Totality and Infinity

1
Totality and Infinity
Section II Interiority and Economy
C. I and Dependence
D. The Dwelling
Jeremy Chen Prof. Chung-Hsiung Lai Levinas Study
Group 8 Nov 2008
2
C. I and Dependence
1. Joy and Its Morrows
Egoism dependent independence
it is enjoyment of something else, never of
itself (143).
The movement to self in enjoyment and happiness
marks the sufficiency of the Ithe unrootedness
of this sufficiency in the insufficiency of
living from (143).
The sufficiency of the independence of I is built
on the dependence of something else.
I
Non-I
What it lives from
I
VS
The prior agreement existed the acceptance or
refusal of what we live from in other words,
this agreement constitutes its being at home with
itself which is the essence of I, the egoism of I.
3
The veritable position of the I in time consists
in interrupting time by punctuating it with
beginnings. This is produced in the form of
action (143 p1).
Characteristics of enjoyment
4
2. The Love of Life
The emptiness felt implies that the need which
becomes aware of it abides already in the midst
of an enjoymentbe it that of the air one
breathes (144-5).
Already and henceforth life is loved (145).
love of life, a pre-established harmony (145).
Whats love of life?
NEED
In its opposition to being the I seeks refuge in
being itself (146).
Suffering at the same time despairs for being
riveted to beingand loves the being to which it
is riveted (146).
5
LABOR
Welcoming of the Other
Not a final signification
Future is just an interval of time
Changing possibility
3. Enjoyment and Separation
The ambiguity of a constitution in which the
world represented conditions the act of
representing is the way of being of him who is
not simply posited but posit himself (147).
Being
Humans live in the interiority, and the
inferiority of enjoyment is the separation which
can be produced in the economy of being.
SEPARATION
Material a born being time a temporality
6
FREEDOM
as the possibility of commencement, referring
to happiness, to the marvel of the good time
standing out from the continuity of the hours, is
the production of the I and not one experience
among others that happens to the I (148).
INTERIORITY articulation of separation
Not an idea opposed to transcendence
INTERIORITY open and closed
insecurity troubling its fundamental security
(149).
7
D. The Dwelling
1. Habitation
Intimacy of home
incarnation of consciousness and inhabitation
civilization of labor and possession
DWELLING recollection in the intimacy of the
home pre-exist.
a work of separation, concretized as existence in
a dwelling (providing essential energy for
interiority) 154.
Recollection
2. Habitation and the Feminine
Recollection is a suspension of the immediate
reactions the world solicits in view of a greater
attention to oneself, ones possibilities, and
the situation.
its not concerning about the enjoyment, but the
bare fact of existing which is like the
distance between my familiarity/intimacy and
existence.
8
familiarity and intimacy are produced as a
gentleness spreading over the face of things.
conformity of nature with needs and affection for
that I
presuppose its an intimacy with someone
Other not only reveals in a plastic image but
also a simultaneous presence (Its simultaneity
comes from its essence of discretion).
Woman is the condition for recollection, the
primary hospitable welcome, the interiority of
the Home and habitation.
Habitation is not yet the transcendence of
language, but the thou tu of familiarity a
language without teaching, a silent language, an
understanding without words, an expression in
secret.
feminine alterity which situated on another plane
than language.
this alterity opens up all the possibilities of
the transcendent relationship with the Other.
only on the ground of the full human personality,
the interiorization with woman opens up the
dimension of interiority.
9
Energy of the separation familiarity is an
accomplishment, constituting dwelling and
habitation. ? producing NEW RELATIONS WITH
ELEMENTS.
3. The Home and Possession
Home is set on the known and unknown (anonymous)
with elements and its primordial function is to
opening a utopia for the I. ? welcoming par
excellence, welcome in itselfthe feminine
being ? while pondering upon the existing
question, the immediate enjoyment is postponed.
But this postpone or separation is not a complete
isolation form the elements instead, its both
removal and connection. That is, the disposal of
the I to take or to leavepresupposes the
discovering of the world. Through the grasping
and recollecting, the separated I recollects
itself in its dwelling. ? but the world is not
produced through this energy, which postpones and
recollects.
How this home is possessed, acquired and rendered
interior? 1) An egoist and grasping some durable
substance from the elements. 2) Possession isnt
to possess movable goods, but being hospital for
proprietors of those substances.
4. Possession and Labor
10
5. Labor, the Body and Consciousness
Primary relation of enjoyment the univocal
position of being simultaneously both
self-sufficient and depended
constituting a body a suffering with alienation
in enjoyment.
11
Enjoyment, which makes labor or acquisition
possible, is the postponement of death or
foundering in the dimension of time.
labor makes a will incarnated to ward off the
threat which giving oneself the distance.
seeking or catching hold of the goal a thrust in
void, at random.
12
Thanks