Alterity and the call of conscience: Heidegger,Levinas, and Ricoeur

Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that there is a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful.     

Kierkegaard,Repetition and Ethical Constancy

How can a person forge a stable ethical identity over time? On one view, ethical constancy means reapplying the same moral rules. On a rival view, it means continually adapting to one's ethical context in a way that allows one to be recognized as the same practical agent. Focusing on his thinking about repetition, I show how Kierkegaard offers a critical perspective on both these views. From this perspective, neither view can do justice to our vulnerability to certain kinds of crisis, in which our ethical self‐understanding is radically undermined. I further examine his alternative account of ethical constancy, by clarifying Kierkegaard's idea of a ‘second ethics’, as addressed to those who feel ethically powerless and as requiring an ongoing process of self‐transformation.     

A challenge to ‘self’ centred ‘psycho’: Therapy as an introduction to an ‘inter-relational therapy’

This paper focuses on ‘psychotherapy’, particularly exploring the emphasis on the ‘psyche’. The term ‘psyche’ is described as potentially having different interpretations depending on the underlying ontological assumptions that influence its understanding and these, it is suggested, will have considerable implications for the therapy that identifies with the label ‘psychotherapy’. Two very different ontological perspectives are highlighted in this paper in order to illustrate the different conception of the term ‘psyche’; firstly, Freud’s interpretation of what is meant by ‘psyche’, which is then contrasted with a phenomenological perspective, with reference to the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger. Both the Freudian and phenomenological approaches are then criticised for focusing on, what is described here as, an egocentric perspective and it is suggested that the term ‘psycho-therapy’ will inevitably lead to a preoccupation with putting the ‘self’ first as a basis for relating to the external world. An alternative term, ‘Inter-relational therapy’, is presented based on the ideas of Levinas and MacMurray, both of who are critical of a cultural preoccupation with focusing on the ‘self’ and suggest a need to acknowledge relationships with the external world, including the other people that populate it, prior to a ‘self’ reflective process.     

Kierkegaard,Levinas and the Question of Escaping Metaphysics

While Kierkegaard and Levinas may well be thought of as religious or ethical thinkers, I should not like the reader to be misled by this into assuming that this article is primarily about religion or ethics. Rather, my main concern may more properly be described as metaphysical or epistemological, for I am interested in certain styles of thinking that underlie the religious/ethical themes dealt with here. Thus, this article aims to show that in relation to traditional metaphysical styles, and to each other, the thinking of Kierkegaard and Levinas is parallel and divergent in complex ways. Both share a mistrust of modernist metaphysics, which they aim to escape by pointing to the way in which conceptions of metaphysical totalities (or systems) are breached by a destabilising infinity already internal to them. This anticipates later postmodern styles of thinking which challenge modern metaphysics, its resentment against time, and its confidence in human power to represent all that is by means of closed systems of interpretation. To the extent that they offer philosophical alternatives that accommodate the temporal, both have had highly significant contributions to make to a postmodern style of thinking that has implications not limited to religion or ethics. A study of the philosophical strategies of these two thinkers, where they seem to succeed or fall short in relation to each other and to the traditional strategies of metaphysics, should go some way toward clarification of what I believe to be the most viable style of thinking for a postmodern world. As I see it, one is confronted with three options. The first, represented by Kierkegaard’s ‘infinite resignation,’ may be associated with a Derridean style of thinking. Kierkegaard himself abandons this in favour of a style of thinking for which faith and revelation stand as metaphors. Levinas, in contrast, offers an alternative whose leitmotif is ethical responsibility. I shall try to show in the end that the first of these, which best accommodates the ‘undecidability’ of a middle ground, is the most suitable for contemporary thinkers.     

Does the Reversibility Thesis Deliver All That Merleau‐Ponty Claims It Can?

Merleau‐Ponty's reversibility thesis argues that self, other and world are inherently relational, interdependent at the level of ontology. What is at stake in the reversibility thesis is whether it overcomes skeptical objections in both assuring real communication and avoiding solipsism in assuring real difference; the Other must be a genuine, irreducible Other. It is objected that across the domains of reversibility, symmetry and reciprocity are not guaranteed. I argue that this is a non‐problem; rather the potentialities for asymmetry and non reciprocity in fact guarantee the irreducibility of the Other; reversibility needs to be appreciated as dialectical or aesthetic, not as a literal or ‘mechanistic’ reversal. A further criticism targets the viability of ontology itself, whether alterity is ever compatible with ontology. This paper considers these objections from two of Merleau‐Ponty's contemporaries—Claude Lefort and Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas developed a philosophy which while intersecting with Merleau‐Ponty's at important junctures, nonetheless arrived at an entirely different destination. I argue alongside Martin Dillon against the objections of Lefort, and alongside Dan Zahavi against the objections of Levinas. Both of these interpreters, I propose remain faithful to the core directions and spirit of Merleau‐Ponty's endeavours without becoming diverted by the less significant inconsistencies.     

Radical Passivity: Ethical Problem or Solution? A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

In our present-day Western society, there has been an increasing tendency towards individualism and indifference and away from altruism and empathy. This has led to a resurgence of ethical concerns in contemporary Continental philosophy. Following the thinking of philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas, ethics has come to be defined in terms of a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Levinas claims that taking care of others in need is not a free, rational decision, but a fundamental responsibility that is pre-consciously felt. We are passively obligated before we can actively choose to help. Levinas therefore argues that the needy other incapacitates our normal selfish ways, and that this ‘radical passivity’ enables us to recognise our inherent responsibility towards others in need. Levinas’s own thinking on this subject is not unambiguous, however. While his early works stress the fact that we cannot care for others if we do not first take care of ourselves, his later works focus exclusively on the other as locus of our ethical responsibility. Following this line of thinking, a false opposition has emerged between an absolutised egoism and a crushing altruism that threatens to undermine the recent resurgence of ethical concerns. For how can we continue to care for others if we fail to recognise the duties we have towards ourselves? Moreover, what is the moral significance of responsible action if it is not freely chosen but passively imposed?     

Of Levinas’ ‘structure’ in address to his four ‘others’

It has long been accepted that one of Levinas’ major concerns is to establish an ethics of responsibility for the ‘other.’ Yet it has been deemed for decades, even by Levinasians, that his approach to that concern is ‘unsystematic’ and ‘not consistent.’ That situation arose because Levinas’ four terms for ‘other’ are difficult to translate, so his terms were first addressed by adopting English conventions. Such conventions have furthered Levinas scholarship, but our aim is to consider Levinas’ consistency: Hence we undertake the first English-language assessment of the rigour of Levinas’ approach in 1961 to the ‘other’ by means of all four terms. To do so, we follow a ‘formal structure’ that Levinas develops from the tradition of phenomenological logic—mostly Husserl’s. We hope the result will palliate worries about Levinas’ rigor, and allow new ways to engage with his work.     

Change process in systemic therapy: A qualitative investigation

This study addresses the process of therapeutic change in individuals who received systemic therapy. This study is an exploratory qualitative study based on the client's perceptions and therapeutic experiences. The sample included 10 clients who had completed their therapy with systemic therapists. The method used for the collection of the data was semi‐structured interviews (Change Interview; Elliott, Slatick, & Urman, 2001). The interviews were analysed using grounded theory analysis. The results showed that both specific and common factors in therapy function in a co‐occurring mode, hence suggesting a synergy effect between common factors and specific techniques or therapist factors in psychotherapy. The core category ‘experience of therapeutic change, within the secure frame of therapy, is a process of deconstructing and reconstructing the house you live in: Yourself’ emerged based on self‐exploration and self‐discovery and is then discussed in a theoretical constructivist framework. Implications for research on the issue of the process of therapeutic change are discussed.     

Self‐supervision,surveillance and transgression

Transgression is not only an inevitable part of systemic supervision but is also necessary if we are to work towards innovative and inclusive supervisory and therapeutic practice. Defying culturally generated ‘rules’ of systemic practice can allow for more relevant and productive ways of talking. Systemic practitioners are increasingly finding themselves trying to practice systemic therapy in employing authorities and training courses which are dominated by inflexible professional narratives and manualised procedures. Our profession is committed to ethical inner and outer dialogue, to self‐ and relational reflexivity as distinct from the rule‐bound surveillance culture in which we live and work. Systemic supervisors and therapists may find themselves at odds with monological institutional discourse and attempts from within our own profession to manualise practice. I introduce examples from supervisory conversations to illustrate how supervisors can develop more culturally sensitive practices through supporting practitioners to hear and have heard their own marginalised and oppressed voices and those of their clients.     

The Discursive Performance of Change Process in Systemic and Constructionist Therapies: A Systematic Meta‐Synthesis Review of In‐Session Therapy Discourse

Despite the emphasis of systemic and constructionist approaches on discourse and interaction, to date there has been no comprehensive overview of how change process is performed within in‐session therapeutic dialogue. In this paper, we present a qualitative meta‐synthesis of 35 articles reporting systemic and constructionist therapy process data from naturally occurring therapeutic dialogue. The studies were selected following the screening against eligibility criteria of a total sample of 2,977 studies identified through a systematic search of PsycINFO and MEDLINE databases. Thematic analysis of the 35 studies’ findings identified four main themes depicting change process performance: (a) shifting to a relational perspective, (b) shifting to non‐pathologizing therapeutic dialogue, (c) moving‐forward dialogue, and (d) the dialogic interplay of power. Findings highlight the interactional and discursive matrix within which systemic and constructionist change process occurs. Findings illuminate the value of qualitative research studies sampling naturally occurring therapeutic discourse in bringing this matrix forth, particularly when utilizing discursive methodologies like conversation or discourse analysis.     

Transforming ourselves/transforming curriculum: spiritual education and Tarot symbolism

This paper is threefold. It is grounded in the philosophical work of two educational theorists: John Dewey and our contemporary Nel Noddings. It also brings into the conversation the ancient system of Tarot, arguing that its pictorial symbolism embodies intellectual, moral, and spiritual ‘lessons’ derived from collective human experiences across times, places, and cultures. For Dewey, to call somebody spiritual never meant to invoke some mysterious and non‐natural entity outside of the real world. As a system of communication and interpretation, Tarot is oriented toward the discovery of meanings in the real experience and performs two functions, existential and educational, focusing on the ethical and spiritual dimension of experience. The pictorial images create an adventure story of the journey through the school of life, each new life experience contributing to self‐understanding and, ultimately, spiritual rebirth. Tarot not only speaks in a different voice, therefore bringing forth the subtleties of Gilligan and Noddings’ relational ethics, but also enables a process of critical self‐reflection analogous to the ancient Socratic ‘Know thyself’ principle that makes life examined and thus meaningful. As a techne, it can and should become a valuable tool to complement an existing set of educational aids in the area of moral and spiritual education.     

Towards a common ground in psychoanalysis and family therapy: on knowing not to know

In this paper a common ground between psychoanalysis and family therapy is discussed in terms of postmodern theorizing in both disciplines. Recent systemic, narrative or social constructionist thinking in psychoanalysis and a psychoanalytic turn in family therapy offers the possibility of a shared epistemology. This is described in terms of a critical not-knowing stance which allows for the therapist's/analyst's contribution of meaning, interpretation and knowledge in therapeutic conversation. Here the holding of not knowing and knowing together provides a narrative container for personal meaning and thinking to develop. This 'knowing not to know' is what a postmodern psychoanalysis has in common with family therapy: both are ways of being with persons to help them develop and hold their own knowing. This therapeutic process is illustrated in a clinical vignette of narrative child family therapy.
For what one knows does not belong to oneself.
(Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past , p. 898)     

The Analyst’s Generous Involvement: Recognition and the “Tension of Tenderness”

I define the analyst’s generous involvement as inherent to human encounter and a necessary element of therapeutic process. When the analyst’s generous involvement goes missing, it can be read as a sign of disengagement and disconnection. Using as metaphor H. S. Sullivan’s concept of the “tension of tenderness,” I argue that the analyst’s recognition of a need or affect state in the patient evokes an internal tug constituting the analyst’s need to provide for what has been recognized. I elaborate on what the analyst’s generous involvement is, and what it is not, including countertransference pitfalls and corruptions that may masquerade as generosity. I engage a relational conversation with the radical ethical ideas of Emmanuel Levinas. An extended clinical vignette illustrates the challenges and conflicts entailed in the analyst’s finding an analytically useful form of expressing the tug of generous involvement in the immediate moment.     

The Non-Existent God: Transcendence, Humanity, and Ethics in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

This paper considers three essential gestures in Levinas’s theology, highlighting in each case how Levinas’s thinking allows him to either incorporate or sidestep some of the fiercest modern criticisms of traditional theism. First, we present Levinas’s vision of divine transcendence, outlining his ontological atheism and explaining how this obviates proving the existence of God and avoids the tangles of traditional theodicy. Second, we describe Levinas’s idea of the trace, showing how a non-existent God still leaves its mark in the face of the other person and explaining how this vision of divine immanence accords with the agendas of thinkers such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche, who criticized theology that elevated God while debasing humanity. Third, we present Levinas’s insistence on the philosophical primacy of ethics, showing how he infuses his ethical philosophy with religious themes, elevating moral philosophy to the level of ultimate concern in a way that even atheist social theorists such as Marx or Freud could appreciate. We close by briefly considering limitations of Levinas’s model, discussing problems with its practical applicability and suggesting that its scope might be too narrow: both for its failure to acknowledge potential ethical demands manifest by non-human animals and the natural world and for its inability to recognize solitary or aesthetic experiences as religiously significant. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations.     

Levinas and Shinran: the power of the other

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I compare the idea of ‘substitution’, central to the later work of Emmanuel Levinas, to the idea of jinen hōni, or ‘natural acts’, proposed by Shinran Shōnin. For Levinas, ‘substitution’ meant the acceptance of responsibility for the suffering of the Other that one hasn’t caused, giving oneself up to ‘persecution’ and ‘accusation’ of the Other in absolute passivity. For Shinran, a similar passivity is implied by the unability of the ‘I’ to act in order to liberate itself from its conditioned existence, a result which can be achieved by giving up one’s own agency in favour of the Other. For both thinkers, ethical selfhood is thus attainable only by forsaking of one’s worldly ego, described in remarkably similar terms, even though their understanding of alterity itself is radically different.     

‘All the Rest is Dance’: another look at Levinas

This paper begins by tracing the growing influence of Levinas’s thought in the humanities. Psychotherapy in particular has drawn on Levinas’s original contribution to ethics and is often inscribed within an existing dialogical frame of symmetry. The article discusses facets of Levinasian thought which have been neglected in psychotherapy, namely the notion of separation, in turn linked to the notions of asymmetry and of the traumatic subject, all at variance with dialogical therapy. A second, equally overlooked aspect of Levinas’s philosophy examined here concerns his politics. Some of the implications highlighted here are controversial: these relate to Levinas ‘naive Zionism’ and a prejudiced position in relation to Arab culture. Others are enlightening even if undeveloped: these relate to Levinas’s decolonial thinking of the 1970s. The paper reflects tangentially on the author’s clinical work, and calls for a more nuanced appreciation of Levinas’s philosophy which does not shy away from critique.     

Autonomy,Reciprocity, and Responsibility: Darwall and Levinas on the Second Person

Abstract

Stephen Darwall’s The Second‐Person Standpoint converges with Emmanuel Levinas’s concern about the role of the second‐person relationship in ethics. This paper contrasts their methodologies (regressive analysis of presuppositions versus phenomenology) to explain Darwall’s narrower view of ethical experience in terms of expressed reactive attitudes. It delineates Darwall’s overall justificatory strategy and the centrality of autonomy and reciprocity within it, in contrast to Levinas’s emphasis on the experience of responsibility. Asymmetrical responsibility plays a more foundational role as a critical counterpoint to ‘mean‐spirited’ reciprocity than Darwall’s laudable distinction between accountability and revenge, and responsibility even founds this distinction. The experience of being summoned to asymmetrical responsibility amplifies the meaning of ‘authority’, which is a presupposition for Darwall. Finally, asymmetrical responsibility helps develop decentred reasoning, invites risk beyond the boundaries of reciprocity at moments when autonomy appears endangered, reconciles respect and care at the experiential level, and presses to extend the scope of moral obligation.     

Thinking and Working Relationally: Interviewing and Constructing Hypotheses to Create Compassionate Understanding

In the initial interviews of family therapy sessions, the therapist faces the challenge of obtaining and organizing the information that is most relevant toward understanding the essential concerns that families and couples bring to therapy. This article describes the process of clinical interviewing and case conceptualization used in training family therapists at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. This approach helps the therapist bring forward, and organize, specific information into relational hypotheses, or systemic‐relational conceptualizations, that allow both family members and the therapist to understand presenting problems within their relational contexts. While always provisional, relational hypotheses help anchor the therapist in a systemic‐relational frame and provide a conceptual through‐line to guide the ongoing work of the therapy. The process of interviewing and the construction of clear and complex conceptualizations of presenting problems are illustrated through case examples.