The Ethics of the Other

Ethics of the Other

After having breakfast with the Arnold family and losing miserably at foosball to 10 year old Jonah, I went home. I had hopes of working out but I was incredibly tired from the weekend and still sore. My right eye and right side of my nose throbbed a bit. I went home took a nap and went to a SuperBowl party. I was semi-rooting for the Bears, but like most of the other guys at the party I was more interested in the commercials. I found the opening act of Cirque Du Soleil with Brito’s costumes lots of fun, but could not imagine what person thought that dancing butterflies and big puffy balloons in bright colors and patterns would appeal to the masses of Superbowl watches. Perhaps they were trying a little something for everyone. But then again, this year they asked Prince to sing so that too seemed to be a very odd choice. In other words it was the queerest SuperBowl I have ever watched. Not a bad one to actually see.

I left during halftime to meet the guys from Jewish Mosaic for dinner. We had amazing Vietanamese food—seriously the best Vietnamese food I have ever have. Afterwards, we went to see Children of Men with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. I am not sure if I was just bored with this post-apocalyptic drama where reproduction has gone by the wayside or if I wasn’t feeling well. Either way, half way through I wanted to be in bed asleep. Not a good sign when one goes to an action flick.

I took Monday pretty easy. Had a voice lesson, went to the acupuncturist who used tiny Korean needles on my face.

Tuesday was an interesting day. I attended the Anti-Defamation League’s civil right’s luncheon where they were honoring reporter William Hosokawa and former Denver mayor Federico Peña. Both had impressive biographies. Bill Hosokawa is a retired Japanese reporter for the Rocky Mountain Times who endured both the trials of being told by his university that no one would hire a Japanese journalist and denied placements, and the far worse trial of being forced into the Japanese internment camps during the war. With little rancor in his voice, he told his story of the journey he made as a Japanese American who was denied many opportunities to being a successful journalist and advocate for human rights..

Frederico Pena, a powerhouse of a mayor has been a visionary for Denver. He pioneered historic preservation in Denver and was a champion for the arts. He nbotably served as Transportation Secretary under Clinton, but he was awarded at the luncheon for his work on immigration rights. He spoke very movingly about his ambivalence of taking on another issue wondering whether he had already given his “due” on important issues. However, his wife and his step daughter convinced him that his voice was needed in the immigration struggle. His stepdaughter told him, if you are going to participate in the rally, go big or don’t go at all.

Later that evening, I went to the first of 3 master classes on the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas given by scholar Claire Katz. He wrote of the ethics of the other. Similar to Buber, he spoke of godliness in theother, but took the relationship further in outlining our inherent responsibility to the other. Some would argue, that his vision was burdensome and overly involved. Though anyone involved in social justice would be compelled and challenged by his philosophy.

From Wikipedia:
Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani."
Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strabourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot, which later on turned into more than a friendship. Later he met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl..
According to his New York Times obituary, Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's Nazism. Levinas wrote "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."
After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish university in Paris, the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne 1973, from which he retired in 1979.
In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy." For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Levinas called "ontology"). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom(the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth."
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[2]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny. One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.

The master class began with a look of Levinas prescient crtiquie of Hitler’s philosophy and its incompatiability with Christianity and the danger of its collusion . It was an interesting class and it was followed by a book group discussion at Professor Pessin’s home (a funky concrete loft in SoDo) about Katz’s book Levinas, Judaism and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca. What a great evening! While many of the people there were into the philosophical nuances of his position, I kept asking the baser questions about practical application and how to apply Levinas’ vision to contemporary Jewish life.

What an interesting day, where the awards banquet served as a background for the philosophy I was studyig.