>I've been increasingly fascinated recently by the work of Emmanuel Levinas
>and the possibilities of reading him next to Foucault's work. This would
>also prove fertile ground for some of the recent discussion of humanism
>and antihumanism on this list. Allow me to quote again from Tony Davies'
>book that I mentioned in an earlier post. This deserves more exploration,
>and if anyone knows of any insightful works on Foucault and Levinas,
>please mention them.
This comparison of Levinas to Foucault is interesting. Although I am not
familiar with Levinas' work, nor Davies' book, I am nonetheless curious
about the definition of subjectivity as determined by "an irreducible
'other', the not-I that defines me for myself." In the passage below,
Davies shows Levinas' similarities to structuralist accounts of
subjectivity, but I am also reminded of Hegel's subject as "negatively
determined". So I have a couple of questions here in regards to
subjectivity: 1) is Levinas' account similar to Hegel's? 2) How does it
differ from the structuralists? 3) If Foucault (in his archaeological and
genealogical periods) is attempting to displace the subject as primary,
through a suspicion of the givenness of conscious experience, wouldn't he
also reject this notion of the subject as defined by the "not-I" as an
external abstraction?
sean
>"The Jewish philosopher Emanuel Levinas has written of the possibility of
>an 'humanisme de l'autre homme', a concept and practice of the human that
>proceeds not -- like Descartes' self-contemplative 'I' or Kant's
>transcendental subjectivity -- from a primary centered ego reaching out to
>know and seize the world, but from an irreducible 'other', the not-I that
>defines me for myself. Levinas retraces here the gestures of those
>structural and post-humanist thinkers like Saussure, Levi-Strauss,
>Foucault, and the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, for whom the speaking,
>conscious 'I' is always provisional and secondary to the orders of
>language and social meaning within which it constructs itself. But his
>writing, though refreshingly free of the complacent philanthropic piety of
>much contemporary humanism, retains an ethical register denied to those
>for whom the human is simply an effect of structure or discourse. Humanity
>is neither an essence nor an end, but a continuous and precarious process
>of becoming human, a process that entails the inescapable recognition that
>our humanity is on loan from others, to precisely the extent that we
>acknowledge it in them." (Davies, 132)
>
>
>Nathan
>and the possibilities of reading him next to Foucault's work. This would
>also prove fertile ground for some of the recent discussion of humanism
>and antihumanism on this list. Allow me to quote again from Tony Davies'
>book that I mentioned in an earlier post. This deserves more exploration,
>and if anyone knows of any insightful works on Foucault and Levinas,
>please mention them.
This comparison of Levinas to Foucault is interesting. Although I am not
familiar with Levinas' work, nor Davies' book, I am nonetheless curious
about the definition of subjectivity as determined by "an irreducible
'other', the not-I that defines me for myself." In the passage below,
Davies shows Levinas' similarities to structuralist accounts of
subjectivity, but I am also reminded of Hegel's subject as "negatively
determined". So I have a couple of questions here in regards to
subjectivity: 1) is Levinas' account similar to Hegel's? 2) How does it
differ from the structuralists? 3) If Foucault (in his archaeological and
genealogical periods) is attempting to displace the subject as primary,
through a suspicion of the givenness of conscious experience, wouldn't he
also reject this notion of the subject as defined by the "not-I" as an
external abstraction?
sean
>"The Jewish philosopher Emanuel Levinas has written of the possibility of
>an 'humanisme de l'autre homme', a concept and practice of the human that
>proceeds not -- like Descartes' self-contemplative 'I' or Kant's
>transcendental subjectivity -- from a primary centered ego reaching out to
>know and seize the world, but from an irreducible 'other', the not-I that
>defines me for myself. Levinas retraces here the gestures of those
>structural and post-humanist thinkers like Saussure, Levi-Strauss,
>Foucault, and the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, for whom the speaking,
>conscious 'I' is always provisional and secondary to the orders of
>language and social meaning within which it constructs itself. But his
>writing, though refreshingly free of the complacent philanthropic piety of
>much contemporary humanism, retains an ethical register denied to those
>for whom the human is simply an effect of structure or discourse. Humanity
>is neither an essence nor an end, but a continuous and precarious process
>of becoming human, a process that entails the inescapable recognition that
>our humanity is on loan from others, to precisely the extent that we
>acknowledge it in them." (Davies, 132)
>
>
>Nathan