Hugur - 01.06.2009, Blaðsíða 158

156
Gabriel Malenfant
að finna réttlætingu á trúaratriðum eins og trúarbragða er siður. Emmanuel Lev-
inas - rétt eins og býsna margir aðrir gyðinglegir hugsuðir á 20. öld á borð við
Derrida, en einnig Husserl, Freud, Wittgenstein og Benjamin, svo einhverjir séu
nefndir - lét eftir sig heimspeki sem myndar sjálfstæða heild og gerir þá kröfu til
vestrænnar hugsunar að hún taki afurðir sínar til nýrrar skoðunar. Þar er komin
skýringin á því að hugsun Levinas skipar merkan sess í hugmyndasögunni um
þessar mundir.
Björn Þorsteinsson pýddi
Abstract
An Introduction to theThought of Emmanuel Levinas
This introductory paper aims at presenting the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
(1906-1995) from three central aspects discussed throughout his work: (1) the
foundational importance of transcendence for human subjectivity, (2) the human
concern regarding existence through instantiations of aífectivity and sensibility,
as well as (3) the phenomenological and ethical primacy of the relationship with
the Other over ontology. By way of his “ethics as first philosophy,” Levinas puts
forth a radical reinterpretation of both traditional and Heideggerian ontology and
ethics. From early texts such as Existence and Existents (1947) to the two major
philosophical achievements of his career - i.e. Totality and Infinity: an Essay on
Exteriority (1961) and Otherwise than Being or BeyondEssence (1974) - the French-
speaking Lithuanian Jewish philosopher proposed a phenomenological narrative
dealing with the human uncanny interest in the Good, thereby showing how eth-
ics arises in existence as an embodied fact rather than as a rational system or de-
liberative process. This undermining of the systematization of ethics (which he
assimilates to a form of politics) echoes Levinas’ fundamental recognition of the
violence residing in any enterprise reducing otherness to sameness, an insight
which heavily influenced thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Alain Finkielkraut,
Gérard Bensussan and Jean-Luc Marion, to name only a few. It also opened a new
branch of study, within the field of phenomenology, around the end of the twen-
tieth century.