Alterity and Transcendence

Rating:
Summary: A Systematic Search for Values
Review: When I bought this book, I was attempting to catch the crest of a wave in philosophy, expecting a lot of mental activity in the wake of the death of Levinas (1906-1995) to help put my frame of values within the scope of current thought. But I'm more of a modern fragmentist~thinking through expectations is a realm of impossibilities, and not just for me. I had previously struggled with his TOTALITY AND INFINITY, which pits the urge to control multiplicty by having a system that defines a totality against the limitless possibilities offered by multiplicity itself. A reader may find that effort like a good game of chess: being able to visualize a strategy for winning keeps the sense of involvement high, but any attempt to be more involved than Levinas would obviously be a strain. When ALTERITY & TRANSCENDENCE becomes available in paperback, it might be a better guide for those who would like to see what values Levinas was pursuing. I could confine myself to a single page (177) in an interview published in 1985 for my efforts to comprehend the complexity of his answer to the idea, "To religion would belong the task of consolation, not of demonstration." Levinas took the opportunity to demonstrate the existence of an even greater evil. "The seducer knows all the ploys of language and all its ambiguities. . . . The most dangerous of seducers is the one who carries you away with pious words to violence and contempt for the other man." Instead of trying to create a clear distinction between religion and philosophy, Levinas showed an awareness of the ways of this world, where any dialectic is capable of being a threat to human freedom when it declares war on that for which it expresses disapproval. This is theology when it involves "the voice and 'accent' of God in the Scriptures themselves." As a modern fragmentist, I have hopelessly confused what is actually written there, but that tendency is as strong as the urge to associate The Beach Boys with songs about surfing.