Thinking Difference with Heidegger and Levinas

Rozemund Uljée

Description

Tracing the relationship between truth and justice as articulated by Heidegger and Levinas, Rozemund Uljée presents the relation between the two thinkers as a subtle, profound, and complex rapport, which includes both their proximity and radical difference. This rapport is conceived not as a confrontation, but rather as a transformation, as Levinas's notion of justice does not renounce Heidegger's account of truth and its deployment. Thinking Difference with Heidegger and Levinas shows how the ethical relation transforms the essence and task of philosophy in its entirety, since it shifts the orientation of philosophy and the task of thinking from its concern with truth as ground or foundation to a question of justice. As a result, philosophy is no longer riveted to Being and its truth, but answers to the call for justice and must be conceived of as infinite commencement, where its impossibility to totalize meaning ensures that it remains open to the alterity of transcendence.
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Considering Being and Truth in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit

2. Being and the Possibility of Transcendence

3. Totality Interrupted: Levinas's Totalité et infini as Response to Hegel

4. Thinking the Question of Presence in Heidegger

5. The Question of Metaphysics and Being's Justice in Heidegger's Nietzsche

6. The Time of Justice

Conclusion

Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438478821
• Langue: English

Extrait

THINKING DIFFERENCE WITH HEIDEGGER AND LEVINAS
SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, editors
THINKING DIFFERENCE WITH HEIDEGGER AND LEVINAS
Truth and Justice
ROZEMUND ULJÉE
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Uljée, Rozemund, author.
Title: Thinking difference with Heidegger and Levinas : truth and justice / Rozemund Uljée.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary French thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019036170 | ISBN 9781438478814 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478821 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. | Lévinas, Emmanuel.
Classification: LCC B3279.H49 U45 2020 | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036170
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
L IST OF A BBREVIATIONS
I NTRODUCTION
C HAPTER O NE
Considering Being and Truth in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit
C HAPTER T WO
Being and the Possibility of Transcendence
C HAPTER T HREE
Totality Interrupted: Levinas’s Totalité et infini as Response to Hegel
C HAPTER F OUR
Thinking the Question of Presence in Heidegger
C HAPTER F IVE
The Question of Metaphysics and Being’s Justice in Heidegger’s Nietzsche
C HAPTER S IX
The Time of Justice
C ONCLUSION
W ORKS C ITED
I NDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sections of chapters 1 and 6 have been published as parts of “Hegel and Levinas: On Truth and the Question of Interruption,” Hegel Bulletin 39, no. 2: 221–35. Sections of chapters 4 and 6 have been published as parts of “Metaphysics and Its Other,” in Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida: The Question of Difference , edited by L. Foran and R. Uljée (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016). I am grateful to the publishers for their permission to reprint the material in this book.
The research for and the writing of this book have taken place over a significant amount of time and in a number of different institutions. Part this work was completed at the Archives Husserl in Paris; I am grateful to Marc Crépon and Jocelyn Benoist for their warm welcome. Furthermore, I would like to thank everyone at the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, especially Timothy Mooney and Dermot Moran, who read and commented on draft versions of this work. I am also thankful to Joseph Cohen, who has opened up a world in which philosophy becomes a gesture of and a dedication to responsibility. Moreover, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University, where I feel truly at home. I also wish to thank Andrew Kenyon at SUNY Press for his help. Thank you, Werner, Saskia, Willem, Robbert, Ijsbrand, Tertia for your love and trust. Jullie zijn het fundament . Finally, I wish to thank Gertjan, who, with a smile, makes me remember what matters.
ABBREVIATIONS AQE Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà l’essence (Den Haag: 1974). Translated by Alphonso Lingis as Otherwise than Being: or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: 1981). BH Martin Heidegger, “Brief über den Humanismus” (1946) (Frankfurt am Main: 1976). Translated by Frank A. Capuzzi, J. Glenn Gray, and David Farrell Krell as “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings (New York: 1977). DWS Martin Heidegger, “Der Weg zur Sprache,” in Unterwegs zur Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: 1985). Translated by David Farrell Krell as “The Way to Language,” in Basic Writings (New York: 1977). EE Emmanuel Levinas, De l’existence à l’existant (Paris: 1947). Translated by Alphonso Lingis as Existence and Existents (Pittsburgh: 1978). ID Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz (1957) (Frankfurt am Main: 2006). Translated by Joan Stambaugh as Identity and Difference (Chicago: 2002). NM Martin Heidegger, Nietzsches Metaphysik (1941–42) (Frankfurt am Main: 1990). Translated by David Farrell Krell, as Martin Heidegger: Nietzsche Vol. III The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics (San Francisco: 1982). NLWM Martin Heidegger, Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen Zur Macht (1939) (Frankfurt am Main: 1989). Translated by David Farrell Krell as Martin Heidegger: Nietzsche Vol. III. The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics (San Francisco: 1982). PG G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) (Frankfurt am Main: 1986). Translated by A. V. Miller as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: 1977). SA Martin Heidegger, “Der Spruch des Anaximander” (1946) (Frankfurt am Main: 1977). Translated by David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi as “The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking (New York: 1975). SZ Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: 1927). Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson as Being and Time (Oxford: 1962). TA Emmanuel Levinas, “La trace de l’autre,” in En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: 1967). Translated by Alphonso Lingis as “Trace of the Other,” in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie (September 1963). TI Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini (The Hague: 1961). Translated by Alphonso Lingis as Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: 1969). WHD Martin Heidegger, Wass Heisst Denken? (1951–52) (Frankfurt am Main: 2002). Translated by J. Glenn Gray as What Is Called Thinking? (New York: 1976). ZS Martin Heidegger, “Zeit und Sein” (1962) (Frankfurt am Main: 2007). Translated by Joan Stambaugh as On Time and Being (Chicago: 2002).
INTRODUCTION
It is possible to say, perhaps, that the defining aspect of the history of philosophy is thinking truth in terms of the intelligibility of the presence of Being. This intelligibility would be capable of comprehending truth as that which is present, as that which can be disclosed and that of which it is possible to synchronize into a whole. The equation of truth with presence assumes that however different terms of a relation might appear and however dispersed over time they might seem, in the end, they are rendered commensurate; an expression of unity.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel could be named as the representative of the concern with the deployment of truth as a comprehension of that which is present. Hegel claims that philosophy’s entire history is to be thought as the development of truth. He writes in the Phänomenologie des Geistes : “The true is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development.” 1 It means for Hegel that truth is the movement of reason, which is the history of philosophy itself. For Hegel, thus, there is an intrinsic relation between the history of philosophy and philosophy. This relation implies that different philosophical systems throughout history can be read as the progressive unfolding of truth, since they are moments in its realization.
Hegel suggests that the movement of reason manifests itself both in and as difference. 2 It implies that any identity already presupposes difference, as identity is affirmed both through and as difference. Philosophy is able to grasp or comprehend the movement of differentiation by revealing itself as the identity of different entities. According to Hegel, the task of philosophy is to gather and recollect the essence of the truth of Being, which means nothing other than as the foundation from which difference can arise. This essence, manifesting itself as difference, is the foundation for thinking, because thinking can think the recognition of difference as identity and simultaneously identity as difference. Since thinking is capable of recognizing identity in difference and difference in identity, there is never an alterity that remains outside the movement of thinking, as any alterity is comprehended within this movement itself.
This book seeks to trace both Martin Heidegger’s and Emmanuel Levinas’s attempts to break open and disrupt thinking inherited by the philosophical tradition as represented by Hegel. Understanding the task and essence of philosophy in terms of the comprehension of all that is, is, according to Heidegger and Levinas, incapable of relating to alterity. Therefore, Hegel’s philosophy would be a reduction of difference as difference. Heidegger and Levinas, both heirs to the phenomenological method as developed by Edmund Husserl, take up Husserl’s account of intentional subjectivity, which highlighted the fundamental question of relation in the service of their own respective projects. Problematizing traditional accounts of relationality, both Heidegger and Levinas suggest, contrary to Hegel that the task of thinking or philosophy does not consist in thinking truth as the absolute concept, but in thinking difference. In order to do so, both Heidegger and Levinas engage in a rereading of the history of philosophy. But whereas for Hegel, the engagement with this hist