Abstract: Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics, Justice and the Human beyond Being. Levinas finds the early twentieth century to be marked by a rejection of the concept of humanity, at the moment of its awakening to its own brutality. While accepting the anti-humanist position, insofar as it questions the primacy of free will, and an unquestionable security in its attachment to a pregiven, universal Reason, Levinas' work questions the value of rethinking the human in terms of being. This thesis traces Levinas' attempt to rehabilitate humanity from its devotion to ontology as first philosophy. It argues that Levinas offers a reinterpretation of the relation of being and the human, tracing the movement in Levinas' work from a critical attempt to rethink the human and being, to the notion of the human beyond being. The thesis begins with a critical engagement with Heideggerian ontology suggesting that Levinas' renewal of the question of being in his prewar essays reflects a concern for the meaning of subjective existence and its relation to the social and political totality. These concerns lie behind his reinterpretation of the relation of existence and the existent in his essays of the 1940's in which Levinas undertakes a critique of a Platonic social totality and introduces a notion of the alterity of eros which does not have its value determined in terms of a teleology of social production. From this basis, Levinas is shown to address the question of justice by articulating the essentially ambiguous relation between the subject and another in terms of the ambivalence of the face, and contrasting this with the alterity of love. The development of these ideas is traced across Levinas' major works. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas argues that the response to the singular other is conceived of as the event of the production of a universal which affirms the tertiality of the social totality, that is, attests to the whole of humanity. In Otherwise than Being, the relation of ethics and justice is discussed in different terms, those of the relation of the ethical Saying and the realm of the Said or being's justice. Levinas juxtaposes the ontological tertiality of the third, with the notion of an ethical tertiality, which he calls illeity. Illeity is found to not be reducible to the ontological tertiality of the third party, but to name the exceeding of subjectivity in terms of an absolute susceptibility to the Other, and is an excessive concept of a singular universal: the human beyond being.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2006. / "May 2006." Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thèse (Ph. D.)--Université Laval, 2003. / Bibliogr.: f. 253-258. Publ. aussi en version électronique.

Proefschrift--Godgeleerdheid--Kampen--Theologische academie, Johannes Calvijnstichting, 1991. / Contient un résumé en néerlandais et en français. Bibliogr. p. 274-277. Index.

Diss.--Fachbereich Philosophie--Bochum--Ruhr-Universität, 1995. / Bibliogr. p. 411-430. Index.

This thesis gives an account of Heidegger’s understanding of anxiety and death as it relates to the Christian theology of resurrection. It does so by investigating three primary accusations that Heidegger makes against Christianity with respect to its views on death and anxiety interpreted through a belief in an afterlife. In order to interact with Heidegger’s criticisms, Christian phenomenologist Emmanuel Falque’s work is explored for a more dialogical Heideggerian and Christian understanding of death. In doing so, this thesis picks up questions such as: can resurrection interpreted phenomenologically contribute something new to a Heideggerian view of Dasein as a Being-towards-death? as well as in what ways can Heidegger’s starting-point of finitude formulate new possibilities for interpreting Christ’s death and resurrection? Are these theological events necessary for an “authentic” understanding of death and finitude? These questions pertain to anxiety about what Heidegger calls the “to-come”, a concept mapped out in Heidegger’s own work on Christianity and then secularized in his fundamental ontology delineated in chapter one. Chapter two takes up Falque’s work on the death of Jesus and its correlations to Heideggerian views on death, while chapter three contemplates resurrection (and through this, birth) and the various modes of being that it opens up for human finitude. Chapter three concludes with a Levinasian reading of the New Testament resurrection accounts in order to consider how the Christian mode of Being-towards-resurrection can work alongside and, in a certain sense, within a Heideggerian view of human finitude as a Being-towards-death. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Les principaux livres de Ouaknin ont constitué un matériau de choix me permettant de poser deux questions par hypothèse liées l’une à l’autre : 1. Comment se situe la démarche de Ouaknin par rapport à l’ontothéologie ? Qu’en est-il d’une pensée qui ne soit plus ontothéologique ? En quoi les propos de Ouaknin autorisent-ils une démarche qui se situe à l’horizon d’une épistèmè réellement différente de celle de la métaphysique classique occidentale ? 2. Qu’en est-il de la pensée en hébreu ? La langue hébraïque et certaines traditions de la pensée juive qu’elle véhicule, telles que les présente Ouaknin, peuvent-elles être considérées comme un mode de révélation ontologique porteur d’une compréhension du monde différente de celle de l’ontothéologie ? Peut-on esquisser, à partir de l’interprétation que Ouaknin en a faite jusqu’à présent, une pensée autre que celle qui reproduit une métaphysique marquée par la représentation et la détermination de l’être comme l’objet ou l’étant présent ? L’objectif principal que j’ai poursuivi à travers le questionnement de l’ontothéologie et de l’hébreu est de proposer une articulation d’ensemble de la démarche réflexive de Ouaknin et des matériaux qu’il présente.

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Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Filosofía. / Para llevar a cabo esta pequeña investigación expondré principalmente los textos iniciales de Emmanuel Lévinas dedicados al arte, cuales son “El exotismo”, que se encuentra, como mencionamos, en “De la existencia al existente” y “La realidad y su sombra”. Sin embargo, también recurriré a aquellos textos que, podríamos decir, son más bien éticos, entendiendo por esta palabra el análisis filosófico de la relación con el otro y no un sistema normativo, esto porque, como planteé, muchas de las ideas de Lévinas pueden ser entendidas a partir de su obra. Y, además, porque, ciertamente, los textos sobre arte, en Lévinas, son muy escasos, aunque ricos en su contenido. Para culminar este escrito utilizaré el breve ensayo “Del ser al otro” escrito por Lévinas en 1976 a propósito de un discurso de Paul Celan llamado “El meridiano”. Estos dos últimos textos, de Lévinas y Celan, los empleo precisamente para abordar la relación entre arte y ética; allí me propongo exponer una dimensión del arte que no es aquella de la evasión, sino del encuentro con la epifanía del rostro.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / The present study seeks to address the general question of the relation between Levinas's ethics and his account of religion. The specific questions pursued here include the following: Is his ethics secular or religious, and in what sense is it so, either way? Does his ethics depend on religion? How does Levinas himself understand 'religion'? This thesis will show that any interpretation of Levinas's ethics cannot be separated from its religious dimension, namely, the openness to exteriority as Desire for the Infinite. Religion, despite all consolations it may bring, cannot dispense with this ethical demand. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.