Teaching Philosophy of Science

The topic of time is central to Levinas's philosophy. By examining aspects of the Biblical stories of Abraham and Moses compared with Greek myths, mainly that of Cronos devouring his children, this paper aims to show that Levinas's view of time, though certainly indebted to the Greek (i.e. philosophical) tradition, contains traces of Biblical experiences. Moreover, Levinas's interpretation of time will serve as a concrete demonstration of the way the Jewish experience enables Levinas to express his criticism of the philosophical-Greek tradition.

Focusing on the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, the dissertation examines Levinas’s understanding of time as inter-subjective. A discussion of Levinas’s interpretation of time is needed since he does not provide a systematic theory of the subject, and his views are scattered throughout his works. The thesis explored and defended in the dissertation is that even though we find in different periods of Levinas’s writings apparently inconsistent views of time, a coherent and consistent structure of time can be extracted from his thought. Examining Levinas’s views against the background of two of his most influential predecessors, Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger, leads to conclusions not only concerning the nature of Levinas’s understanding of time, evolutionary rather than contradictory, but also concerning Levinas's unique views concerning the relation between time and ethics. Levinas presents an innovative interpretation of time, which can be considered as an attempt to overcome the dissatisfaction with the egological interpretations offered by Bergson and Heidegger. Levinas accepts the relevance of time to the human structure of existence, but at the same time does not consider the time pertinent to our existence among other people as a degradation of inner-time. Since Levinasian time occurs in the framework of inter-subjective relations, it has an ethical meaning, which is manifested in the relation between responsibility and time, as well as in the relation between time and the formation of the self.

Emmanuel Levinas has been largely criticized for describing his notion of fecundity by focusing mainly on the father-son relation. The close connection Levinas forms between fecundity and time may lead to the conclusion that the female is excluded from the time of sociality. Moreover, such an approach also raises a difficulty concerning Levinas’s view of time as constituted via the subject’s face-to-face relation with the Other. The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Levinas’s concept of fecundity that not only allows a fecund feminine, but also enables us to consider time beyond the limiting perspective of paternity.

'The essential theme of my research is the deformalization of the notion of time,' asserted Emmanuel Levinas in a 1988 interview, toward the end of his long philosophical career. But while the notion of time is fundamental to the development of every key theme in Levinas's thought - the idea of the infinite, the issue of the alterity of the other, the face of the other, the question of our ethical relations with other people, the role of fecundity, speech and language, and radical responsibility - his view of time remains obscure. Yael Lin's exhaustive look at Levinas's primary texts, both his philosophical writings and his writings on Judaism, brings together his various perspectives on time. Lin concludes that we can, indeed, extract a coherent and consistent conception of time from Levinas's thought, one that is distinctly political.

First situating Levinas's views against the background of two of his most influential predecessors, Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger, The Intersubjectivity of Time demonstrates that Levinas's interpretation of time seeks to fill a void created by the egological views those thinkers emphasized. For Levinas, time is neither considered from the perspective of the individual nor is it a public dimension belonging to everyone, but it occurs in the encounter between the self and the other person, and the infinite responsibility inherent in that relation. Yet Levinas himself is surprisingly vague as to how exactly this relation to the other person creates time's structure or how it is experienced in our everyday lives, and he does not make an explicit move from this intersubjective ethical dimension to the broader collective-political dimension.

Lin offers a unique perspective to address this crucial question of the political dimension of Levinas's project. By turning to Levinas's talmudic writings and examining aspects of Jewish life, traditions of communal prayer, and ritual, Lin sketches out a multivocal account of time, deepening Levinas's original claim that time is constituted via social relationships. This imaginative and evocative discussion truly opens the subject to further research.

Often the notion of the in-between is considered by focusing on the spatial aspect. We usually understand in-betweenness as a space, a realm, between two areas such as the bridge affording passage from one terrain to another, or the stairway between apartments and offices. By focusing on Levinas’s thought, my aim in this paper is to consider this notion from the temporal phenomenological perspective. Although the thoughts of thinkers such as Bergson and Heidegger reveal a temporal phenomenological perspective, when it comes to the theme of the in-between, it is either discussed within the boundaries of the individual – leaving out the crucial question of that which exists between two separate, independent, realms or temporalities, or fails in overcoming the spatial perspective. Concentrating on that which is in-between the subject and the Other, Levinas opens up a way to think of the in-between in a manner that goes beyond both the spatial viewpoint and the perspective of the independent individual. Levinasian time can be seen as the dimension that permits the Same and the Other to maintain their separateness, their unique language, but still be able to communicate. Hence, against the background of Levinas’s view of time as an inter-subjective relation between the Same and the Other, the act of conversation will be considered as an experience in-between the absolutely independent, separate, Same and Other that enables them to be in a relation without the risk of reducing the Other to the Same, or losing their singularity.

The paper focuses on the moment preceding the death of Moses for the purpose of examining Levinas's ideas of time, ethics and politics.  This moment is considered as a concrete occasion for examining key themes in Levinas's thought.  The article shows that the episode, in which God presents before Moses the Promised Land, and mentions the covenant with the forefathers, illuminates Levinas’s views of fecund time, diachronic time, as well as his ideas of responsibility and subjectivity.  It is also suggested that Levinas's philosophy opens up a new perspective for interpreting the severity of the punishment forbidding Moses to enter the Promised Land.  Finally, the episode serves as the background for considering Levinas's relation with the State of Israel, and for raising the question whether Levinas's project allows the move from the inter-subjective ethical to the political collective.

This collection of essays is an attempt to capture the drama of the encounter, of the 'facing' of Levinas and the biblical text. It seeks to link Jewish experience and Levinasian themes such as responsibility, substitution, hospitality, suffering and forgiveness, and at the same time make the biblical text accessible in a new way.

The book offers new insights on the opening up of Levinas's thought and biblical stories to one another; it considers the ways in which Levinas can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas. Setting up in dialogue the heteronomic texts – the narrative texts of the bible and Levinas's philosophical texts – allows an enforced and renewed understanding of both. The examination of these issues is pursued from diverse perspectives and disciplines, probing the role biblical figures play in Levinas's thought and the manner by which to approach them. Do the biblical allusions serve in Levinas's thought merely as a rhetorical and literary device, as illustrations of his ideas, or perhaps they have a deeper philosophical meaning, which contributes to his project in general? Do the references to biblical figures work in Levinas's philosophy in a way that other literary figures are incapable of, and how do these references comply with his conflicted attitude towards literature?

Emmanuel Levinas has been largely criticized for describing his notion of fecundity by focusing mainly on the father-son relation. The close connection Levinas forms between fecundity and time may lead to the conclusion that the female is excluded from the time of sociality. Moreover, such an approach also raises a difficulty concerning Levinas’s view of time as constituted via the subject’s face-to-face relation with the Other. The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Levinas’s concept of fecundity that not only allows a fecund feminine, but also enables us to consider time beyond the limiting perspective of paternity.

Introduction The Bible, Ethics and Poetics Yael Lin 1) Subjectivity, Hospitality and Exile The Meaning of the Abrahamic Adventure in Levinas's Thought Ephraim Meir Welcoming the Other: Hospitality, Subjectivity and Otherness in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the Biblical Story, the Hospitality of Abraham Edna Langenthal 2) Suffering, Justice, and Forgiveness Cruel Justice, Responsibility, and Forgiveness: On Levinas's Reading of the Gibeonites Gary D. Mole The Power of Goodness - Rizpah Bat Aya in the Interpretation of Levinas Elisabeth Goldwyn 3) Choice and Election Ruth : The Meaning of a Conversion Catherine Chalier Jonah: Hero of the Impossible Escape: The Biblical Interruption of Philosophy in Levinas Eli Schonfeld 4) The Face, Death, and Responsibility Abel's Look - Levinas Reads Cain Michal Ben-Naftali The Mystery of the Red Heifer - Solved, to Nobody's Satisfaction Richard A. Cohen 5) Judaism, Messianism, and Zionism Joseph: The Voice from the Coffin Han...

The essential theme of my research is the deformalisation of the notion of time, asserted Emmanuel Levinas in a 1988 interview, toward the end of his long philosophical career. But while the notion of time is fundamental to the development of every key theme in Levinass thought -- the idea of the infinite, the issue of the alterity of the other, the face of the other, the question of our ethical relations with other people, the role of fecundity, speech and language, and radical responsibility -- his view of time remains obscure. Yael Lins exhaustive look at Levinass primary texts, both his philosophical writings and his writings on Judaism, brings together his various perspectives on time. Lin concludes that we can, indeed, extract a coherent and consistent conception of time from Levinass thought, one that is distinctly political.

On the face of it, Levinasian time is masculine. Emmanuel Levinas 's claim that the locus of time is found in the relationships formed between the individuals is closely tied to his interpretation of fecundity. The theme of fecundity provides a framework for characterizing the ethical relations between the subject and the Other, which from Levinas 's viewpoint, are required for the constitution of time. But when discussing fecundity, Levinas adopts an expUcit male perspective and vocabulary - fecundity is a masculine product produced via the father's fecund relationship with his son. Levinas claims that time is constituted according to the category of the father,1 and paternity is "the way of being other while being oneself."2 The ego becomes other to itself, since it involves a relationship with a son who is both Other and Same - the father both is and is not his son; the son is part of the father, but is also separate and independent of him. The familial context of paternity incorporates fecundity the son opens up for the father possibiUties that both are and are not his. These possibiUties reveal a future that is the father's but also the son's - it both is and is not the father's future.3 Apparently, only the father, through his relation with his son, is fecund, and as a result we might conclude that the feminine is merely the means for fecundity and in itself is not fecund. As discussed by thinkers such as Luce Irigaray and Tina Chanter, this way of understanding fecundity raises problems regarding the role of the feminine in Levinas's thought. Luce Irigaray criticizes Levinas and claims that in his thought the female is deprived of subjectivity, of a face, and only supports the temporal becoming of the male, in producing a son who, in being both Same and Other, allows the male subject to become Other to himself.4 Tina Chanter claims that in privileging the father and his relation to the son, and subordinating the feminine to the properly ethical and infinite relation, for Levinas the feminine serves as the ground and condition of ethics, but is itself excluded from the ethical.5 Nevertheless, one of the two aims of this essay is to offer an interpretation of Levinas's concept of fecundity that allows a fecund and ethical feminine. The view of fecundity as embedded in paternity also generates a difficulty regarding Levinas's interpretation of time as fecundity. It appears that for Levinas time is meaningful to and relevant only for the male. Such a view may entail that women are not part of Levinas's veritable time, and as Donna Brody claims, that the feminine cannot enter the infinite time of sociality.6 Kelly OUver, too, believes that Levinas's thought does not leave room for the possibility that the trans-substantiation7 of the father will take place in relation to a daughter, and concludes that the future produced by paternity is masculine.8 The difficulty here is that the understanding of fecund time as formed only through paternal relationships engenders a narrow structure of time, which is constituted through limited forms of relationships. Consequently, Levinas's assertions such as "the relationship with the other is time,"9 and "is not sociality something more than the source of our representation of time: is it not time itself?"10 seem less forceful. From this perspective, Levinas's view of time as neither exterior to the subject nor entirely contained in the subject, but rather constituted by one's relationship with the Other person, appears not as compelling. However, by focusing mainly on Totality and Infinity, the second aim of this essay is to offer an interpretation of Levinas's view of fecundity that enables us to consider time beyond the limiting perspective of father-son relationships. Levinas's choice of language in presenting the relationship of fecundity begs the following question - why does Levinas use terms such as "paternity" and "son" rather than "maternity" and "daughter," or non-gendered terms such as "parent," "child" or "offspring"? …