Shame, de-subjectivation and passivity – on the metaphysics of the Self in Levinas and Agamben

Authors

  • Fabricio Pontin PhD (Philosophy, 2013) at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Post-Doctoral Researcher (PNPD-CAPES) at the Graduate Program in Philosophy at PUC-RS; Associate Professor (Law/International Relations) at LaSalle University, Canoas

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2018.1.30069

Keywords:

Shame, Desire, Ethics, Affective Tonalities

Abstract

This article provides a relation between the problem of shame in both Levinas and Agamben, focusing, for the most part, in the development of Levinas' metaphysics and its relation to the emotional tonality of shame in three works: "On Escape", "Time and the Other" and "Otherwise than Being". In stressing the unique take that Levinas has on metaphysics, I try to point at the tension between Jewish and Greek thought in Levinas, and his option for a radical notion of a situated understanding of the "ethical". Hence my interest in contrasting Levinas and Agamben, as Agamben's appropriation of Levinas' lexicon in his "Remnants of Aushwitz" places the subject in a political, and material, position which is ultimately uncompatible with Levinas' situational and metaphysical take on the self.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

AGAMBEN, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive. New York: Zone Books, 2002.

____. Means without end : Notes on Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2000

LEVINAS, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007

____. On escape. Stanford: Stanford University press, 2003

____.Otherwise than being. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998

STEINBOCK, Anthony. “Generativity and the scope of generative phenomenology” in WELTON, Donn. (Org) The New Husserl: A critical reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003

Downloads

Published

2018-04-23

How to Cite

Pontin, F. (2018). Shame, de-subjectivation and passivity – on the metaphysics of the Self in Levinas and Agamben. Veritas (Porto Alegre), 63(1), 190–205. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2018.1.30069

Issue

Vol. 63 No. 1 (2018): Dossier - Jewish Philosophy

Section

Dossier -Jewish Philosophy

License

Copyright

The submission of originals to Revista Veritas implies the transfer by the authors of the right for publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite Revista Veritas as the site of original publication.


Creative Commons License

Except where otherwise specified, material published in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is correctly cited. Copyright: © 2006-2020 EDIPUCRS</p