Previous philosophies put freedom and autonomy before responsibility. When you’ve done something, you’re responsible for what you have done. However, Levinas puts this into question; He says you have responsibility first and then freedom. The subject is not free first but is responsible first. Subjectivity is responsibility.
In Levinas’ two great books Totality and infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, one notices that the description of the subject shifts. In Totality and Infinity, the subject emerges from il y a and experiences jouissance. He is a needy subject and is happy for these needs. In Otherwise than Being, he stressed on radical passivity. Before I can think, choose, act, or begin anything, there is this radical passivity to the Other.
Levinas uses the terms ‘responsibility’ ‘substitution,’ ‘obsession,’ ‘hostage,’ ‘persecution,’ ‘accusation,’ ‘saying,’ and ‘proximity’. Before I actually act, the Other is experienced as if he was accusing me. The Other, before I can claim the Other has already chosen me and imprisoned me. This is what is meant by hostage. These are actually very difficult terms and they will be called hyperbolical and exaggerated. What does it mean to say that before I think, use or act, I am already a hostage and I am responsible for the Other? It is not a temporal priority, it is a conceptual priority. Levinas wants to show that radical passivity is the transcendental condition for the things that I do. It is the condition for human social existence.
This passivity is vulnerability. It’s not the solitary I that wants to relate with the Other, but even before the actual relation, the I is already related to all the Others.
We may be different and separated, but there is a relation. From the very beginning, there is already that basic responsibility and it is that basic responsibility that emerges in those senseless acts of kindness. The Other has already invaded me and charged me. It is a structure that does not resemble the intentional relation, which, in knowledge, attaches us to the subject. Proximity and nearness is not about intentionality or knowledge.
Leo and Levinas Walk Into a Bar 
“Before I can think, choose, act, or begin anything, there is this radical passivity to the Other.”
If this fundamental link to Others is indeed this true and powerful, how can you reconcile human acts such as massacres, holocausts, etc? I understand that there is a difference between the ontological and ethical, but one can’t deny himself to question, why would all of these (i.e. holocausts and massacres) happen if there was indeed this a priori responsibility for the other?
hello 🙂
i think it had been mentioned in class that ethics cannot be forced. Even if one hears the command “Let me live”, one would always have the option to kill, that’s why there’s no system that can implement goodness.
there’s always free will you know and nothing can mess with that.
There is indeed an inherent contradiction between the course of history and what Levinas proclaims. The rise of the west in their conquest for power seemed to have risen out of their lack of concern for the welfare of the other, this disregard for the radical passivity that binds us to the other; it is a culture of autonomy that always leads back to the empowerment of the self. This has led to power shifts and ultimately seemed to have worked in their favor, regardless of their negative perception of the other: the xenos and the unknown. What does this reality tell us of society in general? we all subscribe to a holier-then-thou attitude, where we condemn the tyrants which “depersonalize” its subjects, and yet we are no strangers to the reality that their power stemmed from their impersonal connection with the Other. Passivity is indeed vulnerability, in that the power-hungry exploit the radical separation to satiate selfish desires.
“The subject is not free first but is responsible first. Subjectivity is responsibility.”
Tonight I rewatched war photographer James Nachtwey’s award acceptance presentation in TED Talks. I think Nachtwey captures that face Levinas was trying to describe and does a good job at showing the face that captures us, silences us, and demands responsibility. I think his photos help remind us we are related to the Other.
So radical passivity says that before we can be free, we are responsible 1st. It is a hyperbolic notion saying that we already owe something to the world before we even asked for something from it or got something from it. As in, the Other already expects us to be responsible for her. This suggest that we inherently relate to the Other, it is already a given.
Because the other already expects responsibility from us, it seems like we are being persecuted by the Other, as if being forced to do something. It seems like we are a prisoner of the Other.
It used to sound kind of weird to me, saying that one is a prisoner 1st before being free. I questioned why we couldn’t just be free in the 1st place and why we are prisoners in the 1st place.
It starts to make sense when you put the lessons of il ya, jouissance, emergence, and the law of I and the Other together.
We established that “I” is the “Other”, which means that the “Other” is me.
So, since the Other is me, I am my own prisoner. This is the state of ilya. The indeterminacy that we experience while being trapped in ourselves. We must be able to escape from ourselves. we have to be taken out, to ex- perience, to emerge out of ourselves. And how do we emerge from ourselves? by being responsible for the Other.
So, there’s a little confusion again. Isn’t the Other me? So, I have to be responsible for me? Yes. Self development is also a way of being responsible for the Other. it is development of the Other. how is this possible? It’s possible because of the idea of infinite responsibility and the universal Other (the 3rd party Other). (which is discussed in the next lesson XD )
one has to be responsible for himself also to be able to be responsible to the other. It’s like that saying that goes somewhat like, “we can’t give love to others if we never had love at all.” i know that’s not the saying verbatim but i guess the point’s there haha.
if we just keep caring about the other and forget about ourselves completely, we will soon burn out as well and won’t be able to be responsible to the other anymore.
Upon re-reading this blog entry, I remembered how my high school best friend and I got together. One day, I got a call from this new classmate of mine (I absolutely still do not know how she got my phone number), whom I barely spoke a sentence to, who asked about homework and exams to which I couldn’t refuse. Sometimes, I felt that I was being used, but I helped her anyway no matter how impatient, annoyed, irritated I got the other day because of her call (I’d like to brand this as one of the senseless act of kindness haha) It’s as if every time the phone rings, I am a prisoner who is obliged to do free tutoring service for her. Yes, there were times when I just wanted to avoid the call by pretending to be asleep already but it didn’t feel good. I guess, the feeling can be somewhat compared to the feeling you get from not even looking at a beggar’s face. I felt guilty when I avoided her calls, and so, what I did was to talk to her and tell her directly that I don’t want to talk for the day which is like looking to a beggar’s eyes and saying no.
=)) sorry, my example is so random! But, I guess this can serve as a testimony to how real Levinas’ philosophy of responsibility is because even children do experience this… they never had to take up philosophy to be able to experience this radical passivity and the face of the Other which is, while commanding, leaks of misery. Maybe in order to unsay what has been said, we do have to remember how being a child was for us 🙂 just like what Doctor Garcia has mentioned in class, perhaps, all we need to know we already learned in kindergarten.
There are so many things in life that call for us to do the good – radical passivity and the other as face included. It then leads me to wonder why we still find it so hard to see the importance of doing good. Thats where I think Levinas really excels with us – he helps us understand that there are already so many things external from our free will that calls us to be responsible/to do good/ to manifest god in our actions – all we really have to do is respond. I can realte this to how philosophy shouldnt just be left in the mind, it should flow through our bodies and out our hands because the texts that we read, the terms that we learn, they are a good foundation to reflect on so that we can respond responsibly or justly. But this shouldnt stay in the mind. We should be inspired to go beyond the terms and let the texts we read disturb us and push us to do good.
We are here for a reason. We are here to respond to actions by doing good. By this, we really need to respond to different kinds of situations. We are prisoners/hostages in responding to these. We may look weird or act unaccordingly but we are kind of forced to do these stuff. This is our responsibility as humans, and after that, we have freedom (like what Levinas suggests)
What I got here is that from the very start, we are already created to be for the Other. We are not born for ourselves but instead are beings in existence primarily because there is this mission that we need to fulfill for the other. That is why our existence is not there for us to glorify our own living but to glorify the others who are in need of us.
Adding:
Levinas once again helps us understand the importance of doing good and why we do it. We do it because it is part of our lives and it is our duty and responsibility as an Other for the Otber.
After I start your Rss feed it appears to be to be a ton of junk, is the problem on my part?