Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Lévinas

Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...

, in an attempt to overcome a certain naivety within his exploration of ethics as given in what he describes as the face-to-face

Face-to-face

The face-to-face relation refers to a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' thought on human sociality.Lévinas' phenomenological account of the "face-to-face" encounter serves as the basis for his ethics and the rest of his philosophy...

 encounter, attempts to introduce language into what had only been a "picture" of such an encounter. He distinguishes between The saying of something and what it is that is said during the talk, The said.

The Saying

The Saying relates to an irreducible exposure to the other. The saying makes the self-exposure of sincerity possible, a way of giving everything, of not holding secrets, of complete generosity. One is corrupted into, learns or decides, to lie, to simulate, to dissimulate, to ignore and remain politically or economically silent.

The Said

The said, on the other hand, refers to the intelligibility and reference of what is communicated or transferred, it can be subjected to the closure truth as total presence

Metaphysics of presence

The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important consideration within the area of deconstruction. The deconstructive interpretation holds that the entire history of Western philosophy and its language and traditions has emphasized the desire for immediate access to meaning, and thus built...

, it is associated with ontology

Ontology

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...

 (i.e., philosophy and science).

Man can give himself in saying to the point of poetry - or he can withdraw into the non-saying of lies. Language as saying is an ethical openness to the other; as that which is said - reduced to a fixed identity or synchronized presence - it is an ontological closure of the other.’

The complication Levinas introduces into his analysis of the face-to-face gives his ethics a further reach toward the kind of universalist ethics of a humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

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One can see an image of destitution and choose a logic in which to ignore it, one can hear the cry, the plea, and be summoned to the logic of another person.