This article investigates difficulties in defining the concept of God by focusing on the question of what it means to understand God as a ‘person.’ This question is explored with respect to the work of Søren Kierkegaard, in dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. Thereby, the following three questions regarding divine ‘personhood’ come into view: First, how can God be a partner of dialogue if he at the same time remains unknown and unthinkable, a limit-concept of understanding? (...) Second, if God is love in person and at the same time a spiritual reality ‘between’ human agents, in what ways are his personal and trans-personal traits related to each other? Third, what exactly is revealed through God’s ‘name’? By way of an inconclusive conclusion, divine personhood is discussed in regard to prayer, where the problems of predication that arise in third-personal speech about God are linked with the second-personal encounter with God. (shrink)

This article is a continuation of the challenge begun by early phenomenologists of the reductionistic scientism of Natural Science Psychology. Inspired by five distinctions of Emmanuel Levinas, it seeks to bring a deeper interruption of the seemingly unalterable force of mainstream psychology to model itself after the hard sciences. Levinas distinguishes the experience of totality from infinity, need from desire, freedom as self-initiated and self-directed from freedom as invested by and for the Other, active agency from radical passivity, and the (...) said from saying. Five commonly accepted characteristics of science, objective, empirical, causal, reducible, and value neutral, are used to compare three approaches to psychology: Natural Science, Phenomenology , and Psychology for the Other. Using the definition of science, “knowing the phenomenon as it shows itself,” this paper argue that Natural Science Psychology is the least “scientific,” Phenomenological Psychology is more scientific, and Psychology for the Other is the most “scientific” with its ethical command to allow the Other to reveal her/himself. This extravagant but compelling claim is illustrated with descriptions of research and therapy. (shrink)

I seek to draw out the unique character of Levinas’ theory of recognition by highlighting its transitional character in a double sense. It is transitional, firstly, in that it stands between two models of recognition: the earlier agonistic model of Kojeve and the later model of Honneth which takes as its point of departure a primordial relation of mutual affirmation between individuals. It is transitional secondly in the sense that, while Levinas initially employs the concept of recognition, he is later (...) explicit in his rejection of it. The interest of Levinas’ transitional model of recognition for the philosophy of religion is that Levinas negotiates both transitions by calling on archetypes borrowed from the Jewish tradition. An exploration of this model thus provides us with a fresh vantage point from which to address anew the question of the articulation of social philosophy and the philosophy of religion in his work. (shrink)

The centrality of Lévinasian ethics to Zygmunt Bauman’s sociological vision has been affirmed by a number of writers. However, the way in which Bauman attempts to think through the implications of this ethical framework for political decision-making on a global scale has been seen as highly problematic. In recent years, Bauman has arguably begun to veer towards what can be seen as a more ‘legislative’ position, prioritizing what Lévinas calls archic issues relating to government, foundation and sovereignty, and arguably jettisoning (...) his earlier commitment to socialism as the ‘active utopia’. It is the aim of this article to track this move in Bauman's thought, first of all locating structural continuities between his earliest English-language books written during the 1970s with those of the 1990s. It is shown that while much of the same terminology is carried over into his 1990s work, Bauman moves away from affirming the dynamics of human history and the almost ontological necessity of utopia, towards a sociologically suspect individual moral impulse which exists outside distinct social and historical formations. The sheer enthusiasm with which Bauman took hold of this idea had the result of completely frustrating the movement back to social formations. As such, it is argued that as Bauman moved towards theorizing the individual in ‘liquid modernity’ or consumer society, he developed a highly problematic concept of the individual which relies on the sociologically deterministic understandings of the human being which he was attempting to move away from before and during his engagement with Lévinas. (shrink)

Weight loss surgery is an increasingly common treatment for medically defined class III obesity and related comorbidities. A rise in demand has resulted in progressively longer waiting times in Canada, lasting upwards of ten years. Extended surgical waits impact the lives of people pursuing the procedure, no doubt – I wonder in what way? What is the experience of waiting to have weight loss surgery? I sought to explore this question using a human science approach to phenomenology of practice. It (...) is within this broader inquiry that this particular text is situated. The multiple interviews I conducted with people who were awaiting surgery revealed the experiential import of contact, of touch, metaphorical and otherwise, to the overall waiting phenomenon. In this paper I consider this particular dimension of the wait – I question the experiences and meanings of contact that occur within the pre-weight loss surgical period. I reflect on the possible ethical and clinical significance of contact within this particular context while focusing on the relational aspect of the phenomenon, particularly between patient and clinician. Ultimately this deeper understanding of the experience as it is lived may elicit new and possibly more tactful ways of being with, of making contact – as in touch, hearing from or connecting with – within weight loss surgery-related clinical encounters. (shrink)

What does it mean to be ethical in psychotherapy? Does adherence to ethical codes and rules make a psychotherapist ethical? This article examines standard ways of thinking about ethics in the field and argues that these ways are inadequate, creating a false dichotomy between the ethical and the clinical, and that they are designed only for formal and contractual relationships, in which psychotherapy is more often personal and affecting. The ethic of care and the approach to ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (...) are presented as additional approaches, along with their challenges to rationality and autonomy. An ethic of listening is then presented, and it is argued that ethics should be not an afterthought, but the primary consideration of clinical utility. (shrink)

Realist and liberal understandings of ethics as the dominant approaches to ethics in international relations are unable to respond efficiently to the call of the other in the age of war against terrorism as they revolve around the needs and the interests of the self. Such self-centred understandings of ethics cannot respond to the other ethically and respect the other in its otherness. Therefore, in this work I attempt to develop responsive ethics by drawing on Levinasian ethics which can create (...) the possibilities of concrete non-violent responses to the other in the age of war against terrorism. (shrink)