The new article The levinassian home – moving into itposted today in TxxTlab is not, I hope, for specialists only. The real issue underlying the linguistic technicalities discussed in it is, I think, the relation between our world and the words we use in describing it: our language. As a translator one tends to develop already an extra sensibility to tensions in that relation, but translating 'levinassian' adds a new urgency to it. Whilst we are used to worrying about the strain between reality and virtual reality, we forget how deeply our real world is marked by the way we speak about it – until a philosopher turns up with proposals for a different approach to that world, leading to a...
One of the first questions one can imagine about levinassian philosophy is probably: what –for heaven's sake– can I do with it? The first answer you may well expect to get is: be kinder, or at least less unkind, to yr neighbour. If you were to ask me, however, possible replies will be different. What about maybe asking some questions about yourself? I fear the popular interpretation of Levinas as an ethical thinker shies away from what he writes about ourselves, our separateness and our psychism or inner life. On the one hand he makes it easier, by presenting serious food for thought about it in his writings. On the other, the more you think about it, the harder it becomes to reach...
Summertime in Bergen, North-Holland! The musings of the rainy springtime fade away, whilst hot sunlight and light clothing are making way for renewed enjoyment. A favourable moment to announce the posting of my second article in the Bibliothèque about the Theatre of the Absurd in its relationship to Levinassian philosophy. I must confess: Waiting for Godot proved not an easy subject for an essay in comparative philosophical research, with its incredible series of subtly and/or crudely humoristic scenes with serious undertones. The resulting analysis is supported only by a small number of references – partly because I dispose here only of a recent reprint of the text with a different...
Did you discover yet the new article in TxxTlab – and did you enjoy close-reading some lines from Totality and Infinity? Still, maybe you have been wondering whether Levinas, with his levinassian grammar and vocabulary, is writing in a new, self-developed language. Starting to read a text almost in the very middle of a book, and trying to decipher what is showing up there – it can be a confusing experience, like stepping straight into a room filled with strangers speaking in a foreign tongue, or even in more than one. Or like entering the house of an acquaintance you have met previously only superficially. If so, one could even start fantasizing about a Levinassian -or even Levinassic- as...