Have you read “The House of Spirits”? I think that Pablo Neruda has a somewhat candid cameo as “the poet”.

“most of the world stayed silent at the moment when the Jews needed help the most…” The Holocaust was not limited to the Jews – and this is kind of funny seeing how the Other is contextual; In Nazi Germany or under a like-minded dictator, the Other was not-Aryan, which could be a plethora of things.

But this is taking the self/other binary to a whole different level than what I’m used to – than what I used in that Takemoto post. I perceive your use of “violence” to be in a very “obscure” sense – obviously not physical (and/or literal) but, rather, in a problematic sense. I would have said “the problematics of existence” – although they both have different connotations violence seemingly misled me at first.

So in Levinasian philosophy, the self is the center (center of what? is the self contained with the body? the universe?), and has to become existent, has to achieve hypostasis – the existents become existent.

So this existence is that violence – the reduction of the other – the birth of the self-in-existence? That is the violence of “there is”. Or rather, the violence of is-ing.

“My “close relations” or “my people” are already others, and, for them, I demand justice” So the Other is not in that political sense – black/white – gay/straight and so forth, but, strictly, in that self-other dichotomy.

In that case I don’t get how there can be a “third party” a non-self, but simultaneously a non-other. It seems like the self-other binary is holistic and comprises the entirety of the universe, or so Levi-Strauss may say, but that’s different philosophy. Does this third person act as a mediator? I can’t grasp how: “The interpersonal relation I establish with the Other, I must also establish with other men.” So these “other men” are clearly distinguished from that Other, insofar as that Other is not limited to his half of the holistic binary – then the binary is not holistic. And so perhaps this is “justice”? The removal of the binary – the equal treatment of humanity – even though this treatment (inasmuch as any kind of treatment) is in itself violent or violence.

Hard to wrap your head around, having not engaged these authors fully, to say the least.

It was an interesting read though, violence and self. These are things I’ve not thought about, but probably will be questioned this semester as I have a required ethics course I’m taking. As for myself, I enjoy a peace within, but I still believe justification for judgment is applicable on larger scales, though I think the idea of control plays into that justification much too often; I’m from the USA, we are always in the midst of ethical justification for control, many absolutists live here.

Violence, a struggle within. We are violent naturally, but no less naturally than the “violence” of interstellar collisions. Yet, we have the ability to structure our violence within, through mind, or relax our standards to become murderers of men, or not. It is very boggling. At some part in the reading, I felt like I should become a monk.

Well, congrats on 150 posts! This was a good entry to be that marker.

[WP needs the read but no comment button...]

I’m glad to see you back around here as well. I’m sorry for neglecting your site, as much as others – I haven’t really got online for … umm … a long time, and I just thought a lot about different things, so… yeah, this was the result. Scary, but you get the picture.

And I don’t think passing judgment is neccesarily a bad thing. Believe it or not. In fact, I think it’s a very human thing. But over all it was a really good post and I’m glad to see you back

Thanks for reading and trying to understand this celebratory (or incunabular) spiel of mine. I appreciate it.

@IKnight

I haven’t read Being and Nothingness. If anything, I’d gladly wallow more in Joyce’s Ulysses or Finnegans wake (and I’m averse to those novels already, although I’m exerting great effort to start and finish Finnegans Wake). 800 pages of pure philosophical treatise isn’t exactly my cup of tea. As for Levinas, there were only a few disjoint chapters of his philosophy that I’ve read, but it was so pervasive and interesting that I was, shall we say, besotted with it.

Levinas dislikes all other Western philosophy because they have been violent: they always relate what is other to what is the self.

Bah, I know I seem to be speaking nonsense, but I think meaning is there. Somewhere. O_O

Anyway, congrats on 150 posts.

Totali is Filipino too … somewhat.