ricoeur excludes the Name of his philosophical speech, building a hermeutics of the self without the support of transcendence; while for Levinas, the problem of subjectivity goes along this the problem of transcendence. Therefore, a question is born: the presence or absence of the Name of God in their philosophy of subjectivity could have connections or correspondences with their respective religious traditions Ricoeur´s Protestantism and Levinas Judaism? Traditions never denied by both of them, although kept far from their philosophical reflections, each one in his own way / A presente tese se propõe a confrontar as filosofias de Paul Ricoeur e Emmanuel Lévinas, a partir de uma questão essencial: a relação do sujeito com a alteridade. Questão cuja relevância se coloca de modo dramático após a experiência histórica das duas Guerras Mundiais, em particular da Shoah: que sentido dar, hoje, às palavras: sujeito, homem ou ética? Conscientes da necessária e incontornável crítica ao humanismo clássico e, desejosos de retirar o sujeito da posição central que vem ocupando na filosofia, desde Descartes, ambos parecem querer reabilitar o sujeito, fazer-lhe novamente confiança, sem por isso, render-lhe irrestritas homenagens. O resultado é uma concepção de sujeito que inclui em si próprio a alteridade: si mesmo como um outro , diz Ricoeur; o outro no mesmo , diz Lévinas: mas que lugar dar a outrem? Lévinas insiste na prioridade absoluta do outro, propondo a deposição do sujeito em favor de outrem: o sujeito se substitui ao outro, é refém do outro, sendo absolutamente passivo na relação; Ricoeur, por seu lado, defende a importância dos dois pólos e prefere falar em reciprocidade da relação e em receptividade do sujeito. As diferentes perspectivas na relação sujeito-outrem implicam em duas concepções de ética: em Lévinas, ética da responsabilidade e da eleição; em Ricoeur, ética da promessa, do bem viver-junto e da mutualidade. Como também em duas atitudes diferentes, no que diz respeito a uma questão nem sempre considerada filosófica: a transcendência ou o nome de Deus. Se para ambos Deus é uma questão que merece atenção, Ricoeur O exclui de seu discurso filosófico, construindo uma hermenêutica do si que não necessita da transcendência para se sustentar; enquanto para Lévinas, o problema da subjetividade e o da transcendência caminham juntos. Nasce uma questão: a presença ou a ausência do nome de Deus nas filosofias do sujeito de Ricoeur e Lévinas poderia ter conexões ou correspondências com suas respectivas tradições religiosas - o protestantismo de Ricoeur e o judaísmo de Lévinas? Tradições que eles nunca negaram, embora as tenham mantido afastadas, cada um a seu modo, de suas reflexões filosóficas

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been both contentious and successful. By examining the ICTY from a Levinasian ethical standpoint, we might be able to understand how the court uses language to enforce ethical and moral standards upon post-war societies. Using linguistic methods of analysis combined with traditional data about the ICTY, I empirically examine the court using ordinary least squares (OLS) in order to show the impact that language has upon the court's decision making process. I hypothesize that the court is an ethical entity, and therefore we should not see any evidence of bias against Serbs and that language will provide a robust view of the court as an ethical mechanism.

« C’est seulement lorsque nous nous ouvrons à ce qui est plein de secret et plein de grâce comme à cela qui nous donne proprement à penser, qu’il nous est aussi donné de penser ce que nous tenons pour la malignité du mal », notait Heidegger au moment de méditer la vérité de l’être dans l’exploration de la dimension inouïe au sein de laquelle elle se déploie, à l'heure de mettre fin à la philosophie pour commencer seulement à penser.Comment comprendre que l’expérience du mal ait pu accompagner le chemin de la pensée ? N’est-ce pas cette singulière concomittance qui en éclaire, à l’époque du nihilisme, l’implacable urgence, ainsi que l’indifférence apparente aux questions éthiques ? Car si le mal est accessible à la pensée par delà la différence ontologique, c'est qu'il n’est pas qu’une valeur et excède la législature de la morale. Que signifie-t-il alors et que peut vouloir dire en lever le règne ?Répondre à cette question n'ira pas sans impliquer un retour sur la signification philosophique et théologique du mal, au moment d'en attester, à l'instant de penser, l'incomplétude. Le champ dans lequel Heidegger a pu de manière ou d'autre faire sienne cette tâche n’implique-t-il pas alors de soustraire au silence sa singulière relation au christianisme, dont la morale à laquelle il s'agit de retrancher la vérité du mal porte aussi la trace ?Et si la pensée de l’Ereignis s’accomplit comme surmontement de tout mal, si c’est la paix des choses et des mortels qu’il s’agit d’y construire, la résonance du silence qui structure la langue pour en faire le plus haut de ses modes et dont nous recevons en y répondant ce que nous avons de plus propre, le dire, de quelle paix la pensée en chemin peut-elle porter l'annonce ? Quel sens revêt à cet égard la responsabilité dont l’essence de la langue nous rend face à l’être, titulaires ? / As he takes to addressing the question of being, Heidegger writes: « Only when we open ourselves to what is full of secrets and full of grace as we do to something that makes us think, are we also enabled to think what we consider as the malignancy of evil. »How is one to understand that the experience of evil goes along with the path of thinking ? Is it not this concurrence alone that can explain why evil seemingly ignores ethical questions ? For one can think of evil beyond mere metaphysics as it is not only a value and overrides the laws of morality. What is, then, the meaning of evil, and what could it possibly mean to undo its domination ? Answering this question necessarily implies to reassess the philosophical, and biblical, meaning of evil, with its incompleteness being asserted as the thinking process begins. Aiming at uprooting the truth of evil out of the Christian morality, marked as it is by silence, one wonders whether the field in which Heidegger sets out to make this task his own in one way or another, indeed involves to remove silence off its special relationship to Christianity ?

Persistent Pasts: Historical Palimpsests in Nineteenth-Century Prose traces Victorian historical discourse with specific attention to the works of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot and their relation to historicism in earlier works by Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg. I argue that the Victorian response to the tense relation between the materialist Enlightenment and the idealist rhetoric of Romanticism marks a decidedly ethical turn in Victorian historical discourse. The writers introduce the dialectic of enlightened empiricism and romantic idealism to invoke the historical imagination as an ethical response to the call of the past. I read the dialectic and its invitation to ethics through the figure of the palimpsest. Drawing upon theoretical work on the palimpsest from Carlyle and de Quincey through Gérard Genette and Sarah Dillon, I analyze ways in which the materialist and idealist discourses interrupt each other and persist in one another. Central to my argument are concepts drawn from Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, and Frank Ankersmit that challenge and / or affirm historical materiality.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.

This doctoral thesis explores the literarity of reportage, with a focus on the 20th century and modern reportage. The aim is to describe the literary strategies used in modern text-based reportage and how these strategies relate to journalistic standards of credibility and ethics. A primary focus is the question of what the reportage is looking for in the literary, what happens to this literarity when it is used for journalistic purposes, and, in turn, how the literary establishes ethics in the text.        By suggesting that a piece of reportage is a journalistic text that simultaneously tells the story about the reporter’s encounter with the event, this dissertation sheds light on possible approaches to the concept of literarity: Subjectivity, narrativity, meta-narrative aspects, the poetic function of language and the performative movements in the text. The ethics of reportage is also to be derived from the encounter, and this thesis implements a concept of ethics in conversations with Emmanuel Levinas and dialogical philosophy. It provides an opportunity to separate ethics from moral, ideological and political dimensions of responsibility in the encounter. This aspect of ethics, where literarity and counter-movement operate beyond the direct intention, is what is needed to understand the reportage genre.      The dissertation also includes six longer reportage analyses embodying its results: Djuna Barnes’s, Vagaries Malicieux, Ryszard Kapuściński’s Another Day of Life, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Hanna Krall’s A Tale for Hollywood, Sven Lindqvist’s Kina nu: Vad skulle Mao ha sagt? and Joan Didion’s, Slouching towards Bethlehem.

This research brings the thought of Emmanuel Levinas into play in attempting to understand the responsibility of a group of educators of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal heritage working amidst the tensions of ethno-cultural difference in an inner city public high school in Western Canada. The concept of ‘welcoming’, that is born in the words of Levinas, and that I further fashion into an interpretation framework while relying on the writings of Jacque Derrida and Sharon Todd, is employed in articulating this research. The research involves exploring: if, how and to what extent the responsibility of these educators might be understood as a welcoming of the Other and; if, how and to what extent the notion of welcoming itself, and particularly the thought of Levinas, might be potentially helpful in understanding the responsibility of educators? This study articulates a philosophical hermeneutic that is an interpretation of participants’ stories developed through a close examination of Levinas’ philosophy aided by insight from Derrida, Todd and other writers. This research articulates how educators revise and reenact their responsibility wherein their success and that of their students involves the establishment of a non-coercive relationship educators believe is fundamental and crucial to any other form of success their schooling context. This study offers examples and insight concerning how educators are interrupted by the difference of others; how educators realize their vulnerability to others and respond to others where their relationships with others change from merely being-with others to a “being-for” the Other; how educators negotiate the difficult tension of being an hôte or a guest in one’s own situation and; how educators receive the gift of learning from the Other or learn what their responsibility demands of them as they seek to serve others in amidst ethno-cultural difference. This research is helpful in offering an alternate way to approach how educators’ understand and enact their responsibility amidst ethno-cultural difference and does this by offering an atypical consideration of what is ethical, where responsibility is reconceived as a welcoming of the Other. In this pursuit insight is offered into the helpfulness and use of Levinas’ philosophy with the suggestion that his writings remain challenging to decipher as well to apply, offering few if any specific guides for action. Despite this, I suggest that Levinas’ philosophy when refashioned as welcoming, relying on scholars such as Derrida and Todd, can be helpful in prompting us as educators to think differently about our responsibility and therefore to perhaps act differently. In this capacity this study is potentially helpful to educators in assuring them that what is ethical is not necessarily defined within the confines of convention, legal codes and rules nor is what is ethical solely determined within such confines, but rather in our attentiveness to others and our attentiveness to our attentiveness, where we realize the welcoming nature of responsibility and what is actually demanded of us in being responsible to the Other.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.

No description available.

No description available.