Session 8
- Topics: Levinas on Speech/Discourse, The “Face,” and Human Responsibility
- Reading: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, 194-204; 215-219.
- What does Levinas mean when he claims that “speech proceeds from absolute difference?” How does this relate to his understanding of discourse and the “formal work of language?”
- How does the “face” put the “I” in question (i.e. as a “moral summons,” etc.)?
- Explain Levinas’ central claim that the Other, “rather than limiting the freedom of the same, founds and justifies it by calling it to responsibility…” “…by arousing my goodness.”