Existence and Existents
by Emmanuel Levinas
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Book Summary Information
Author: Emmanuel LevinasTranslator: Alphonso Lingis
Foreword: Robert Bernasconi
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04
ISBN: 0820703192
Number of pages: 113
Publisher: Duquesne Univ Pr
Book Reviews of Existence and Existents
Book Review: The Short Form of Making Way
Summary: 5 Stars
Writing a review of a major work of philosophy is a preposterous act of presumption. So,instead, I will simply offer a thank you.
I have already recommended this book. This friend of mine is a self-taught student of philosophy who is truly exploring through this literature what Nietzsche's proclamation, "God is Dead" means to someone who is deeply committed to a spiritual practice.
"Existence and Existents" is an exploration of life's upsurge, in the language of philosophy, that accepts the "irremissible" (Levinas's word) onslaught of this upsurge, while not surrendering to its being "meaningless."
The book also serves as a concise counterpoint to Heidegger's mythologizing romanticism of "being." Being is a construction of the already knowing, power-seeking, war-making (as Levinas' "Totality and Infinity" makes clear) subject. Existence, in contrast, knows nothing of being, and engenders "existents" as its self-forming instantiation in its on-going surge of potency, venturing ever onward.
This book therefore sets in motion, in my opinion, the terms and the notion that defines the work of philosophy in the decades ahead. We must come to see how coming forth, in instants and as hope, also yields the human endeavor among other existents and within a frame of that humans must surpass; and so it is the work of the human endeavor to take up its stance as existents always already amid the traces of all that comes and the "there is" that has already ventured beyond itself, no less the human.
God is dead means that we are now taking up the conditions, means and comprehensions that shape a human endeavor at all. Being is the mirror, but look up over it and there is the Other, the infinite writings of faces, all of whom write their coming from existence from the "there is" to exist here, in the "I am." What there "is" of this, we humans must give to ourselves, to others and to all that lies in our "proximity."
I recommend this book to all those who seek a new way of making it matter that the human endeavor take up its responsibility. The book requires work, thought, slow reading and reflection. It teaches us, there by, the ethic of becoming the living we are.
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