PHIL 23006 Metaphysics of Society - An Introduction to Levinas's Totality and Infinity
This course is devoted to one of the most important philosophical books of the continental tradition, Levinas's Totality and Infinity. We will propose a systematic reading of Levinas's masterpiece in order to show the main aspects of Levinas's philosophical elaboration. The first aspect of our course will be to insist on the way Levinas takes position in the field of German and French phenomenology, in what consists exactly his technical and systematic critique of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre's conceptualities. We will, for that reason, propose to make Totality and Infinity in resonance with the most important sections of Husserl's Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Philosophical Phenomenology, Heidegger's Being and Time and Sartre's Being and Nothingness. This preliminary step will give us the conceptual means required in order to understand the exact philosophical position of Levinas towards the concept of society - that Levinas inherits directly from the French Sociological tradition (Durkheim in particular). Once such a background clarified it will become possible to understand Levinas's own elaboration towards the notion of society and for what reason the social experience coincides for him with a metaphysical experience - in other words in what sense Levinas can claim that the social relationship articulates what Descartes called the Idea of the Infinite. Such a second step will lead us to a last step which constitutes the ultimate demonstrative goal of our course: we will indeed try to show the necessity to overcome with Levinas the universalization of the notion of phenomenon coming from Husserl and Heidegger, to propose, in other words, a deflationist understanding of the notion of phenomenon. Such a deflationist understanding does not imply nevertheless the abandonment of the notion of phenomenon. On the contrary the metaphysics of society that we will propose, will lead us to think society as the fundamental presupposition from which the notion of phenomena coming from the Phenomenological tradition can find its logical meaning. What will be at stake is nothing else than the possibility of thinking anew the notion of Metaphysics in order to overcome the so-called "end of Metaphysics" proclaimed by Heidegger and Derrida.