Other
Emmanuel *Levinas's concept of Ethics is centred on the problematic of the relation between being and that which is otherwise than being (the title of one of his later books), or the self and Other (which he capitalizes to distinguish it from the more ordinary form of otherness, namely the experience of unfamiliarity). Other, for Levinas, is that which the self can neither know nor assimilate. Levinas often describes it as a Mystery (in the religious sense), as that which is beyond imagining, experiencing or knowing. It is that which resists ‘my’ purposes absolutely. I am obligated to the Other; it commands me, but it has no authority over me. By the same token the Other is what ‘I’ desire to kill, but cannot kill. When ‘I’ kill others, i.e. actual people, it is the Other that I am really trying to kill according to Levinas, and since that is impossible, all violence is doomed to failure. ‘I’ encounter the Other as a ... ...
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