Substitution

Emmanuel Levinas
Outline of Discussion
• The Philosophical
Project of Levinas
• Substitution
• Principle and
Anarchy
• Recurrence
• The Self
• Substitution
• Communication
• Finite Freedom
The Philosophy as Ethics
Philosophical
Project of A “phenomenological
description of the rise and
Levinas repetition of the face-to-
face encounter”
“Intersubjective relation at
its precognitive core”

“Being called by another

and responding to that
other”
(Bergo, 2011)
The Levinas is doing “an ethics
Philosophical of ethics” – Derrida (1967)
Project of He is exploring the
Levinas meaning of intersubjectivity
in the light of three themes:
transcendence, existence,
and the human other.

(Bergo, 2011)
 Substitution is a lecture
presented by Levinas in 1967 is
Substitution considered as the centerpiece
of Otherwise than Being or
Beyond Essence
Levinas describes being as that
which has an identity, something
that is the same as another
object—an other.
Self is a substitution for an other
whose existence cannot be the
same as that of the self—
“otherwise than being”
 Otherness is presented as
Substitution both experience and as an a
priori to all experience.

Otherness is also conceived

as a behavior—that of
substituting oneself for
another.
 Levinas opens by linking
Principle subjectivity to archic thought.
and
Anarchy “Subjectivity qua consciousness is thus
interpreted as an ontological event…
an ideal principle or arche in its
thematic exposition” (p.99)

“subjectivity as irreducible to
consciousness and thematization”
(p.100)
 Levinas also introduces the
Principle notion of proximity and
and obsession
Anarchy
“Proximity appears as the relationship
with the other, who cannot be…
exposed in a theme. It is the
relationship with what is not
disproportionate to the arche in
thematization… Proximity is thus
anarchically a relationship with a
singularity without the mediation of
any principle, any ideality.” (p.100)
 Levinas also introduces the
Principle notion of proximity and
and obsession
Anarchy
“Anarchy is persecution. Obsession is a
persecution where the persecution
does not make up the content of a
consciousness gone mad; it designates
the form in which the ego is affected,
a form which is a defecting from
consciousness.” (p.101)
 Through the notion of
Principle proximity and obsession as it
and is linked to consciousness,
Anarchy Levinas shifted the focus to a
source outside of
consciousness: responsibility
for the other.
“It is in a responsibility that is justified
by no prior commitment, in the
responsibility for another - in an
ethical situation - that the me-
ontological and metalogical structure
of this anarchy takes form”(p.102)
Recurrence

Levinas criticizes the reduction of subjectivity

to consciousness.

“But consciousness is not all there is to the notion of

subjectivity. It already rests on a 'subjective condition', an
identity that one calls ego or I… subject and
consciousness are equivalent concepts. The who or the
me are not even suspected… Yet this term of an
irreversible assignation is perhaps dissimulated, under
the outdated notion of the soul. It is a term not reducible
to a relation, but yet is in recurrence.”
Recurrence

Recurrence is a question of moving from “the

ego to the self”

Levinas describes the recurrence of the

oneself as different from the ego or the
Sartrean for-itself

Levinas claims that the oneself is “bounded on

the responsibility for others” (p.105)
The Self Levinas returns to the idea of
passivity of the oneself and of
obsession, that these are
fundamental and happens in a
pre-philosophical way of
thinking.

“we have to ask if this folding back

upon oneself proper to ipseity, this
passive folding back, does not coincide
with the anarchic passivity of an
obsession… obsession is anarchical; it
accuses me beneath the level of prime
matter”
The Self The self is understood as
something that can determine
itself to be what it wills.
“It strips the ego of its pride and the
dominating imperialism
characteristic of it.”

Self-consciousness consists in the

cognition of the self’s significance
as the embodiment of an ethical
responsibility to an other
The Self The ontological character of
the self depends on how the
self signifies a relationship that
is exterior to consciousness
and is “older than” the ego and
the a priori.

The obsession of the self with

the other is really an
obsession with the
inconceivable maternal trace
of the an-archic principle that
calls it into being.
 “The more I return to myself,
The Self the more I divest myself,
under the traumatic effect of
persecution, of my freedom as
a constituted, willful,
imperialist subject, the more I
discover myself to be
responsible; the more just I
am, the more guilty I am. I am
'in myself through the others.”
Substitution
Levinas’s concept of
substitution begins with
conceiving the self
outside the self.

“The oneself has to be

conceived outside of all
substantial coinciding of
self with self.”
Substitution
He characterizes the
self through the link
between freedom and
responsibility.
“free responsibility, the
responsibility for the other, the
responsibility in obsession,
suggests an absolute
passivity of a self that has
never been able to diverge
from itself, to then enter into
its limits, and identify itself by
recognizing itself in its past.”
Substitution
He characterizes the
self through the link
between freedom and
responsibility.
“Responsibility for another is
not an accident that happens
to a subject, but precedes
essence in it, has not awaited
freedom, in which a
commitment to another would
have been made. The word I
means here I am, answering
for everything and for
everyone.”
Substitution
It is, however, not an alienation,
because the other in the same is
my substitution for the other
through responsibility, for which I
am summoned as someone
irreplaceable. I exist through the
other and for the other, but
without this being alienation: I
am inspired. This inspiration is
the psyche. The psyche can
signify this alterity in the same
without alienation in the form of
incarnation, as being-in-one's-
skin, having-the-other-in-one’s-
skin.
Substitution
“the self liberates itself
ethically from every
other and from itself. Its
responsibility for the
other, the proximity of
the neighbor, does not
signify a submission to
the non-ego; it means
an openness in which
being's essence is
surpassed in
inspiration.”
Substitution
“To be oneself, otherwise
than being, to be dis-
interested, is to bear the
wretchedness and
bankruptcy of the other, and
even the responsibility that
the other can have for me.
To be oneself, the state of
being a hostage, is always
to have one degree of
responsibility more, the
responsibility for the
responsibility of the other.”
Substitution
“The self, a hostage, is
already substituted for the
others. 'I am an other'… I
am outside of any place, in
myself, on the hither side of
the autonomy of auto-
affection and identity resting
on itself. Impassively
undergoing the weight of
the other, thereby called to
uniqueness, subjectivity no
longer belongs to the order
where the alternative of
activity and passivity retains
its meaning.”
Communication
“Substitution operates in the
entrails of the self, rending its
inwardness, putting its identity
out of phase and disrupting its
recurrence. Substitution is a
communication from the one
to the other and from the
other to the one without the
two relations having the same
sense.”
Communication
“communication would be
impossible if it should have to
begin in the ego, a free subject, to
whom every other would be only a
limitation”
“To communicate is indeed to
open oneself, but the openness is
not complete if it is on the watch
for recognition. It is complete not
in opening to the spectacle of or
the recognition of the other, but in
becoming a responsibility for
him.”
Communication
“The overemphasis of openness
is responsibility for the other to
the point of substitution, where
the for-the-other proper to
disclosure turns into the for-the-
other proper to responsibility.”
“The openness of
communication is not a simple
change of place, so as to situate
a truth outside instead of
keeping it in oneself.
Communication
"Communication is an
adventure of a subjectivity,
different from that which is
dominated by the concern
to recover itself, different
from that of coinciding in
consciousness; it will involve
uncertainty.”
 "the idea of a responsibility prior to freedom,
and the compossibility of freedom and the
“Finite other such as it shows itself in responsibility
Freedom” for another, enables us to confer an
irreducible meaning to this notion, without
attacking the dignity of freedom which is thus
conceived in finitude.”
 “In finite freedom, there can then be
disengaged an element of pure freedom,
“Finite which limitation does not affect, in one's
Freedom” will. Thus, the notion of finite freedom
rather poses than resolves the problem of
a limitation of the freedom of the will.”
 “This finite freedom is not primary, is not
initial; but it lies in an infinite responsibility
“Finite where the other is not other because he
Freedom” strikes up against and limits my freedom, but
where he can accuse me to the point of
persecution, because the other, absolutely
other, is another one.”
 Responsibility for the other, for what has not begun
in me is responsibility in the innocence of being a

“Finite hostage…
My substitution - it is as my own that substitution
Freedom” for the neighbor is produced. The Mind is a
multiplicity of individuals. It is in me - in me and not
in another, in me and not in an individuation of the
concept Ego – that communication opens.
 Subjectivity is being hostage. This
“Finite notion reverses the position where the
Freedom” presence of the ego to itself appears
as the beginning or as the conclusion
of philosophy.
 “the other is the end; I am a hostage, a
responsibility and a substitution
“Finite supporting the world in the passivity of
assignation, even in an accusing
Freedom” persecution, which is undeclinable.
Humanism has to be denounced only
because it is not sufficiently human”
Final Points
• Substitution is conceived as maternal
support for the material destitution of
another.
• Substitution is conceived as the state of
being hostage, held accountable of what I
did not do, accountable for the others
before the others
• For Levinas, substitution is the ethical self;
responsibility is putting oneself in the place
of another.
Final Points
Ich bin du, wenn
ich ich bin

I am you, when
I am I

From Praise of Distance

by Paul Celan