Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / The argument of this dissertation is that futurity is a central theme of phenomenology, because it is central to a proper understanding of two pillars of the phenomenological method, namely, constituting consciousness and intentionality. The centrality of futurity to phenomenology first manifests itself in all three levels of Husserl's constituting consciousness via the three-fold distinction within futurity between protention, expectation, and anticipation. This analysis of futurity within constituting consciousness reveals that the object of futurity must bear a necessary relation to our horizons of constitution, but an analysis of anticipation itself suggests that futurity cannot be solely contained within those horizons. In turning to that which opens the subject to what is beyond its own horizons of constitution, we see that futurity enables Levinas to insert a level of passive-ication into intentionality, and thereby into ethics and constituting consciousness as well. The consequences of this for phenomenology manifest themselves most clearly in Derrida's parallel analyses of futurity (via the notions of differance and the messianic) and the promise. Through this latter we see the fundamental necessity of both constituting consciousness and intentionality for the phenomenological subject. The dissertation concludes with a brief examination of how these conclusions might apply to the philosophy of religion via an analysis of the question of the possibility or impossibility of the divine. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-04T21:01:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 1 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação tem como tema a constituição da subjetividade e ação ética no pensamento de Emmanuel Levinas. Seu objetivo é investigar a constituição da identidade do eu segundo a obra de Levinas. A hipótese que defendemos é que, segundo Levinas, a identidade do sujeito não se anula na acolhida responsável do outro, mas se constrói sempre como referência necessária na relação com o outro, relação que se torna sempre uma interpelação ética. A alteridade é um convite-demanda para sair de si, para se transcender na responsabilidade pelo outro. O primeiro capítulo mostra que o eu se constitui como uma identidade fechada quando considerado meramente na sua relação com o mundo. O eu, na sua relação com o mundo, não tem um ponto fixo, nem um lugar definido para onde retornar; é um ser peregrino no mundo. O segundo capítulo aborda de forma especial o tema do tempo. Em Lévinas o tempo é diacrônico, isso indica que ele não é uma mera sucessão de acontecimentos pontuais. Essa experiência inédita de uma temporalidade

This research project participates in the genre of Performance art. It explores performativity in relation to Emmanuel Levinas' formulation of two interlacing modes of language, the ethical saying and the ontological, political said. The saying is of my originary, ethical relation to the other person that constitutes me, whereas the said is the mode of 'content', knowledge, and ontology. The project suggests that at least two registers of performativity pertain to the saying. One is in Simon Critchley's description of the saying as performative, prior to any decision to perform. In regard to another meaning of performativity, I propose that a political signification of art may be what Levinas calls a "reduction" of the said that 'performs' a showing of the saying. To perform a showing of the saying, would, in a Levinasian engagement, be to make apparent the ultimate interruption by ethics of ontology and politics, thus pointing to a constitutive non-closure of the political like that theorized by Jacques Derrida and by Critchley. Such a non-closure of the political is tentatively linked with critiques of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics such as Claire Bishop's which draw on Jacques Lacan's notion of the subject. Performances explore the notion of the "reduction" of ontology resourced by Derrida's formulation of Levinas' later writing style as involving a sériature; serial and heterogeneous interruptions of the said1. The project has unfolded in a series of performance pieces, and will conclude with a final performance in March 2007. This exegesis articulates the major provocations for the project, contextualises the project with regard to selected art practices, and documents and discusses the major performance pieces.

This study used a qualitative research design incorporating principles of social constructionism, hermeneutic dialectic method, Neo-Socratic dialogue and philosophy for reporting the tacit and social knowledge constructions underlying particular ways of knowing that inform the experiential reality of love in the practice of nursing and midwifery. The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, that culminated in his magnum opus of the ‘metaphysics of otherness’, provided the theoretical underpinning for the interpretation of the experiences nurses and midwives believed were examples of love in their clinical practice in Australia, Singapore and Bhutan. What is love in nursing and midwifery? The answer is moral responsibility. The relational context has a nurse and midwife constantly exposed to patient situations that give rise to expressions of love as moral responsibility. It is a form of love that centres on the ability of our being, or at least the possibility of our being, to transcend its everyday form to a metaphysical state of being moral. It enables a nurse and midwife to transcend the isolation associated with their personal being as a self-project, to be ‘for’ the patient as a first priority. But while the ‘Goodness’ of the ‘Good’ assigns the nurse and midwife responsible and is expressed to their personal being in the form of the ‘urge to do’, ‘what to do’ in caring for the patient is a matter of living out the command to be responsible and will be different for each nurse and midwife. However, no matter the outcome, love as moral responsibility will always leave a nurse and midwife feeling there is still more to be done in being responsible.

The phenomenological approaches to embodiment presented by Levinas and Merleau-Ponty cannot provide an adequate account of bodily identity because their methodological commitments forbid them from admitting the central role that sensation plays in the constitution of experience. This neglect is symptomatic of their tradition's suspicion toward sensation as an explanatory concept, a suspicion stemming from Kant's critique of empiricist metaphysics and Husserl's critique of psychologism and objectivism. By contrast, I suggest that only with a robust theory of sensation can the integrity of the body and its relations be fully captured. I therefore develop--contra Kant and Husserl's idealism--a realist conception of sensation that is at once materialist and phenomenological. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Philosophy / PhD; / Dissertation;

La ricerca, seguendo l’evoluzione dell’idea d’intenzionalità nell’opera di Lévinas, vuole mettere a tema il problema che è all’origine della sua scelta di superare l’intenzionalità stessa. In particolare, intendiamo mostrare che la comprensione della coscienza come esistenza intenzionale rappresentativa, conduce Lévinas a cercare un’esperienza della trascendenza irriducibile alla rappresentazione, e che si presenti come un’interruzione della correlazione tra idea e ideatum. Infatti, per il nostro autore si giunge all’esperienza della trascendenza attraverso un atto al quale è impossibile ritornare a se stesso, essendo ogni ritorno a se stesso il tentativo della coscienza di costituire l’alterità. Questa convinzione ha come conseguenza la separazione tra ontologia ed etica. Tale separazione implica l’impossibilità per la coscienza etica di accedere ad un senso che essa possa intenzionare, vale a dire una pratica senza sapere. / The research, following the evolution of the idea of intentional in the script of Levinas, wants to focus the problem at the base of his choice to go through the intention itself. To be more precise, our goal is to demonstrate that the comprehension of conscience as intentional and representative existence make Levinas look for an experience of irreducible transcendence to representation, an experience that seems to be as an interruption of the correlation between idea and ideatum. In fact, the author gets to the experience of the transcendence through an act, which is impossible to go back to again, because every coming back to self is an attempt of the conscience to constitute the concept of Other. This conviction carries the separation between ontology and ethic. This separation implies the impossibility for the ethic conscience to get to a sense that could be intentional, that it means an activity without knowledge.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Greifswald--Ernst-Moritz-Arndt. / Bibliogr. p. 263-284.

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The following is an analysis of the affinity between the accounts of value of Nietzsche and Levinas—two philosophers commonly thought to be antithetical. I propose an account of value, derived from the aforementioned authors, according to which an enigmatic phenomenon beyond or hither from being orients one toward an invisible good. The analysis suggests that despite the fundamental role of value in philosophy and thought, value necessarily remains obscure.

This research project participates in the genre of Performance art. It explores performativity in relation to Emmanuel Levinas' formulation of two interlacing modes of language, the ethical saying and the ontological, political said. The saying is of my originary, ethical relation to the other person that constitutes me, whereas the said is the mode of 'content', knowledge, and ontology. The project suggests that at least two registers of performativity pertain to the saying. One is in Simon Critchley's description of the saying as performative, prior to any decision to perform. In regard to another meaning of performativity, I propose that a political signification of art may be what Levinas calls a "reduction" of the said that 'performs' a showing of the saying. To perform a showing of the saying, would, in a Levinasian engagement, be to make apparent the ultimate interruption by ethics of ontology and politics, thus pointing to a constitutive non-closure of the political like that theorized by Jacques Derrida and by Critchley. Such a non-closure of the political is tentatively linked with critiques of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics such as Claire Bishop's which draw on Jacques Lacan's notion of the subject. Performances explore the notion of the "reduction" of ontology resourced by Derrida's formulation of Levinas' later writing style as involving a sériature; serial and heterogeneous interruptions of the said1. The project has unfolded in a series of performance pieces, and will conclude with a final performance in March 2007. This exegesis articulates the major provocations for the project, contextualises the project with regard to selected art practices, and documents and discusses the major performance pieces.