Richard Cohen

Contemporary philosophers are increasingly turning to the work of Emmanuel Levinas to bring a consideration of ethics into their own thinking. As an exponent of the phenomenological tradition, Levinas ranks with Heidegger and Sartre; as a disciple of Husserl, he was one of the most independent and original interpreters, testifying to the fruitfulness of Husserl's phenomenology. In collecting almost all of Levinas's articles on Husserlian phenomenology, this volume gathers together a wealth of thoughtful exposition and interpretation by one of the most important European philosophers of the twentieth century. Levinas's thought is relevant to a broad variety of disciplines and concerns. This volume serves as a reliable introduction for the beginning student, as well as satisfying the expert's more demanding and critical desire for insight into the complexities of Levinas's thought.

Alternative oppositions to “infinity” and “totality” are suggested, examined and shown to be inadequate by comparison to the sense of the opposition contained in title Totality and Infinity chosen by Levinas. Special attention is given to this opposition and the priority given to ethics in relation Kant’s distinction between understanding and reason and the priority given by Kant to ethics. The book’s title is further illuminated by means of its first sentence, and the first sentence is illuminated by means of the book’s title. Special attention is given to explicating the nature and significance of the hitherto unnoticed “informal” fallacy contained in the first sentence.

In many ways the whole of contemporary thought reduces to the search for new middle terms, such as 'desire', 'will to power', 'language', and "difference', to mediate, displace, or evade the classical philosophical dualisms, such as being and nonbeing, ideality and reality, mind and matter, is and ought. These dualisms--set up by the ancients, pursued by the moderns, and bequeathed to us contemporaries by their failures--are Kearney's target. His aim is to overcome them through the notion of figuration. This term--as well as the book's title--suggests an aesthetic orientation, but it is quite deliberately conceived as no mere substitute for the term 'imagination'. While Kearney does argue that the distinction between the imaginary and the real is a distinction ultimately of greater significance than the distinction between being and nonbeing, he also shows that the imaginary, classically conceived, has always taken second place to the real, and thus has always reproduced rather than overcome the insupportable difficulties of classical metaphysics. Figuration, by contrast, is not to be conceived in opposition to the real, but as a "comprehensive creativity," determining all fields of signification, such as the aesthetic, practical, ontological and ethical. It must be understood functionally, as the activity of an "always new ludic metamorphosis," the reciprocal play of new and old. Thus, like Merleau-Ponty's notion of "the flesh," it has great plasticity and at the same time yields specific insights.

Chapter 7 of my book, Ethics, Exegesis, and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas, entitled “Humanism and the Rights of Exegesis,” was devoted to elaboratingthe notion of “ethical exegesis.” The notion of ethical exegesis is not only inspired by Levinas’s thought, but expresses the essential character of it, its “method,” as it were, the “saying” of its “said.” Accordingly, here I will begin by reviewing some of what I have already said about ethical exegesis, and then I will develop this notion further in relation to Plato and to the question of moralizing.

Is cybernetics good, bad, or indifferent? SherryTurkle enlists deconstructive theory to celebrate thecomputer age as the embodiment of difference. Nolonger just a theory, one can now live a virtual life. Within a differential but ontologically detachedfield of signifiers, one can construct and reconstructegos and environments from the bottom up andendlessly. Lucas Introna, in contrast, enlists theethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to condemn thesame computer age for increasing the distance betweenflesh and blood people. Mediating the face-to-facerelation between real people, allowing and encouragingcommunication at a distance, information technologywould alienate individuals from the social immediacyproductive of moral obligations and responsibilities. In this paper I argue against both of thesepositions, and for similar reasons. Turkle''scelebration and Introna''s condemnation of informationtechnology both depend, so I will argue, on the samemistaken meta-interpretation of it. Like Introna,however, but to achieve a different end, I will enlistLevinas''s ethical philosophy to make this case.