Emmanuel Levinas: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Infinity

Introduction: Levinas and Ethical Constructivism

Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher and intellectual scholar whose propositions and influence expounded on the study of phenomenology. While developing his philosophy, Levinas encountered Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher fully affiliated with the Nazis. This affiliation grounded Levinas's phenomenological philosophy in enthusiastic criticism of Heidegger. His influential study of Western philosophy led to the comprehension of existential phenomenology in France and to the development of ethical and moral thought, shaped in part by the events of World War II. In addition, the philosophy he developed included an inter-subjective relation to ethics through deontology, utilitarianism, self-legislation, and virtue ethics. This greatly assisted in developing a conceptual sense and affectivity to Levinas's propositions. In this context, Levinas exemplifies ethical rationality and human freedom by incorporating time and the transcendence of totality and infinity into phenomenological description.

In representing time and the ethics of the Other, Levinas's phenomenology explores the conditions that offer possibilities of good action in human lives. This phenomenological perspective deals with a critique of Heidegger's alternative philosophies on Totality and Infinity in light of three thematic concerns: existence, the human Other, and transcendence. These themes expand the entire concept of Levinas's phenomenology by providing descriptions and characterizations of constructivism. Understanding constructivism within Levinas's ethical framework presumes awareness of the misconceptions, impositions, and misconstructions that may arise in advanced experience — whether through cultural, religious, or sensory channels, or from different fields of science.

According to Levinas, phenomenology articulates the fragility of ethical imperatives — as explanations of the ethical Other — by cutting through moral ambiguity toward absolute and indestructible responsibility. This notion describes how human freedom (deontology) gives rise to uncertainty in ethical life. In addition, Levinas's approach to contemporary issues marginalizes competing philosophical ideas by proposing arguments on alterity as a matter of singularity. His accounts in relation to Heidegger's philosophies and phenomenological traditions are addressed through metaphysics, constructivism, transcendence, totality and infinity, truth, discourse, deontology, the phenomenology of Eros, descriptive psychology, the absolute notion, Husserl's philosophy, and the intuition theory.

Metaphysics and the Intuition Theory

According to Levinas, metaphysics is the face-to-face relationship, especially in relation to Totality and Infinity. The proximity in this relationship is a privileged and primordial phenomenon of gentleness, felt in the closeness of that distance. In relation to phenomenology, Levinas links this to the eventual repetition of everyday actions, yet holds it to be irreducible to an objectified existence conceived intentionally. The face-to-face relationship interrupts premeditated consciousness, whether in situational aloneness or solipsistic quality. Aspects drawn from Totality and Infinity led to Levinas's observation: "The true life is absent. But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi." Metaphysics is therefore distinguished by the fact that it moves towards something totally and entirely other — towards the absolutely other, which is not merely other but absolutely so. Its otherness, nevertheless, cannot simply be contrasted with subjectivity. This means the metaphysical is fundamentally superior if Levinas's perception is adopted, representing metaphysics as transcendence proper.

Levinas's phenomenology advocated for the existence of the Other in the context of Heidegger's alternative to Totality and Infinity. The latter reduced the capacities of human being to theoretical relationships, among which metaphysical desire is a part. It is a dialectical relation to the different ways in which quotidian desires determine lack. Similarly, this metaphysical desire is conclusive in the restoration or satisfaction — in the subject — of a given absorption of the object.

The theory of intuition is a close engagement with Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. According to Husserl, his criticism of naturalism is a negative aspect he terms a limitation. Husserl also believed in the absolute presence of consciousness, going beyond that to demonstrate the existence of consciousness as an accurate science in which all aspects must be grounded in consciousness as the absolute source that reserves all meaning. He also believed in the phenomenological presence of being, which is both inescapable and inevitable. Levinas, by contrast, emerged with concepts of perception and judgment, which he thought deserved exceptional priority when tackling phenomenology. Levinas was also in support of the concept of intellectualism, concluding that intellectualism "prepare[s] the way for the intuitionist theory of truth," because "for the first time, judgment and perception are brought together and put on the same level" (Levinas, 1995, p. 21).

Levinas's propositions are inquisitive with respect to ethical metaphysics, drawing on his distinctive contributions to philosophy. Though intuition was Husserl's early work, relations can be drawn between ethics and phenomenology. Heidegger's exposition on the alterity of Totality and Infinity depicted a bias toward theoretical consciousness, materialism, and objectification in his ontological criticism. Levinas diverged from Heidegger's ontological descriptions due to their lack of ethical significance — a precise representation of phenomenological inter-subjectivity.

Ethics, Constructivism, and the Other

Heidegger's affiliation with Nazism revealed very little of his contribution to ethical inquiry. His perception is an articulation prior to a division between a being and his or her identity, and it is a struggle concerning the possibility of postmodern ethics. According to Levinas, however, ethics was expected to precede metaphysics. Ethics is a first philosophy; metaphysics is a subordinate under ethics and the concept of justice. Despite the traditional Western understanding of ethics as a concept or discipline within philosophy, Levinas sought other ways to help Western philosophers appreciate that ethics is fundamentally about other persons — described as otherness during metaphysical inquiry. Ethics is what prevents most global attempts to provide final explanations. Levinas defended his philosophy against the traditional understanding of ethics: contemporary perception asserts that ethics is related to egoism, definable as a relation to oneself as a primary relation, as found in the works of Locke and Hobbes.

Another perspective holds that human beings have a responsibility to the Other, which is the most fundamental structure upon which all other social structures are founded. A phenomenological description of ethics is therefore currently understood not as an egocentric mode of behavior, nor as a buildup of theories, but as involvement in the limitation of a person's freedom with the intention of remaining open to others in a manner that allows oneself to be constrained by them. Ethical codes are embedded within human actions and determine their level of rational motivation, making ethics inescapable for any human being. Levinas insisted that the ethical is the spiritual itself — it cannot be overcome by anything, and it comes first. This concept of ethicality gave rise to the title of Levinas's book Humanism of the Other Man.

In metaethics, constructivism is a contributor to normative ethics. Levinas's philosophies constitute a constructivist project by virtue of their phenomenological propositions and hermeneutics of human experience. These experiences determine the human encounter with the universe, the human Other, and a re-enactment of an encrusted interior characterized by responsiveness and affectivity.

In accordance with constructivist views in ethics, the truth of any normative claim is part of what is entailed within the practical point of view. When constructivism is characterized in ethics, the result is a differentiation between the metaethical versions of constructivism and restricted versions of the same. Restricted views in ethics specify selected sets of normative claims; they insist that the truth of any claim falling within that set is constituted by its being entailed from within a practical point of view. The most fundamental goal of constructivist views is to assign an account of truth in relation to a set of normative claims. According to Rawls, the restricted constructivist viewpoint asserts that the truth of claims concerning sociopolitical justice in a liberal democratic society consists in being part of the view's original position. Entrenched in an original-position setup, certain prescriptive judgments implicit in the political culture of a liberal democratic society are revealed (Street, 2009, p. 8).

Scanlon's restricted constructivist view is that the truths of claims concerned with right and wrong action — what one owes to the other — consist in their being entailed from the standpoint of a contractual situation. The contractual situation is one where normative judgment is inevitable: everyone has reason to live with others under specific terms that cannot be rejected on the basis of unenforced agreements unless adequate grounds are established. Mostly, restrictive constructivism hardly accounts for the truth of other substantive normative views.

By contrast, metaethical constructivism does seek to provide a comprehensive account of the truth of normative claims. In doing so, it appeals to ideas about what follows within the practical point of view when it is given a formal characterization. Successful metaphysical constructivists do not take the truth of any substantive normative claim for granted.