Totality and Infinity
| File:Totality and Infinity (French edition).jpg Cover of the French edition | |
| Author | Emmanuel Levinas |
|---|---|
| Original title | Totalité et Infini: essai sur l'extériorité |
| Translator | Alphonso Lingis |
| Language | French |
| Subjects | Ethics, religion |
| Published |
|
| Publication place | France |
.jpg){kind=link}
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (French: Totalité et Infini: essai sur l'extériorité) is a 1961 book about ethics by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Highly influenced by phenomenology, it is considered one of Levinas's most important works.
Summary
[edit | edit source]The Other
[edit | edit source]Levinas advances the thesis that all ethics derive from a confrontation with an other. This other, with whom we interact concretely, represents a gateway into the more abstract Otherness.
The distinction between totality and infinity divides the limited world, which contains the other as a material body, from a spiritual world. Subjects gain access to this spiritual world, infinity, by opening themselves to the Otherness of the other. For example:
To approach the other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. (p. 51)
Presence
[edit | edit source]Levinas places heavy emphasis on the physical presence involved in meeting the other. He argues that only a face-to-face encounter allows true connection with Infinity, because of the incessance of this type of interaction. Written words and other words do not suffice because they have become past by the time the subject perceives them. That is: they have fallen into the register of totality.
History
[edit | edit source]The book contains several observations on history and the judgement of history, like "the judgement of history is always pronounced by default."[1]
Reception
[edit | edit source]Totality and Infinity is considered an original and significant contribution to the world of philosophy—continental philosophy in particular. The work can be read as a response to Levinas's teachers, the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Britannica both identify Totality and Infinity, along with Otherwise than Being (1974), as one of Levinas's most important works.[2][3]
The philosopher Jacques Derrida criticized Totality and Infinity in his essay "Violence and Metaphysics".[4]
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Didier Pollefeyt (2004), Incredible forgiveness, p. 43
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Derrida, Jacques (2001). Writing and Difference. Routledge Classics, 97–192.
Secondary literature
[edit | edit source]- Callier, Bernadette. "Totality and Infinity, Alterity, and Relation: From Levinas to Glissant." Journal of Francophone Philosophy, 19(1), 2011.
- Davidson, Scott, and Diane Perpich. "Totality and Infinity at 50". Duquesne University Press, 2012.
- Derrida, Jacques. "Violence and Metaphysics: Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," in Writing and Difference.
- Mensch, James. Lectures on Totality and Infinity [1].
- Mensch, James. Levinas' Existential Analytic, A Commentary on Totality and Infinity, Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).