This double tension, together with his hyper-sensitive way of searching for parallel movements in language and in the world, makes studying Levinas an exercise that can be as exacting as it is rewarding.
The one thing I cannot do however, being extraneous to the English language myself, is suggesting alternatives for words that do not seem quite up to the tasks entrusted to them by Levinas. What I can do, is dreaming of even further possibilities in linguistic cross-pollination between languages – thinking for instance of the curious fact that 'habitation' in English normally is expressed as 'living'. However, in this study of levinassian 'economics' I am leaving aside the facinating chapter about 'living from…', in order not to complicate things more than necessary.
With all this serious disputation the spontaneously improvised comments to the previous posting by Michael Smith regretfully must await a serious reaction till next time. Only one short anecdote may serve here as an opening – dating from the time I studied Autrement qu'etre with a group of interested amateurs. Reading together the passages about responsibility and material maternity in what is p. 108 in the Lingis translation, we suddenly all felt it culminating in the sentence : It is not a flight into the void, but a movement into fullness, the anguish of contraction and breakup' – an almost perfect description, be it by a man, of childbirth!