Session 8: Thinking and Feeling it Through
3rd Global Conference
Thursday 15th March – Saturday 17th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
Reading Levinas on Justice: Existence as Evil, Ethics as Transcendent
Imge Oranli
Department of Philosophy, DePaul University, USA
In the introduction of his book Existence and Existents, Levinas indicates that he will try to think evil in its very positivity by questioning the presence of evil in the structure of existence. Such a questioning, he tells us, is an attempt to think evil outside the paradigm of lack or deficiency. Levinas stresses that evil is rooted in existence, not because of death, but due to one’s inability to escape suffering. This inability to escape suffering results from existent’s situatedness in a nexus of relations and material conditions, all of which, I argue, are articulated by Levinas through the notion of the body. The existent takes up existence through his/her body, a body which can be absorbed in enjoyment as well as suffering. Levinas’ interest in theorizing existence through suffering and evil rather than enjoyment or forgetfulness is associated with his experience as a European Jew during Second World War.
By considering existence intrinsically evil vis-a-vis suffering, on the one hand, Levinas emphasizes the element of the body in the constitution of the subject. He argues that one’s bodily experience plays a fundamental role in how one becomes a subject. On the other hand, we find Levinas theorizing evil in order to call for an ethics of justice that questions the freedom of the I.
In this paper, I argue that Levinasian ethics is conditioned by the notion that existence is intrinsically evil, which calls for an ethics of transcendence where one is asked to question critically one’s relation to the injustices that prevail.
Entries (RSS)