Emmanuel Levinas and the Anxiety of Intersubjective Origins
Anxiety January 14, 2021 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197539712.003.0013 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Anxiety |
| Key points | Argues that Levinas radicalized Heidegger's hermeneutic moods into embodied affects and located ethical responsibility for the other in the intersubjective interweave of lived bodies and affects, later framed as anxiety, emotional memory, mourning, and mnemonic obsession. The author contends Levinas's effort was the greatest since Scheler's The Nature of Sympathy to connect specific affects with ethical responsibility within phenomenology. |
Abstract
Levinas radicalized Heidegger’s hermeneutic moods into intensely embodied states and affects, pointing toward their intersubjective connections. His early work challenged Heidegger’s intellectualist approach to affective tonalities, arguing that our experience of “Being” occurs in bodily modes, from nausea to shame to escapist pleasures. Following his famous treatise on welcoming the “Other” in 1961, he turned to theorize the experience of alterity as first affective; and thereafter in 1974 as anxiety and emotional memory (“the other-in-the-same”). Taking a step outside Husserl’s phenomenology, he located the birth of responsibility for the other in the intersubjective interweave of our lived bodies and affects, and later on as mourning and mnemonic obsession. Since Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy (1923), Levinas’s was the greatest effort, since Kant’s practical reason colored by Achtung, to underscore within phenomenology the connection between specific affects and ethical responsibility.
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