Time and the Other

by Emmanuel Levinas, Richard A. Cohen (Translator)

Time and the Other contains a series of essays presented as a series of lectures in 1946—47 at the College Philosophique in Paris, along with additional essays dealing with the themes of time, sociality and ethics. This work represents, along with Existence and Existents (1947), the first formulation of Emmanuel Levinas's own philosophy, later more fully developed in Totality and Infinity (1961) and Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974).

Beginning with an analysis of existence without existents, Time and the Other then describes the origination of the subject, and moves through its encounter with another person. It is in this encounter rather than in the world that Levinas discovers time in its full sense. The progression of Levinas's phenomenology moves towards alterity, not toward totality. Levinas connects the alterity of the Other with temporality; the Other who is encountered is not contemporary, not met "at the same time." The time of the Other disrupts or interrupts the self's own temporality.

This is essential reading for all those interested in Levinas, and an excellent starting point for understanding the nature of Levinas's philosophical project and thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, France, Theory, Psychoanalysis, Metaphysics, French Literature

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Emanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French orthography as Emmanuel Levinas) received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani", whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life.

Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.

According to his obituary in New York Times,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]

After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy.

Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.

In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".

Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.

In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintai

Reviews

[Pavelas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Levinas pripažino, kad kiekvieno žmogaus egzistencija yra atskira - neįmanoma gyventi svetimo gyvenimo. Tačiau jis nepritarė Heideggeriui, kurio filosofijoje nėra vietos artimiems žmonių santykiams. Skirtingai nei Heideggeris, Levinas žiūrėjo į Kitą ne kaip į grėsmę, bet kaip į didžiąją paslaptį.

Kadangi knygoje yra surašytos kelios Levino skaitytos paskaitos, dėstymas gana lakoniškas. Pasirodė, kad ne visos mintys suprantamai išplėtotos. Tačiau ši plona knyga puikiai padeda nuspręsti, ar verta toliau gilintis į Levino filosofiją. Pavyzdžiui, aš supratau, kad gilintis noriu.

Patiko ši citata apie tėvystę (57 p.): “Kaip aš galiu tapti kitu sau? Tai gali nutikti tik vienu būdu - per tėvystę. Tėvystė yra santykis su svetimu, kuris būdamas visiškai Kitu, yra manimi; tai mano santykis su manimi pačiu...”

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

All thee essays in this collection already gesture towards a beyond of phenomenology to the idea of the Infinite as anterior to intentional consciousness' thematization/presentification of it. The first essay is a contraction of the ideas that will be developed further in Totality and Infinity. The second and the third essays deal with a dimension of time (the face of the Other) that delivers the existent from its obsessive compulsion to repeat the present. There is the past that can never be made present because it is always already primordial (transcendental?). But this transcendental only emerges, is only concretized with the emergence of existents out of the maelstrom of forces in which nothing ever begins nor ends--the anonymous and insomniac "There Is" (pure existing). Atheism isn't a fall from grace. It is a positive ontological accomplishment of the existent or the I. Enjoyment, always solitary, is on its own neither good nor evil. Withdrawn from the insomniac vigilance of pure existing, we are all atheists. What does this mean? It means we can fall asleep.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential text, marking the transition from Levinas' early thought to that of Totality and Infinity,.

The titular lecture series is a rich, if not at times rushed (that is, further explication and examination, which is often offered in his other scattered texts, would greatly enhance the expression of the thought), consideration of the emergence of consciousness in the hypostasis of existence, moving towards the emergence of time in the exposure to alterity, to what remains inassimilable to the powers and dominion of the self-same. This exposure is evinced in death (which marks the abyssal grounds of sociality) - a mortality which is never "my own," as Heidegger attests, but is always other than anything proper to the subject, to me. Death marks the interruption and the displacement of hypostatic subjectivity, which is brought infinitely into question by this alterity. And this alterity, in its infinite approach, is traced in the face of the other, of every other, which thus leads the subject beyond the circuit of its departure and return, towards the infinity of the radical outside in the moment of desire.

Cohen has also added translations of two later essays to supplement the lecture series. "Diachrony and Representation" offers insight into the non-simultaneity of the diachronous dimension of time - a time radically incomensurable with the tripartite temporality of the subject. This other time is linked, in its anteriority beyond memory and the coming of a futurity which never arrives in the present, to the irrepresentable trace which the other exposes to us, and exposes us to, in the proximity of the visage. "The Old and the New," on the other hand, covers the senses of history and consciousness in the ancient and modern senses of the relation between these eponymous conceptions, before turning to Bergson (and beyond him) in attempts at thinking a novelty which cannot be foreseen , approaching from an anteriority so terrifyingly ancient that the concepts of the old and the new must be re-invented - that is, must be opened again, otherwise, in order to allow in a wind or breath from the outside, from the desert. Less a re-invention of the other than a (re-)invention for> the other, in response to the infinite responsibility we bear in hospitality older than ourselves, than our subjectivity or being-subject, and yet more novel than any welcoming that the world has yet seen.

This short text is a necessary read, and the brevity grants much space for further reflection and explication on our part. Levinas has opened the way for a thought, proposed a questioning to be thought, rather than answering for and to that to which an answer would only preclude and foreclose any thoughtful relation.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emmanuel Levinas is at the same time “too well and too little known, too often schematized and too rarely understood adequately,” in the words of one commentator. His work is “the postmodern ethics” postmodernism, apparently, so desperately needed—his reduction of subjectivity to responsibility the ostensible solution, proposed without recourse to morality based in metaphysics or the theistic God, to the ostensible indifference to ethical questions in a postmodern era. Yet despite the importance attached to Levinas by postmodern philosophers, disenchanted ethicists, and Jewish scholars, Levinas remains relatively obscure to the wider philosophical community. In my own experience, most of my philosophy professors had only heard of Levinas, and only three truly understood and drew upon his work in their research. On the one hand, this makes the study of Levinas feel like an intellectual adventure, one in which hyperbolic rhetoric, provocative philosophical ideas, and misinterpretations abound. Mere comprehension of his sometimes preposterously difficulty prose marks a praiseworthy achievement. On the other hand, it also makes the study of Levinas a rather lonesome endeavor without an appropriate mentor, and, if one happens to think that our decadent postmodern world truly needs Levinas, somewhat bleak. Without Derrida, who will take up the cause? Where can one look for inspiration with respect to this transformative, and necessary, postmodern thinker?

Of course, there are many philosophers who devote much of their research to Levinasian scholarship. Ever since his death in 1995, Levinas’s work has attracted more and more attention outside of France and even beyond continental philosophy. Time and the Other, one of Levinas’s first notable works prior to 1961’s monumental Totality and Infinity, has received less attention, however, than his mature philosophical projects. If Totality and Infinity forever transformed the landscape of postmodernism’s approach to ethics—indeed, carved out a place for ethics in postmodernism—Time and the Other established the foundations for Levinas’s notion of primordial responsibility manifest in the face-to-face encounter. Without these series of lectures, in which Levinas moves step by step from anonymous existence to hypostasis, from hypostasis to solitude, from solitude to enjoyment, from enjoyment to death, from death as other to the other person as wholly Other—the reduction of subjectivity to responsibility for the Other achieved in Totality and Infinity would have been impossible. So, from a historical perspective, Time and the Other is a seminal text.

Yet it is so much more than that as well. On its own terms, Time and the Other represents a revolutionary description of temporality that upends our traditional idea about time as a succession of instants without duration, with a past and future that we can make present to consciousness via memory (for the past) and via anticipation (for the future). For Levinas, this classical notion of time, first made famous by Aristotle, fails to preserve the pure alterity of time. In his own terms, it reduces what is Other to the Same, a reduction that Levinas made it his mission to call out in all his works spread across his entire philosophical career. Time, Levinas insists, is radically not me and positively other than me. Recollection (in reflection on the past) and expectation (in anticipation of the future) re-present time, simultaneously, to the self, and in representation strip time as such of its exteriority or alterity. While Levinas accepts the classical tradition’s central tenet that time breaks up reality into the dimensions of past, present, and future, he does not seek to reunite this break-up which, when accomplished in representational time, merely constitutes a derivation from the primordial time that Levinas seeks to describe. In other words, we do represent pasts and futures to ourselves in our everyday, ordinary existence, yet this by no means substantiates the formal, linear view of time as the fundamental way in which we should understand temporality. Primordial time, Levinas claims, is “older” and “more original” than ordinary or world-time (to use Heideggerian terms), and is “that from which scientific [i.e. linear or formal] time would be derived and abstracted.”

Levinas’s temporality also juxtaposes the ecstatic temporality posited by Martin Heidegger, his teacher for some time, whose Dasein analytic Levinas found too solipsistic and insufficiently other. On the one hand, both Levinas and Heidegger put forth notions of temporality in which “past” and “future” are past and futural in a non-successive sense (thus in contrast to the classical conception of time), insofar as both thinkers call attention to a past that was never present and a future that never will be present. For Heidegger, the never-present past is associated with Dasein’s facticity and attunement, its already-in-the-world-ness, whereas the never-will-be-present future is associated with Dasein’s existence and projection, its ahead-of-itself-ness (and, perhaps most importantly, in relation to existential death encountered in anxiety). For (the later) Levinas, the never-present past is associated with an “ancient” responsibility to the other person that was never justified or contracted in a “prior,” ontic present, and the never-will-be-present future is associated with that same responsibility manifest in the face-to-face encounter with the Other, a responsibility that I as subject can never fulfill or cast off. I never became and can never have become responsible, since I am always already responsible and never, down the road, finished with responsibility.

In Time and the Other, an early work wherein Levinas is most concerned with the radical alterity of the Other (and thus of time, which is Other), he prioritizes this futural aspect of time; time is “a relationship with a future that escapes presence absolutely, the Other’s future.” He does not yet couch this relationship with the other person as responsibility or even as inherently ethical, an idea he first introduces in Totality and Infinity. In this earlier work, Levinas must, in response to Heidegger, take a necessary detour via the subject’s relationship to death, which Levinas characterizes as a “mystery,” an “unknown,” the “limit of possibility,” and in fact “a unique relationship with the future.” Death marks the end of our ability as subjects to continue our relationship with the world in terms of enjoyment and mastery, since death is the end of experience. The approach of death therefore indicates that when confronted with death, we are confronted with the Other, or pure alterity. Yet for Levinas—and this is a crucial point at which he departs from Heidegger—the subject cannot preserve her subjectivity in the face of death. Death “crush[es] subjectivity itself,” and insofar as it threatens to obliterate the self, the subject cannot escape its materiality (the material facticity of its existence, which is burdensome in solitude) in relationship to death. In the words of translator Richard Cohen, the relationship with the futurity of death is a “relative rather than an absolute escape from the immanence of subjectivity.” The time of representation and the primordial, ecstatic time Heidegger describes in Being and Time are thus insufficient in different, yet equally important ways. Only time constituted by the subject’s relationship with the other person adequately preserves the alterity of the future yet does not shatter or subsume the subjectivity of the subject. In a later work, Levinas even claims that the other person individuates the subject in a way that death cannot.

The Duquesne University Press publication of Time and the Other includes two important essays, “Diachrony and Representation” and “The Old and the New,” both published in the 1980s, in which Levinas expounds upon the temporality he first posits in Time and the Other. In many respects, these essays echo ideas most boldly asserted in Levinas’s second major work, Otherwise Than Being, Or Beyond Essence, insofar as they focus almost exclusively on the past-ness of responsibility, a phenomenon Levinas had by his later career come to associate with subjectivity itself, and the potentiality for the divine in the encounter with the other person. While it is impossible to explicate these essays to any satisfactory extent here on account of their complexity and the exotic nature of their claims, it suffices to say that by his later career Levinas had transitioned from an emphasis on the radical alterity of the Other to an emphasis “on the effect of that alterity on the subjectivity of the subject,” in the words of Richard Cohen. Responsibility had become synonymous with subjectivity, so much so that one can say that Levinas seeks to reduce subjectivity to responsibility to the Other. Still, temporality holds the key to responsibility, since responsibility is structured by Levinas in terms of time. The past is characterized by an irrecusable responsibility, which imposes itself upon the subject and manifests in the ethical plea, a command, from the other person in the face-to-face. The future, likewise, comes to be associated with the death of the other person, for which I as subject am responsible, even beyond my death. “Responsibility for the Other’s death,” Levinas writes in “Diachrony and Representation,” constitutes a relationship (and Levinas admittedly shudders at the inappropriateness of this conceptual term) with “a future beyond what happens to me, beyond what, for [me], is to-come.”

In these essays, it is clear that Levinas has arrived at the end of the possibilities for language to explain his phenomenological project. When he moves into even more complicated unthematizable material, such as the rupture of the super-natural in the command issued by the other person, and thus the manifestation of a God who “comes to the idea” yet is not an idea, a God who is not and thus cannot be thematized, a God beyond metaphysics, Levinas moves ever further from philosophy as we know it and ever closer to religion. He reaches the post-metaphysical, post-traditional horizon of philosophical thought in an effort to name a transcendent God who surpasses atheism and the death of God, who, in fact, is unexposed to the denials of atheism whatsoever. For some readers, this is what makes Levinas so important in a postmodern world that has witnessed the death of God and, in response, has either retreated from religiosity altogether or embraced, in bad faith, debunked metaphysics. Neither response seems desirable, and Levinas, perhaps, offers an alternative theology that posits a God witnessed in responsibility and in love of the other person, a God about whom “it is impossible to preach” and yet who can, perhaps, radically transform the way we live our lives.

[Miloš · Rating 5 out of 5]

okej, što sam bio bliži kraju čitanja, to mi je levinas bio manje nazočan, makar ono o očinstvu gde je subjekt - otac kroz relaciju: očinstvo - plodnost- plod pretvoren sebi sam u "drugo", gde je dete stranac - drugo, ali je opet JA - "Ja nemam moje dete; ja, na izvestan način, jesam svoje dete". i uopšte pričanje priče o "drugom" i "Smrti" jes malo zajebano za razumeti, jer je ovo delo preneseno sa predavanja, dakle iz jednog jezika u drugi, i kontam da su ti koji su ga slušali '48., bili malo upućeniji u huserlovsku fenomenologiju i hajdegerovsku ontologiju i merlo-ponti-sartrovski egzistencijalizam, i sve te uticaje prepoznavali, ta sitna gaženja po pristima "starih" učitelja;

ovo čitanje me reminisciralo na čitanje vidljivog i nevidljivog merla pontija; neke stvari uhvatim, neke ne, a one koje uhvatim, privučem ih na svetlo iz mraka, tako ih oneobičim svojim slabim znanjem i dubokim neznanjem, da se u svemu prepoznajem, to je tako lipo iskrivljavanje, divno prevođenje filosofskog diskursa u mene - neki moj unuturanji govor, u tu neku moju mogućnost "prikupljanja", "selektovanja", "čitanja", "tumačenja" koja dakako ima slabe poveznice sa samim filozofom, njegovim delom, smislom intendiranim u delo, itd...

levinas se poodosta osvrće i zagleda hajdegera, sa svih strana, ko komšinice što se zagledaju, ili koleginice, pa komentarišu koliko koja nosi šminku dugo već i koja koliko puta pere kosu, i kako masna kosa može biti proporcionalna antipatiji jedne prema drugoj;

i tako levinas zagledajući hajdegera, čije otastvo priznaje, obrće hajdegerovsku relaciju sein-a i seiende-a; bivstvovanja i bivstvujućeg; gde za razliku od prethodnika, levinas kaže da je egzistirajući uzrok egzistencije! "Egzistiranje ne egzistira! Egzistirajuče egzistira!

"Ja je neopozivo zakovano za samo sebe". (33)

[cerkesaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esminis dalykas, apie kūrį privaloma susimąstyti pirmą kartą susidūrus su Kantu, yra realybės sluoksnių klausimas. Kiek jų yra? Levinas, matyt, pritartų, jog du: yra egzistuojantysis ir jo egzistavimas; realybę tiesiog paprasčiau mąstyti, mąstant apie save.
Adrianas Lėverkiūnas romane Daktaras Fausas atsainiai išmeta skaitytojo atidumo reikalaujantį pastebėjimą: iš filosofijos perimdami posakį "pats savaime", gana greitai pradedame jį kaišioti bet kur, per daug nesukdami galvos dėl jo metafizinės prasmės. Ar nepamiršome, jog kiekvienas iš mūsų esame nepažinus daiktas pats savaime? Tik mūsų išorinis egzistavimas, ne mes patys kaip vidiniai egzistuojantieji esame prieinami Kito žvilgsniui ir tyrinėjimams. Levinas tarsi perspėja mus: idėja, jog vienatvę aptinkame visai ne santykio su Kitu stokoje, o šio santykio absurde - fenomeninės realybės nepakankamume vidinio aš, noumeninio aš begalinumui materializuoti - turėtų šiurpinti. Vienatvė čia įgauna absoliutų, ne santykinį; grynakraujo egzistencialisto įžvalgumo reikalaujantį svorį.
Tiesa, Levinas mus bando paguosti tardamas, jog kaip vidinė bedugnė esame ne vieninteliai. Neva Aš išsilaisvina iš savo vienatvės per Kito begalinumo supratimą. Autorius sako, jog Kito veidas tuo pat metu ir duoda, ir paslepia Kitą. Čia negalime neprisiminti Nietzschės: kai ilgai žiūri į bedugnę, bedugnė irgi žvelgia į tave. Šia prasme santykyje su Kitu negalime nebūti metafizinio realizmo šalininkais.
Levinas smogia ir antrą - galbūt net galingesnį - smūgį, teigdmas, jog laiką matuojame mums pilnai neprieinamo Kito atžvilgiu. Sunku nesutikti su mintimi, jog tai mes primetame išoriniam pasauliui laiko matą, ne jis mums (taip save siaubingai suvaržydami). Tačiau bandymas kovoti su absoliučia vienatve, Kitam suteikiant tokį svarbų vaidmenį - paverčiant jį mano būties liniuote - pernelyg moraliai sunkus, jog būtų galima lengvai juo patikėti. Tiesa, panašu toks ir yra autoriaus tikslas - įtikinti mus, jog atsakomybė prieš Kitą yra neišvengiama kiekvienam, susimąsčiusiam apie realybės gylį, kiekvienam, metusiam žvilgsnį į Kitą. Taip Emmanuelis, greičiausai bemąstydamas apie meilę, papildo Immanuelį, kurio pastaroji nedomino, - Kitas mums visada atsiveria kaip noumenas ir niekada kaip fenomenas, nors apie noumeniškumą nė velnio ir nenutuokiame.

[Sina · Rating 3 out of 5]

این ارائه‌های لویناس به شکل مجموعه‌سخنرانی‌هایی موجز، خصلتی مضمون در تحلیل‌های «اگزیستانسیالِ» او را آشکار می‌سازند؛ قسمی بی‌قیدی و دست‌‌گشودگی و آزادیِ عملِ برآمده از آن که دقیقن معلوم نیست چگونه و از کجا به او اعطا شده و خود را به صعب‌ترین شکل در امکان سبقت گرفتنِ موجود بر وجودش نشان می‌دهد؛ جایی که او می‌تواند به سهولت «من» را از «خود» تفکیک کند. به نظر می‌رسد با مطرح شدن تحلیلی اقنوم‌محور در بحث‌های لویناس، او بدون آنکه – بتواند– مستقیمن بر تمایز انتولوژیک خدشه‌ای وارد سازد، نوعیِ تعالیِ صوری را بر مفهومِ وجود غلبه می‌دهد. اما از سوی دیگر نخ تسبیحِ همه نسبت‌هایی که مطرح می‌شود، « دیگری» است، دیگری‌ای که در دیگر بودنش چنان دسترس‌ناپذیر می‌شود که با آیرونیِ سهمناکی به سولیپسیسمِ دهشتناکی فرو می‌افتیم. اشاره‌های مکرّر به آینده‌( آینده‌ی اصیل)، دیگریِ مطلقی که با مرگ، اروس‌ و پدرانگی « مصداق می‌یابد»، چون با الغای بی‌ سر و صدای مفهوم وجود همراه است نمی‌تواند با زمان‌مندیِ دازاین هیچ نسبتِ وثیقی برقرار کند و بدین‌ترتیب در قسمی بی‌بنیادیِ دلبخواهی رها می‌شود.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This early lecture series treats a lot of the same themes that are developed more fully almost two decades later in Totality and Infinity. Here, Levinas sets out from a more Heideggerian starting point of solitude and death as the paradigm cases for interiority and alterity. I think T&I develops these ideas more clearly (even though it is itself incredibly hard). It is useful to read his gloss of fecundity and paternity in the final section of this book, however, since it more clearly and concisely states the function of those concepts that become a bit overwrought in T&I. In short, I'd read Totality and Infinity first, and then read this short book to gain further clarity.

Another takeaway from this book: Levinas loves Shakespeare.

[nemėgstu filosofijos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Džiaugiamės Anthony Kiedis lietuviškomis šaknimis, džiaugiamės, jog Jason Sudeikis kartais pamini Lietuvą, džiaugiamės ir dėl Hanibalo Lekterio... O filosofijoje -- retas atvejis, kada galėtumėme palaikyti akademijos olimpines žaidynes, stebėti, kaip tautietis suvartys varžovą savo proto šviesa. Emmanuelis Levinas -- labai svarbi asmenybė filosofijos tradicijoje: savą filosofiją brandinęs greta Heideggerio bei Husserlio minčių, Levinas galiausiai tapo originaliu ateities filosofijos tėkmę itin pakeitusiu mąstytoju. Anot vertėjo, filosofo Viktoro Bachmetjevo: „Levinas sako, kad pirmoji filosofija yra etika, iš kurios išeina visi likę klausimai. Tai, kad po Antrojo pasaulinio karo, po Holokausto baisumų, kai atrodė, kad žmogaus gyvybė absoliučiai nuvertinta, radikaliai ir taip aštriai, sąmoningai teigti, kad etika ir moralė, visgi, yra svarbiausios, tai ir yra Levino stiprybė ir išskirtinumas“. Etika ši knyga, švelniai tariant, yra permėžta, tekstas garsiai byloja, kad turim atsisukti į Kitą, Kitu rūpintis bei suprasti, kad be Kito esame niekas, nors tas Kitas mums menkai besuprantamas. Filosofas yra parašęs nemažą kiekį tekstų, tačiau lietuviškai yra išleistos tik dvi jo knygos -- "Laikas ir Kitas" bei "Apie Dievą, ateinantį į mąstymą". Džiugu, kad leidykla Phi knygos po 17 metų pertraukos publikavo Levino žodžius lietuviškai, tačiau, filosofijos olimpiados ištroškusi širdelė nori vis daugiau.

[Niloufar Mazinani · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتابی درخشان با ترجمه‌ای درخشان از خانم سمیرا رشیدپور. مقدمه‌ی مترجم به خودی خود غنی و گیرا بود.
این سِیری که سوژه غربی طی کرده، هنگامی که به لویناس میرسد به مانند سوسوی ستارگان است که هنگامی که نور آن به چشم ما میرسد در واقع هیچ نسبتی با اکنونِ ما ندارد؛ نه به وقتِ ماست و نه در افق هم‌زمانی ما.
دیگری نیز اینگونه می‌آید و این ناهمزمانی سبب گسست میان خود و دیگریست. اما آن هنگام که دیگری آمد ، سوژه زاده میشود، زمان آغاز میشود و به مسئولیت‌پذیری در مقابل دیگری فراخوانده میشود. مسئولیتی اخلاقی. در واقع برای لویناس اخلاق مقدم بر وجود است(نقد به هایدگر)، به همین دلیل است که او فیلسوف اخلاق است. ایده این کتاب زمانی شکل گرفت که او در کمپ نازی‌ها بسرمیبرد.

بنابراین لویناس از «خود» فاصله میگیرد، سوژه با دیگری آغاز میشود، مرگ را نیز از طریق دیگری تجربه میکند، رنجی را معنادار میداند که مارا به دیگری پیوند دهد و آزادی نیز برای او اخلاقی است و از این منظر یک گام از سوژه‌ی خودمحور غربی فاصله میگیرد.

[Kas Molenaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ik heb geprobeerd een temporele transcendentie te vinden van een heden gericht op het mysterie van de toekomst." (62)

Eén van Levinas' eerste werken van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog, en daarmee ook dichter bij zijn filosofie. Een bundeling van vier lezingen, waarin Levinas de dialoog met de fenomenologie aangaat, waar gedacht wordt vanuit de eenzaamheid, slapeloosheid, confrontatie met de dood, de Ander, de Eros en het vaderschap.

Levinas leest ingewikkeld, maar het staat vol goede intuïties en prachtige citaten. De eerste drie lezingen zijn geweldig. In de vierde lezing slaat Levinas een pad in dat ik niet helemaal kan volgen vanwege de structuur en bepaalde bepaling, maar desalniettemin zou ik iedereen geïnteresseerd in Levinas en/of de fenomenologie dit werk van harte aanbevelen.

[Deniz · Rating 3 out of 5]

"İlksel zamanın kökeni itibariyle bir ekstaz olduğu düşünülebilir, sonra tutar kendimize bir saat satın alırız; varoluş çıplaktır çıplak olmasına ya, yine de mümkün mertebe usulünce giyinmek icap eder. Ve endişe hakkında bir kitap yazınca bu kitap birileri için yazılmıştır, kaleme alınışından yayımlanışına dek tüm aşamalar katedilir ve bu arada bazen de bir endişe tüccarı gibi davranılır. İdam mahkumu son yolculuğu esnasında kılığına kıyafetine çeki düzen verir, son bir sigarayı kabul eder ve kurşunlanmadan önce anlamlı bir iki laf eder."

[H. Isikgun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levinas düşüncelerinin ifadesini gerçekten çok yalın bir şekilde aktarmayı başarmış. Burada çevirinin de hakkını vermek gerekiyor tabi. Zaman ve özneye felsefe açısından, varlıksal açıdan ayrı bir boyut kazandırıyor ve okuyup birlikte düşünmeye teşvik ediyor.

[Stephen Antczak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has a few interesting ideas when it actually makes sense, but this one of those philosophy books where the writing seems to be intentionally and overly difficult in order to obscure what is being said as much as possible. I read it for a class.

[Catarina Stella · Rating 4 out of 5]

a more complex but also more fascinating Sartre , it did change my philosophical mind

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nach der dritten Lektüre sind die fünf Sterne doch mal angebracht!

[Guillaume Sionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time and the Other, the two fears of Man. Enough said.

[Yahya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levinas'tan okuduğum ikinci kitap oldu. Kitabı Levinas felsefesine temel bir giriş kitabı gibi düşünebiliriz. Temel olarak varlık, zaman, başka ve ölüm kavramları üzerine dönen bir metin. Metni daha iyi anlayabilmek için Heidegger'in Varlık ve Zaman kitabına biraz hakim olmak lazım. Çünkü onun felsefesine bol bol atıf var. Kitap yüz sayfa ama zaten bunun yarısı Zeynep Direk'in sunuşundan oluşuyor. Sunuş asıl metni yorumluyor. Onun için orayı atlayıp metni okuduktan sonra sunuşu okudum ben. Bir metnin açıklamalarını metinden önce okumak bana mantıklı gelmedi hiçbir zaman. Zaten kendisi de bunu tavsiye ediyor.
Benim okuma amacım aslında iki farklı nedene dayanıyor. Birincisi Başka kavramına Lacan'dan farklı olarak nasıl baktığı. İkincisi ise Zaman kavramına Bergson'dan farklı olarak nasıl baktığı. Ama temelde Lacan okumalarımı bir ağaca benzetirsem Levinas okumalarım da onun yan dalları gibi bir okuma sayılır. Aslında Lacan'ı temelde daha iyi anlayabilmek için hepsi.
"Zaman, önceden mevcut bir ebediyete gömülü değildir; zamanı ebediyetten söküp almayız. O mutlak olarak başka ve yenidir. Zamanın gerçekliğinin kendisi, geleceğin eşdeğerini şimdide bulmanın mutlak imkânsızlığı, geleceği ele geçirmekten yoksunluk böyle anlaşılabilir."
"Başka ile ilişki, başkanın yokluğudur; saf ve basit bir yokluk değil, saf hiçliğin yokluğu değil, bir gelecek ufkundaki yokluk, zaman olan bir yokluktur."

[Shahed · Rating 4 out of 5]

از مقدمهٔ مترجم:
«رنج از نظر لویناس همانا حقیقتِ بودن است. امکان هیچ گریز و عقب‌نشینی از آن وجود ندارد». ص. ۲۳

دردهای جانکاه یکی از دگردیسی‌های رخت‌هایم است. والت ویتمن؛ سرود خویشتن؛ بند ۳۳؛ ترجمه شاهد حسینی

از پانویس اُبژه و طرح. ص. ۵۲:

از سوی دیگر به تدریج روشن شد که تکثرگرایی‌ای لویناس و دیگر متفکران با خوش‌بینی تمام به عنوان برگ برنده در مقابل ایدهٔ «کلیت» هگلی رو می‌کردند چگونه در نیمهٔ دوم همان قرن بیستم به نوعی خواهش نسبی‌گرایانه ختم شد که بر خلاف دلالت‌های درخشان و رادیکال اولیه‌اش که باید در راستای خروج از کلیت، تأکید بر تفاوت و ضربه وارد کردن به صلبیت «کل» عمل می‌کرد، عملاً نه‌تنها هیچ ضربهٔ محکم و شکافنده‌ای به «کل» وارد نکرد بلکه به یک معنا، خود در نسخهٔ بازسازی‌شده‌ای از همان «کلیت» جذب شد.

اِروس؛ ص. ۱۱۰

عشق یک امکان نیست، عشق ناشی از ابتکار عمل ما نیست، عشق بی‌دلیل است، بر ما مستولی می‌شود و به ما لطمه می‌زدن و با این حال من (je) در عشق زنده می‌ماند.

از یادداشت‌های نویسنده؛ ص. ۱۱۸

آن‌گونه که ژان وال می‌گوید مرگ نزد هایدگر «ناممکن بودنِ امکان یا امتناعِ امکان» نیست، بلکه «امکانِ ناممکن بودن یا امکانِ امتناع» است. این تمایز که ظاهراً مربوط به دوزهٔ بیزانس است، اهمیتی اساسی دارد.

[J.S Tiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

As frustrating as reading this was, and as difficult it is to reconcile with my own metaphysical beliefs, Levinas' musings on the Other made me reconsider my own perception of myself in relation to the rest of the world around me quite a bit. I am really not cut for philosophy other than very specific branches of it like political and religious philosophy or structuralism and post-structuralism, but getting about, uh, I'd say a decent half of this text and reflecting on my own opinions on and responses towards it was, honestly, extremely rewarding.

But also please free me from my philosophy class holy fuck I do not want to read anything philosophical any longer please release me save me from this prison

[Melker Epstein]

"l’inconnu de la mort signifie que la relation même avec la mort ne peut se faire dans la lumière; que le sujet est en relation avec ce qui ne vient pas de lui."

This book is about light and loneliness and how that which you cannot know appears infinite when you try to think about it. Then it is about encountering something which cannot be experienced or enjoyed and about how this shatters the loneliness and the light and the subject. Ethics, for Levinas, is to remain oneself at this point and answer for the other who remains infinite because you remain yourself. It is not about being so close to the other that reality turns inside out and you lose the person you were and cannot / couldn't find your way back.

[FOCUSOT💡 · Rating 5 out of 5]

列维纳斯最好读的一本。是存在主义之后，最打动我而不只是被用来补充认知的一个流派，看到中间会频频站起来平复心情，因为在他的理论里，列维纳斯留下了神秘的领地，而且又把这领地与“他人”相连。

书中对海德格尔哲学的评价是“男子气概的”，主体有一股面向虚无后对存在的掌控力，而列维纳斯逆向而行，留下这样一个“不可知”之地——无实存的实存/il y a /将来。列维纳斯的理论当然是有创造力和颠覆性的，但最喜欢的一点是，这种创造力是出于他性格本身的谦逊：他对所知和不可知都没有任何敌意，都带有敬意，有种与世界、自我平和相处的感觉，而且他抛弃了“光”带来的满足感和征服欲，回到一个平视他人与万物的状态。他也不同意精神高于物质，或物质高于精神的论断，大概意思是：“如果这些都为我们所有，为什么我们不能接受它们呢？”

很难准确描述他的人格给他的哲学带来的独特魅力，就好像他和佛教文化有些不完全一致的共通之处，可能直接引用非常喜欢的话会更清晰些：

“当人们认识到‘我’还不是一个原初的实存者，而是实存的模式本身，准确地说，它还不实存的时候，上面那种矛盾对立（存在与虚无）就消失了。”

但还不实存并没有给他带来危机感，因为：

“虽然存在是赤裸的，但我们仍然要体面地穿着。”

———

而在这对物质世界、对这世界中孤独的自我的双重认清与接受中，他仍然给出一种在实存的寂静里保存自我的方式：

所有可能性都不再可能，人们不再能有所能，但在和我们完全不可把握的他人面对面时，自我却得以留存，由此我们终于在对立和征服的方法之外，“战胜”了死亡。

———

遗憾是，最后并不喜欢他将这种在实存中保留自我的做法完全归为“男性和女性、二元的、爱欲的、父与子之间的”，如果我们能推及传统爱欲关系之外的更多人多好啊。

[Ayush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levinas throws open, in this important work, many routes to approach both the problem of consciousness (and alterity) and the phenomenology of time. He argues that radical alterity is possible not within the phenomenology of time as it occurs to an existent, but in the very schema or temporal order that gives rise to the existent from anonymous existence.

The lecture format keeps at bay the condensation of language enough for it to be a primer on Levinas' philosophy of time. The translator's commentary is quite insightful as well.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The modern is not, to be sure, the end of everything unknown, but an epoch where the unknown to be discovered can no longer surprise thought with its new alterity. Thought is already fully conscious of itself and of all the dimensions of what is reasonable in reality. For thought, everything is consummated.”

“the absolute foreignness of an unassumable alterity is refractory to its assimilation into presence, is foreign to the apperception of the "I think" that always assumes what strikes it by representing it.”

[Steven Berbec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time opens up sociality. Moves to transcend toward the infinity of the "wholey other." It is a portal, a kind of detour in ones being toward another's—an ethical adventure. The distance in time is a practice of proximity. The proximity of the alterity of the other. Alterity is time interrupting reality and being, overwhelms, excites being to infuse it with a responsibility beyond ones capacities.

Will we make the time for Time?

[Mha]

فلسفة حول الزمن والآخر على ما يبدو

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[Riccardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

"La morte non è mai adesso."

Testo importante soprattutto perché introduce i temi della maturità di Levinas. Resta tuttavia piuttosto impenetrabile, concettualmente densissimo, forse perché trascrizione di quattro conferenze tenute dal filosofo a inizio carriera.

[Cony Baby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too ontological

[Luca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grazie, Emmanuel, ma continuerò a usare il guanto.

[Bram Schwartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vivid, evocative, even intimate.