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LEVINAS: Philosophical Reflections
While some philosophers taught that the basis of ethics should be the “moral law resulting from rational will” (Kant), or “the ideal moral life” (Aristotle), or a “supremely perfect God” (Descartes), Levinas seems to suggest that the basis of ethics is “my encounter with the Other.” His ethical theory is found primarily on the "face to face" encounter with "the Other". His idea of “the Other,” refers to a person who is alien, different, and unknown --- one who has not yet been encountered. Levinas explains how one’s encounter with “the Other” allows humans to be opened (not dominated) and accessible (not isolated) thru the face of “the Other” and its alterity, Infinity and fraternity.
21 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 22, 2025
SOCIAL MEDIA AND SELF-DISCLOSURE:
Our Goodreads friends are living, breathing human beings - just like us: and we can reestablish our living, breathing selves by not conveniently opting out into what Levinas terms Invisibility.
Modern social media gives us that convenient option. Of friending the others in our lives and so assimilating them electronically. Emmanuel Levinas would say that by doing so we are lying. To ourselves and to them.
He says the only way to uncover authenticity is through making ourselves as fully visible as we can to them. The only way we communicate with the Other in a Real way is through personal disclosure.
That hurts. And it’s next to impossible here on social media. So we do it till it hurts some more!
The growing invisibility of our electronic prevarications is doing more than hiding Our lies. It’s hiding the Ultimate Lies of life. Pretty soon we’re going to be robotic yes-men, if we continue.
Teachers like Jesus and Buddha told us to uncover the Ultimate Lies if we want a chance at Real Life. We’re ignoring them.
Big Lies, but Bigger Promises! They’re the carrots dangling from sticks we don’t Need.
It’s a fact we sometimes miss in this relentlessly objective world - a product-and-consumer-driven world with little time or patience with the incredible richness of our shared, but buried, cultural heritage - AND the inner lives of Other People!
We moderns are missing out.
There is a RICHNESS on the periphery of the Actual. Something that’s missing in the multiple punning and antagonistic empty chatter of the social media.
It’s as if T.S. Eliot could foresee our endless modern media feed when he wrote a century ago...
These with a thousand chilled deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Multiply variety in a wilderness of mirrors.
But, you know, the Real is Out There:
The lines on our family’s faces speak of mortal enemies faced, and Conquered, and worlds of gnawing anxieties put to rest...
The abrupt pauses in our close friends’ stories of their own distant memories contain vast Volumes of Unvisited Territory...
But our pop culture is a tight little island of SAMENESS. And conflict.
Cet unanime blanc conflit
D’une guirlande avec la même...
That’s where we are now.
Otherness is a No-No, and the Other in modernity is the Enemy. The outsider must remain an assimilated stranger. Speaking our minds is politically incorrect. Desultory thoughts are a sign of dementia, not of honest searching.
There’s RICHNESS in the Others around us!
Thank goodness for our books. Books celebrate our Otherness - or Alterity, as Emmanuel Levinas calls it. In books we learn about the Real, Living Life we all aspire to.
They are an escape from this trite single dimension - and they are our teachers!
No wonder Hitler burned books.
Modern societies repress our own sacred individuality - our Otherness. What exactly are they so scared of?
Themselves. Or their own Shadow. Their Lies.
So they continue like rapid transit bullets “on the metalled rails of appetency.” They try to Contain it all in a prison of mediocrity. Ever wonder why the buildings in our cities are so repressively impersonal? That’s Sameness to a T.
Sameness is the new chic. Sameness is minimal and modern. And Sameness CHUCKLES KNOWINGLY at individualism.
So WE have to have to start somewhere anew. In that great book, Thank You for being Late, the author says we have to throw our personal preferences onto public platforms - to Teach the Machine.
That’s what we’re doing here on GR. Making our books Personal Statements of Who Are, Machine or no Machine.
We can ALTER cyber reality. Because the Machine takes note of our words. So why not make our words, our gripes, our enthusiasms a More Personal, and hence Real, component of the Machine’s language.
Sameness is driven by fear.
A fear manufactured by a mere projection. But we authentic Others don’t really care about all that. We rather LIKE our cozy, inquisitive, outside-the-box lives, thanks very much!
No, quite frankly, we’d rather explore all possible imaginary AND REAL worlds on this planet in our books - than be swallowed up in the Big Bright Pleasure Machine of Sameness.
True Nondual Authenticity is the Grand Prize of life.
If you value the Authentic at all, this small and inexpensive book will give you some key concepts to ground your own personal Quest, and give you a warm feeling that the Machine is malleable. This book will make his game obvious, and hence subject to amendment.
In this we are more than conquerors... And the Machine, too, in time may become concerned by the state of our sensitive souls!
Cause the Real Universe - far beyond the little dreams and schemes of our friend, the tight-minded Machine, safely wrapped up in its present homogenized Sameness - will ALWAYS EMBRACE our DIFFERENCES!
Our Goodreads friends are living, breathing human beings - just like us: and we can reestablish our living, breathing selves by not conveniently opting out into what Levinas terms Invisibility.
Modern social media gives us that convenient option. Of friending the others in our lives and so assimilating them electronically. Emmanuel Levinas would say that by doing so we are lying. To ourselves and to them.
He says the only way to uncover authenticity is through making ourselves as fully visible as we can to them. The only way we communicate with the Other in a Real way is through personal disclosure.
That hurts. And it’s next to impossible here on social media. So we do it till it hurts some more!
The growing invisibility of our electronic prevarications is doing more than hiding Our lies. It’s hiding the Ultimate Lies of life. Pretty soon we’re going to be robotic yes-men, if we continue.
Teachers like Jesus and Buddha told us to uncover the Ultimate Lies if we want a chance at Real Life. We’re ignoring them.
Big Lies, but Bigger Promises! They’re the carrots dangling from sticks we don’t Need.
It’s a fact we sometimes miss in this relentlessly objective world - a product-and-consumer-driven world with little time or patience with the incredible richness of our shared, but buried, cultural heritage - AND the inner lives of Other People!
We moderns are missing out.
There is a RICHNESS on the periphery of the Actual. Something that’s missing in the multiple punning and antagonistic empty chatter of the social media.
It’s as if T.S. Eliot could foresee our endless modern media feed when he wrote a century ago...
These with a thousand chilled deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Multiply variety in a wilderness of mirrors.
But, you know, the Real is Out There:
The lines on our family’s faces speak of mortal enemies faced, and Conquered, and worlds of gnawing anxieties put to rest...
The abrupt pauses in our close friends’ stories of their own distant memories contain vast Volumes of Unvisited Territory...
But our pop culture is a tight little island of SAMENESS. And conflict.
Cet unanime blanc conflit
D’une guirlande avec la même...
That’s where we are now.
Otherness is a No-No, and the Other in modernity is the Enemy. The outsider must remain an assimilated stranger. Speaking our minds is politically incorrect. Desultory thoughts are a sign of dementia, not of honest searching.
There’s RICHNESS in the Others around us!
Thank goodness for our books. Books celebrate our Otherness - or Alterity, as Emmanuel Levinas calls it. In books we learn about the Real, Living Life we all aspire to.
They are an escape from this trite single dimension - and they are our teachers!
No wonder Hitler burned books.
Modern societies repress our own sacred individuality - our Otherness. What exactly are they so scared of?
Themselves. Or their own Shadow. Their Lies.
So they continue like rapid transit bullets “on the metalled rails of appetency.” They try to Contain it all in a prison of mediocrity. Ever wonder why the buildings in our cities are so repressively impersonal? That’s Sameness to a T.
Sameness is the new chic. Sameness is minimal and modern. And Sameness CHUCKLES KNOWINGLY at individualism.
So WE have to have to start somewhere anew. In that great book, Thank You for being Late, the author says we have to throw our personal preferences onto public platforms - to Teach the Machine.
That’s what we’re doing here on GR. Making our books Personal Statements of Who Are, Machine or no Machine.
We can ALTER cyber reality. Because the Machine takes note of our words. So why not make our words, our gripes, our enthusiasms a More Personal, and hence Real, component of the Machine’s language.
Sameness is driven by fear.
A fear manufactured by a mere projection. But we authentic Others don’t really care about all that. We rather LIKE our cozy, inquisitive, outside-the-box lives, thanks very much!
No, quite frankly, we’d rather explore all possible imaginary AND REAL worlds on this planet in our books - than be swallowed up in the Big Bright Pleasure Machine of Sameness.
True Nondual Authenticity is the Grand Prize of life.
If you value the Authentic at all, this small and inexpensive book will give you some key concepts to ground your own personal Quest, and give you a warm feeling that the Machine is malleable. This book will make his game obvious, and hence subject to amendment.
In this we are more than conquerors... And the Machine, too, in time may become concerned by the state of our sensitive souls!
Cause the Real Universe - far beyond the little dreams and schemes of our friend, the tight-minded Machine, safely wrapped up in its present homogenized Sameness - will ALWAYS EMBRACE our DIFFERENCES!
June 17, 2020
I've wanted to read Levinas for some time now, but I've been put off by the fact that he's spoken of as "difficult". Carino has made his thought very accessible, digesting his ethics through a lens of faith without being unfaithful to Levinas' emphases. I would have valued a more in-depth exploration of much of these ideas than a book of this length can offer, but Carino whet my appetite for more Levinas, and in this has succeeded in making his philosophy accessible and appealing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews