Levinas's Philosophy of Time: Gift, Responsibility, Diachrony, Hope

Notes

303 NOTES Notes to Introduction 1. Chanter, Time Death, and the Feminine, 1. 2. Indeed, chronological studies on Levinas’s work are also strangely sparse, despite a growing interest in his work, particularly in the Anglo-American context . As Samuel Moyn notices, “Surprisingly, the origins of Levinas’s thinking have never...been studied carefully by intellectual historians, with a method that calls for illuminating a body of philosophy by reading it chronologically and understanding it contextually” (Moyn, Origins of the Other, 4). Moyn attempts a chronological study not of Levinas and time, but of the relationship between revelation and ethics in Levinas. This book investigates the chronological development of Levinas’s thinking about time, beginning with his first independent essays and concluding with some of his final essays. 3. Cohen, Elevations, 133–61; Wygoda, “Phenomenology of Time,” 283– 301; Tauber, “Outside the Subject,” 439–59; Bernet, “L’autre du temps,” in Levinas, Positivité et transcendence, 143–63; Robert Legros. “L’expérience originaire du temps, 77–97. Paul Olivier wrote an article in 1983 proposing to “compare” the theme of time to the main themes of Levinas’s thought (Oliver, “L’être et le temps chez Emmanuel Lévinas,” 337–80). Though Oliver’s study traces many of the themes expanded upon in this volume, I am staking the claim that time is a “main theme” in Levinas’s oeuvre. 4. Wygoda, “Phenomenology of Time,” 283. 5. Tauber, “Outside the Subject,” 439. 6. Chanter makes this case not only throughout Time, Death, and the Feminine but also in her essays “Hands that Give and Hands that Take: The Politics of the Feminine in Levinas” and “Conditions: The Politics of Ontology and the Temporality of the Feminine.” 7. Rose, Broken Middle, 252. 8. Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas, 5. 9. Jeffrey Bloechl points out that it is a “dangerously misleading premise” to suppose that Levinas foresees in the beginning what he will reveal in detail in the end (Bloechl, Liturgy of the Neighbor, 12). 10. Lingis, translator’s introduction, EE xxii. It is significant that Lingis makes this note in introducing Existence and Existents, as it is Levinas’s first book that is a development of his own philosophical project. 11. Bloechl, Liturgy of the Neighbor, 5. 12. There is little agreement regarding the translation of Levinas’s French terms autre, Autre, autrui, and Autrui. Levinas vacillates in his capitalization of these terms, often without rhyme or reason, and this has perplexed translators and confused readers. I have followed the later strategy of Alphonso Lingis who, 304 Notes to Pages 3–8 in translating Levinas’s Otherwise than Being, renders all four terms as simply “other.” There is some risk of losing intonations that Levinas intended with the capitalized terms, but this risk is preferable to the danger of adding mystical intonations where they were not intended. 13. Levinas has essentially left us three levels of primary sources. First, we have the philosophical texts that Levinas published with careful deliberation. Second, we have religious and confessional writings that Levinas wrote for a mostly Jewish audience. While my focus is on the former, the confessional writings turn out to be critical in investigating Levinas’s understanding of time. Levinas considered these to be a separate genre, yet they appear to gestate ideas and terms that Levinas later introduces to his philosophical writings. I introduce them carefully and avoid building philosophical arguments from the claims he makes in his confessional texts. Third, there is a significant collection of interviews , anecdotal stories, and private notes that express his philosophical positions in less polished forms. Levinas demonstrated a deep willingness to participate in conversations and to have his interviews published, despite the obvious risks involved when a person speaks without preparation. There are multiple volumes of Levinas’s interviews. Some of these are helpful, and some leave a troubling trail of idiosyncratic opinions. These were risks Levinas undertook willingly. The notes and interviews are often lucid and candid, a quality sometimes lacking in the more polished philosophical writings. Their clarity can confirm the genesis of certain elements as they appear in the published philosophical texts. 14. The publication of Carnets de captivité et autre inedits, volume 1 of Levinas’s Oeuvres, allows for fresh insight into Levinas’s thoughts between 1937 and 1950. I have included references to this volume only as support to the themes from his published writings, and I translated them into English myself, with the kind assistance of Kurtis Jardim and John Fraley...