Feminist interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas / edited by Tina Chanter.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Chanter, Tina, 1960-

Series:

Re-reading the canon

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Feminist theory.

Physical Description:

xv, 272 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, [2001]

Summary:

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas's relationship to feminist thought. Levinas has become known as the philosopher of the Other famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigm Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume's primary aims.

Levinas breaks with Heidegger's phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to the Other, the 'face-to-face', as exceeding the language of ontology. The ethical orientation of Levinas's philosophy assumes a subject who lives in a world of enjoyment, a world that is made accessible through the dwelling. The feminine presence presides over this dwelling, and the feminine face represents the first welcome. How is this feminine face to be understood? Does it provide a model for the infinite obligation to the Other, or is it a protoethical relation? The essays in this volume investigate this dilemma.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, and became a naturalized French citizen in 1930. He was influenced by Edmund Husserl, with whom he studied phenomenology, and Martin Heidegger, among others. It was mainly during the 1950s that Levinas began to work out a highly original philosophy of ethics with the aim of going beyond the ethically neutral tradition of ontology. Levinas's first magnum opus, Totality and Infinity (1961), sought to accomplish this departure through an analysis of the 'face-to-face' relation with the Other.

Contents:

1 From the Caress to the Word: Transcendence and the Feminine in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas / Diane Perpich 28

2 Levinas's Maternal Method from "Time and the Other" Through Otherwise Than Being: No Woman's Land? / Donna Brody 53

3 The Ethical Passions of Emmanuel Levinas / Ewa Plonowska Ziarek 78

4 The Delightful Other: Portraits of the Feminine in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Levinas / Sonia Sikka 96

5 The Fecundity of the Caress: A Reading of Levinas, Totality and Infinity, "Phenomenology of Eros" / Luce Irigaray 119

6 Reinhabiting the House of Ruth: Exceeding the Limits of the Feminine in Levinas / Claire Elise Katz 145

7 The Exteriority of the Feminine Translated by Bettina Bergo / Catherine Chalier 171

8 Masculine Mothers? Maternity in Levinas and Plato / Stella Sandford 180

9 Levinas and Kant: Maternal Morality and Illegitimate Offspring / Alison Ainley 203

10 Paternal Election and the Absent Father / Kelly Oliver 224.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-262) and index.

ISBN:

0271021136

0271021144

OCLC:

44914372