Abstract
Levinas and the Night of Being investigates the ontological character of Totality and Infinity that has frequently been overlooked, suggesting that this ontological character is constituted by nocturnal events of being, the dark foundations that undergird the intentional activity of consciousness. Through a close reading of Totality and Infinity, Levinas and the Night of Being begins with the separation of the self and the nocturnal event of the enjoyment of the elemental that establishes the self as the same in its independence and self-sufficiency. In its sameness, the self can then encounter the Other as other through the nocturnal event of the speech of the Other. The encounter with the Other through speech and language is the foundation for the nocturnal event of the pluralization of existence through fecundity, culminating in what Levinas and the Night of Being calls a world shared with the Other, a world of sociality and justice. This review emphasizes that Levinas and the Night of Being, by addressing the ontological character of Totality and Infinity, offers a significant contribution to the field of Levinas studies and points toward a valuable path for future research that examines how ontology and ethics might be thought together rather than in opposition.
Notes
Levinas (1969, p. 26). Similarly, among the conclusions of Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes that “Being is exteriority: the very exercise of its being consists in exteriority, and no thought could better obey being than by allowing itself to be dominated by this exteriority” (p. 290).
Levinas (1969, pp. 208, 207).
Levinas (1969, p. 296).
References
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. 1969.
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Willcutt, Z. Raoul Moati, Levinas and the night of being: a guide to totality and infinity, translated by Daniel Wyche, New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, 217 + xvii pp., ISBN: 9780823273201. Cont Philos Rev 55, 397–403 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09574-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09574-z