Emmanuel Levinas: a snapshot – The Philosophers’ Magazine Archive

https://archive.philosophersmag.com/emmanuel-levinas-a-snapshot/

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Levinas’s philosophy is clearly governed by a deep-seated pacifism. In fact, it is one of Levinas’s central contentions that Western philosophy is wedded to a counter-ethical process of conflict. It is this radical idea that underpins Levinas’s first magnum opus, Totality and Infinity (1961). This treatise opens with a discussion of war – an all-encompassing, as well as literal term for conflict. Levinas states that it is the Western preoccupation with the truth that generates this conflict. In short, if one is able to apprehend the truth, one is essentially self-sufficient or “total”. For Levinas, this reassuring sense of totality is disastrous for it harbours an underlying antagonism towards others who are liable to challenge one’s authority.

Levinas traces this conception of totality back to the teachings of Socrates and Plato. According to classical authority, the self is literally self-contained – it is able to contain the truth. For Levinas, this spirit of autonomy was perpetuated in the work of philosophers as diverse as Plotinus, Bishop Berkeley and Hegel. In addition, Levinas also detected a return to this spirit of self-sufficiency in the phenomenological work of his former tutors, Husserl and Heidegger.

In an attempt to evade this tide of thought, Levinas turned his attention to the constitution of subjectivity. For Levinas, far from being self-sufficient or total, the self can only exist through reference to the non-self. In short, self-knowledge presupposes the existence of a power infinitely greater than oneself. Echoing the famous Cartesian cosmological argument, Levinas thus suggests that the subject is indebted to the idea of infinity. In direct opposition to contemporary continental thought, Levinas thus reinstates the subject – a subject that encounters itself through the mediation of an-Other. According to Levinas’s intricate argument, such an encounter precedes the disastrous desire for truth.

Crucially, Levinas argues that the encounter between the self and the Other is always passive. In slightly different terms, one welcomes the Other as the measure of one’s own being. It would seem to follow that one’s subjectivity depends upon a non-aggressive or non-violent interface. Given its passive nature, Levinas concludes that this interface is a proto-ethical moment that precedes all other ethical discourse. In this way Levinas undercuts traditional ethical debate.

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Today, Levinas’s ethical thought is frequently discussed in relation to diverse academic fields beyond the traditional boundaries of philosophy. Disparate fields such as sociology, literary theory, historiography and anthropology have all benefited from the priority Levinas accorded to “the Other”. This ubiquity stands as testimony to both Levinas’s profundity and growing contemporary relevance.

At the time of writing, Lawrence R Harvey was teaching and completing his doctoral thesis on Levinas and the ethics of representation.

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Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

A day with my own self, such peaceful hours
The inner seas make music as they roll
And in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

The rain comes down in cold but gentle showers
Desiring  to  give moisture to all souls
A symbol of  the value of quiet hours

In Northern hills we looked for  Durham owls
They hunt by day to keep their bodies whole
While in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

My loved one was a native of those towers
Highcliff Nab and Hasty Bank  called home
My days with him a-wandering there for hours

As he died , deep in my heart I howled
I held his hands, remembered , paid the toll
While in the ground the worms digest  the sour

Lying in the heather  we had roamed 
May God  have mercy on his  homing soul
Now I enjoy   in reverie our hours
Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

 

 

 

Praise the kettle

Oh, lidded kettle boil me water fast
I cannot live without your heated blast
Your spout is small but perfect for its use
And, as your lid is hinged. it can’t get lost

An electric kettle made by Russell Hobbs
A teapot with a spout and lid with knob
Are what the Britons need in times of storm
If crisis comes, we need tea hot,not warm

I don’t object to diverse kettle brands.
We had a coal fire once with kettle stand.
Its metal black from soot and burned by coke
We made our neighbours tea which seemed to smoke.

Ah,kettle ,instrument of civil life
We cannot boil our water on a knife

Everybody needs to be bad enough

My own photograph

Are you a bad enough parent? We’ve heard of good enough mothers through the work of Dr DW Winnicot, but surely mothers need to be bad as well and fathers do but how bad do they need to be?

Murdering their children will be too bad, but never disagreeing with them will be too good

Be bad enough to others to make sure you are respecting your own boundaries you know it makes sense and you read it here first in a similar manner you need your baby to be bad enough because if the baby is too good she will be ignored and made use of by unkind parents

Everybody needs to be a little bit bad enough to preserve their own self while living in this curious unequal society

You are not bad enough

I had a heart attack but when I got to the hospital the doctor said

It’s not bad enough but you can come back if you die

I went to the dentist but he didn’t do anything because he said my teeth were not bad enough. An abscess has formed on the bottom of one of my teeth but he said it’s not big enough 

I wanted a hip replacement replacement but the surgeon said it’s not bad enough

Come back when you can’t  crawl

I was very depressed so I was sent to see a psychiatrist and he said it’s not bad enough yet wait till you can’t eat sleep speak read or write.

So I decided to go to hell but when I got there Satan said you’re not bad enough. Go away and commit some sins..

So I went to heaven and it’s really lovely but you have to die first

I had a ready meal in the fridge but it looks as if it’s a gone bad that my husband said  it’s not bad enough to throw  away so we ate it and were sick. But we were not sick enough to go to a and e especially at the North Middlesex University Hospital

I will soon empty Britain when I’m the prime minister

I promise you that when I am the prime minister I will deport two million asylum seekers in the first month.

And after that it will go up exponentially so I will deport 4 million in the second month eight million in the third month in 16 million in the fourth month

If I continue in the same way how long will it take to completely empty the country?.

After that I will start with the illegal immigrants such as all those descended from the Normans .

Keep Britain empty especially from deserving asylum receivers.

Don’t waste your vote

The Unconscious Self Has More Answers Than We Think | by Thomas Oppong | Mystic Minds | Medium

The Unconscious Self Has More Answers Than We Think | by Thomas Oppong | Mystic Minds | Medium https://share.google/tiIF4dHRFVbUgXT5v

Cracked shall be the golden bowl

Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]

We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few  of my thoughts not  about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I could n’t manage that after seeing the play.

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.

Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.

She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.

Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.

Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.

We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take

Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.

Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.

And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.

As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.

Conception is a game of chance;
We come to be by happenstance.

we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.

We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm

The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.

For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.

Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?

And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.

Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.

Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.

Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged  only 25 years:

I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

Oh, gentle Light

I ‘ll try to get it right for one more time
You did not converse with me in words
You were simply present in your Light

Nowhere did I feel your power and might
You were no eagle, but a strong wild bird
I ‘ll try to get it right just one more time.

Who made our language with its subtle rhymes?
The ancient people had their well trained Scribes
You were always there,oh gentle Light

You gave me warmth, you changed my too fixed sight
A comforter , a Spirit, how describe?
I ‘ll try to get it right a final time.

The agony inside me lost its bite
I wanted to go on, to be alive
You do not always show your golden Light

We do not know when we at last arrive
We do not reach this meeting place by strife
I ‘ve tried to get it right this final time
I never saw such Gold until that night

Love is waiting

At the very edge of human sight
Places we don’t go, till in despair
Love is waiting like a golden light

The world in panic, will the virus bite
Noone ever said this world is fair
At the very edge of human sight

Is there really danger of such might,
Where our hidden fears emerged dark ,bare?
Love is fading where’s the sun, the light?

Panic like a virus can ignite
Responses that are worse than germs out there
At the very rim of human sight

Our defences that are usually adroit
Now lie like dead young soldiers unrepaired
Love is fading to a weaker light

The still,small voice is quieter than a bird
The storm is passing by, will it be heard?
At the very edge of human sight
Love is dying,looks like candlelight

THE MEMORY LASTS

midsummer days evoke the trancelike past
where children played in joyous, daisied fields
with buttercups so bright the memory lasts
a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.

those stones and leaves and many coloured flowers
were gathered into images that glow
yet later we forget those treasured hours
when for a while we lived in life’s deep flow

we did not look and see,but felt at one
we lived as did the birds high in the trees
now we write , experiencing has gone
we cannot live like flowers filled with bright bees

to lose ourselves in nature is a joy
which to our adult selves we must restore

Annie falls over in the mud

  • Stan was sweeping the garden path.He had a stiff broom with a small head that was useful for cleaning the edges of the steps.Emile, his beautiful cat was sitting in the old apple tree gazing down on Stan.
    “Is it time for coffee yet,”Stan asked himself.He had forgotten to put on his watch.
    Suddenly he heard a shriek.He peered through a hole in the fence.His neighbor Annie was lying on her back in some mud.
    “Hang on,I’ll come round!” he called.
    There was a gate in the old fence which was rarely locked
    since Annie loved to drop in on Stan.
    “Oh,Annie,how are you feeling?” he asked her anxiously.
    “Bloody annoyed.I’ve only just bought these,”Not your daughter’s jeans” and now I’ve torn them,” she replied politely.
    “But you don’t have a daughter!” he informed her loudly.
    “I know that.It’s just they are better cut for the mature figure.”
    “Your figure is not mature.You are quite slender.my dear,” he murmured lovingly.
    “Well,I never feel happy with it!” she said mutinously.
    “Whereas I am very happy feeling it,” he responded romantically.
    Tears came into her green eyes lined with purple eye shadow.Alas,it was not waterproof and purple rivulets ran down her cheeks across the peach blusher with which she had valiantly decorated herself earlier.
    “Can you get up?” he asked tenderly.
    “Yes, but it would be nice if you picked me up.”
    He leaned over her and licked the purple streams of tears off her cheeks.
    “I hope it’s not poisonous,” she murmured.
    Then with the aid of Emile,he lifted her to her feet and helped her into her large trendy kitchen.
    The kettle switched itself on as they entered and a robotic voice asked if they’d like coffee.
    “God in heaven,what the hell is that?” he cried confusedly.
    “It’s my new computerized hot drink maker.After that fall I think a double espresso would be good.”
    Emile ran in and asked for coffee too.
    “Emile,you usually have milk,”Stan reminded him softly.
    “Well,coffee is a new taste for me but I like a little.”
    the cat whispered sweetly.
    “I’ll give you some of mine in a saucer,” Stan replied.
    Emile began to sob.
    “Why Emile,whatever is wrong?”
    “I want a cup and saucer just like you” the cat howled.
    But you have no hands,Emile,” Stan reminded him.
    The poor cat was crying loudly now.So Stan rang 999.
    “Can you please send the emergency ambulance round.the cat’s crying and all his hankies are in the wash.”#
    Soon Dave,the transvestite paramedic appeared.
    “I love your light teal kitchen,” he informed Annie,
    “And your eyes look like two deep pools in a coal mine.”
    She slapped his cheek naughtily.
    “Have a look at Emile” she ordered him sweetly.
    He turned to the cat who was sitting on the dark pine table.
    “Here,Emile,I got you some Kleenex for Cats in Sainsbury’s.” he said gaily.
    “I want a real hanky,”cried Emile.Dave took a clean hanky from his own pocket and dried the cats tears.
    “What made you cry.Are you feeling bad.”
    “Yes,I want to go to Cafe Nero,” Emile mioawed.
    “Who told you about that?”
    “Another cat down the road has been and he said it’s lovely for people watching.”
    “The town is not safe for cats like you,Emile.”
    Dave urbanely replied,
    “But when summer come I’ll take you to the out of town
    Marks and Spencer’s.They have a cat’s coffee corner upstairs.”
    “Wow,isn’t it amazing,”Stan wondered out loud.
    So Dave poured out the coffee and they all sat down and
    discussed Ray Monk’s Life of Wittgenstein.
    Ray has discovered that Wittgenstein liked cats but as he moved around quite a bit,he never owned his own cat
    though Elizabeth Anscombe let him play with her three cats now and then.
    We may all be different but most of us value the love of a good cat.Even boiling their hankies and ironing them is very nice.We all have this problem though.
    Where can a cat carry his own hanky?
    Do cats need shoulder bags?
    What would Wittgenstei

With friends like these …

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/08/choosing-friends-friendship-breakdown?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Neuroscientists have shown that our brain does not reveal to us the world as it is, but rather as possible interpretations of what is going on around us, drawn from our past experience. Since no two people ever have exactly the same experience, no two people ever see anything in exactly the same way.

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Where is the light?

Where is that light which once consoled me?

That held me and  brought love into my heart

Why am I in this darkness without you?

And from all human contact feel apart?

Now I’m old, I’m crippled and ignored.

Ignored by Man but also split from God

Where can I find my comfort in this life?

Shall I give up and wait for death instead?

Where can I find my peace from all this strife?

In despair I lie all day in bed

We cannot force the holy and the good

But wait in silence and  in taut despair

How to make such darkness home to light?

Confused  and lost, where is my love tonight?

I am a gleaming aubergine

I am a gleaming aubergine
in an oval dish
My purple skin is polished
Like BBC English.

I await my fate for I am ripe
My seeds fulfil my wish
Soon,soon the knife will cut me up
As corn in fields is threshed.

I’d rather lie in Egypt’s soil
By birds and insects bit
But here I am in England
Where irony is wit.

After cutting comes the salt
As in a bowl I sit
For I am moist like lady’s parts
As poets have much writ.

Moussaka is my destiny
And as you bite and chew
I shall be what Jesus was
And give my grace to you

I am fried in olive oil
To give me flavour ripe.
Dried in cloth and placed in pot
Atop the meat I ride.

My colour brings all eyes to me
As I lie in a heap.
Some like carrot heads so bright
Royal purple is my state.

So better than a lamb I am
For a sacrifice.
I am proud and gleam like gold
As Caesar-like I’m knifed.

My seeds through sewers deep shall pass
And somewhere come to grief.
I shall grow again and be
Portrayed by a leaf.

Luminosity

Art by author

Virtuosity,

,….being very charitable.

Precocity,,,going mad before most of us do

Animosity,,,. ,…kindness to animals

Ferocity,,.,,having iron teeth and using them.

Democracy,,…. demons running a country.

Humorisity,,,….getting a degree in Yankee jokes

Criminology,,,, understanding criminals

Religiosity,,,.misinterpreting love.

Tasmania,,…going mad in the sunshine.

Curiosity,,,.a desire to heal the sick

Originality,….

The desire to make a fresh start in life.

A mirage–a mirror that tells your age

Humour and poetry

img_20190510_163949https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/humor-and-poetry

Extract:

In 1993, I took a left turn one day out of my MFA program and found myself at the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. There I discovered several poets who were funny for the sake of being funny. Particularly Hal Sirowitz from New York (“don’t stick your arm out the window, mother said” and Matt Cook from Milwaukee (“it was easy to write the Great American Novel, back when there were only five American novels”) Both poets initially delighted me and confounded me: There are no similes, a voice in my head said. What would Tom Lux (my first teacher) say? the voice continued. Despite my resistance, I believe those poets gave me a kind of permission to explore humor a little more vigorously in my second book, The Forgiveness Parade (1998), for “I thought the word loin and the word lion were the same thing. I thought celibate was a kind of fish”. Perhaps in that book there were places where I was too vigorous in my pursuit: looking back there are a few poems that are just a little too jokey somehow, a little one-dimensional.

I am becoming aware of how some humor can set a roadblock for the poetic speaker, making it impossible for the speaker to get back to a serious place. And how some other (less frequent) uses of humor can leave that door open. I want to leave that door open

Dust motes dancing

I saw the dust motes singing in soft air
The yellow grey, the light where nothing’s clear
The silent chorus hurts me as I stare

The heart feels unprotected, as if bare
Only when we’re lonely are we here
I saw the dust motes dancing in soft air

The little things we don’t see till we care
The eyes that signal bring to birth our fear
The silent chorus gabbles as I stare

The Essex fields are huge like mass despair
Yet summer poppies bright make them so dear
I saw the dust motes dancing on fresh air

Life is like a vehicle we steer
Yet unseen hands in wisdom change the gear
I heard the dust motes singing in soft air
The small still chorus tells me what to dare

When you are able to relax yet your mind is not idle the poet John Keats called this ‘diligent indolence’

When you’re trying to do a very hard Su doku puzzle or even an easy one it’s very tempting to make a big effort to try a very hard to do it.

But in fact this is the wrong approach. Yes you have to read all the information and you have to know what you meant to do to solve the problem but tensing your muscles and trying hard will not help you to do it

The mind is much bigger than we think and once we’ve got the general information the mind itself will be pondering over the problem and will come up with answers

So why don’t we do this normally? I suppose we don’t like to rely on something or someone else we want to feel we’ve done it all by ourselves but we’re never really by ourselves because we’ve always got to the deeper parts of the mind the part that produces dreams and the remembers things and learns things that you didn’t know that you were learning

I think the French used to call this part of the mind

L’autre moi.

The other me.

But this is not talked about at school or even at university. It could be that fear of being dependent on another person when your parents were harsh or punitive may  make you want you to rely only on yourself.

It is true that you have to cultivate your garden in other words you’ve got to know something about the problem and I’ve done the necessary reading and preperation or even talk to someone about it

But after that you’ve got to rely on your un conscious mind.

Some people may have a closer relationship where their unconscious than others do

I have read this approach helps in sport for example playing tennis is described in the book

A life of one’s own’ by Marion Milner’ so

If you’re interested in art you might like that book also or just generally well worth reading

Relaxation is the most important skill or should we call it a skill when it should come naturally to us?

Western society values efforts and hard work and of course there’s always a certain amount of that in any situation like running a home for example but even that can be done in a more relaxed manner then we think.

My grandad was a coal miner for 50 years starting at the age of 14 and I don’t know what he would have said about relaxing at work but he  was very proud of himself. He brought up six children alone as well and he used to work nights. But it did have some bad consequences like my mother always had problem sleeping. Especially when she was left in the same situation after 11 years of marriage.

The other factor is that tension is one way that we control our feelings and if we let go of the tension we may hear some interesting idea coming from unconscious mind but we might also feel some feelings that we don’t want to feel because we’re frightened of them sometimes with good cause.

When I was at school I was trying to solve a mathematical problem with no luck until I went to bed. When I closed my eyes I saw the numbers I had been trying to deal with rearranging themselves into a new pattern and suddenly I saw the solution. It was a mystical experience.

It doesn’t mean that if you are relaxed you will never suffer pain again you may not suffer the same kind of pain that you did when you were trying to do your homework when you were 15 years old but there is always pain and suffering in different degrees from not being able to have the clothes that you want when you’re a teenager to suddenly realizing a person you thought was a friend is actually someone who doesn’t like you but you’ll never been able to see it before.

Then there’s marriage and it’s problems: life is never easy for most of us. We can’t envy the royal family either.