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- Our struggle is a resistance to capitalism Tahmasebi 10
Ethics o/w CapMarxism remains bound to assimilating the Other Tahmasebi 10Victoria, assistant professor in women's studies/humanities at the University of Toronto Scarborough, “Does Levinas justify or transcend liberalism? Levinas on human Liberation”, Philosophy Social Criticism June 2010 vol. 36 no. 5 Marx, according to Levinas, is right insofar as he realizes that consciousness, as perceived in modern liberal philosophy, cannot determine being. Marx is the first philosopher who recognizes ‘the whole weight of matter in the present itself’. 26 Marx, according to Levinas, is the only western philosopher who does not view the human as existing in pure freedom; Marx acknowledges the chaining of the body and its consciousness to the concrete existence which no reason can completely undo. In Marxism, the spirit ‘is no longer a pure reason that partakes in a real of ends. It is prey to material needs.’ 27 Consequently, Levinas claims that Marxism ‘is opposed not just to Christianity, but to the whole of idealist liberalism, wherein ‘‘being does not determine consciousness’’, but consciousness or reason determines being’. 28 Yet for Levinas, Marx’s break with liberal, western tradition is not radical enough. 29 By insisting that being determines consciousness, Marx does not take the implications of the original freedom sufficiently seriously. In Marxism, the consciousness is expected to liberate being from that which determines it. If consciousness is solely determined by being, how then is consciousness to free the being from that which determines it? How can an overdetermined consciousness free the being unless it is originally constituted through something beyond itself, through its openness to the idea of transcendence, which is expressed concretely in the face of another human being? Marxism ignores the fundamental sensibility at the heart of subjectivity which inspires the subject to transcend its own being, and his or her thought to think beyond itself in such a way that liberation means something more than resubjugation of one and the other to the domination of another totalized identity. To Levinas, Marx, although he realizes that economic justice is central to human dignity, and opens philosophy to something beyond itself by acknowledging the other and her or his demand on humanity, 30 is unable to open the fundamentally ethical dimension of liberation. Marx’s foundational legitimacy of the human liberation is still trapped within the logic of the same, based on comprehension and identification of the other and the equation of the other’s suffering with one’s own. Levinas’ ethical relation suggests that the legitimacy of human liberation from bondage is not, as it is proposed by new forms of social movements in liberal democracy, based on difference. Nor is it based on a class consciousness that converts members of a class from a ‘class in itself’ to a ‘class for itself’. 31 Rather, human liberation from bondage, justice, ‘consists in recognizing in the Other my master’, 32 a proposition that runs contrary to the foundational narrative of the individual in the liberal tradition. Our struggle is a resistance to capitalism Tahmasebi 10Victoria, assistant professor in women's studies/humanities at the University of Toronto Scarborough, “Does Levinas justify or transcend liberalism? Levinas on human Liberation”, Philosophy Social Criticism June 2010 vol. 36 no. 5 Usually the answer to these objections is met by an argument that Levinas himself admits: as saying is always betrayed by the said, so too the irreducible responsibility for the other must be rectified by justice, necessitating the state, its hierarchical and bureaucratic structures, and even economic inequality. Indeed, Levinas consistently repeats this when confronted by questions of the impossibility of his ethical demand. He reminds us that saying is always betrayed by the said, by thematization, calculation and prioritization. However, betrayal is not inevitably translated into exploitation, oppression and poverty, all of which are tolerated and justified in liberal tradition and the liberal state. As Asher Horowitz argues, almost all Levinas’ readers interpret the relation between saying and the said, between ethics and politics, as paradoxical, viewing the political and the said as necessary and inevitable privations from the ethical relation, imposed by the requirements of being. 72 Such a reading, Horowitz continues, confines Levinas within the liberal framework, accepting rational peace as the limit in politics and conveniently forgetting that the abolition of economic domination and exploitation is to be put as the first ethical task. 73 For Horowitz, the relation between ethics and politics, between saying and the said, is not a paradox but a betrayal that can be reduced. But why cannot those scholars who, much like Cohen, interpret Levinas to justify the liberal state and its institutions, address and expand upon these central themes in Levinas’ ethics? Levinas argues that underlying his philosophy is a concern with reducing this betrayal to the extent that ‘one can at the same time know and free the known of the marks which thematization leaves on it by subordinating it to ontology’. 74 He sees the possibility even of freeing the other from the scars that thematization leaves, above all liberating the other from the economic exploitation and class structure inherent in liberal capitalist societies. In fact, Levinas considers the tearing-away of the human from economic bondage as the meaning of a revolution, suggesting that ‘revolution takes place when one frees man, that is, revolution takes place when one tears man away from economic determinism. To affirm that the working man is not negotiable, that he cannot be bargained about, is to affirm that which begins a revolution.’ 75 Therefore, beyond the objectification necessary to the human condition, bondage and suffering are unnecessary and avoidable, and the struggle against them is central to Levinas’ concept of one-for-the-other. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.03 Mb. Share with your friends:
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