Abstract
The previous chapter dealt with the relationship between an ethic of justice and an ethic of compassion. One of the foundations of an ethic of compassion, as I showed, is loyalty to the event—a loyalty driven by the recognition of the moral agent’s unique situation. In this chapter, I will attempt to broaden the scope of this loyalty and will refer to it as “loyalty to the visible.” I open with an explication of the nature of loyalty in general and then move on to consider loyalty to the visible in particular. This chapter will serve as a theoretical platform for the others since the “ethic of loyalty to the visible” is the foundation for all the variations of inner retreat.
This chapter appeared in a Hebrew book titled Facing Others and Otherness: The Ethics of Inner Retreat (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012). The Hebrew title is Mul aherim ve-aherut: Etika shel ha-nesigah ha-penimit.
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Notes
- 1.
Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (New York: Macmillan, 1920), 16–17.
- 2.
Ibid., 120.
- 3.
George Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 7.
- 4.
Ibid., 18.
- 5.
Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, 31.
- 6.
Cf. Richard Mullin, “Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty as the Basis for Democratic Ethic,” in Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience, ed. Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer (New York: Rodopi, 2005), 183–184.
- 7.
Fletcher, Loyalty, 17.
- 8.
Ibid., 14.
- 9.
Ibid., 122.
- 10.
Ibid., 18–19.
- 11.
Andrew Oldenquist, “Loyalties,” The Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982), 175. See also John Ladd, “Loyalty,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 97; Fletcher, Loyalty, 14.
- 12.
R. E. Ewin, “Loyalty and Virtues,” The Philosophical Quarterly 42/169 (1992), 406.
- 13.
Ibid., 411.
- 14.
Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, 18.
- 15.
Ibid., 22.
- 16.
Ibid., 18–19.
- 17.
See Ladd, “Loyalty,” 97.
- 18.
Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, 19.
- 19.
Ibid., 131. See also 130.
- 20.
Ladd, “Loyalty,” 98.
- 21.
Fletcher, Loyalty, 6.
- 22.
Ibid., 10.
- 23.
Ibid.. On the meaning of the “voice,” see ibid., 4.
- 24.
Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, 353.
- 25.
Ladd, “Loyalty,” 98. On the additional elements of loyalty, beyond duty, see Sophie Bryant, “Loyalty,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 8, 183–184.
- 26.
Ibid., 184.
- 27.
Ibid., 187.
- 28.
See Ewin, “Loyalty and Virtues,” 405; Bryant, “Loyalty,” 184, 187.
- 29.
Fletcher, Loyalty, 8.
- 30.
Ibid., 9.
- 31.
John Kleining, “Loyalty,” Stanford Encyclpedia of Philosophy,
- 32.
See also Stephen Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality and Peace (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 106–109.
- 33.
Fletcher, Loyalty, 9.
- 34.
See Avi Sagi: Halakhic Loyalty: Between Openness and Closure (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2012) [Heb], especially 203–223.
- 35.
This matter points to the crucial role of the loyalist in constituting the object of his loyalty, including when the object is God. I discuss this complex issue in ch. 7 below.
- 36.
Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 85.
- 37.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 94 (emphasis in original).
- 38.
Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 30 (emphasis in original).
- 39.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), 197e.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
See ibid., 212–213.
- 42.
Ibid., 193.
- 43.
See Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method: Neglected Aspects (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 1–2, 182.
- 44.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 191–192.
- 45.
Ibid., 193.
- 46.
Ibid., 194–196.
- 47.
James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. Theodore Spencer, John J. Slocum, and Herbert Cahoon (Norfolk, CO: New Directions, 1963), 211.
- 48.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 202 (emphasis in original).
- 49.
Ibid., 215.
- 50.
Ibid., 75. See also Emmanuel Levinas, “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 54–55.
- 51.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 203.
- 52.
Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 68.
- 53.
Ibid., 72.
- 54.
Emmanuel Levinas, Humanism of the Other, trans. Nidra Poller (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 7.
- 55.
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Allan Bass (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), 115.
- 56.
Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, 78.
- 57.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 39.
- 58.
Levinas, Humanism of the Other, 65–67.
- 59.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 35–38. See also Derrida, Writing and Difference, 116–117.
- 60.
Ibid.
- 61.
Charles E. Scott, “A People’s Witness Beyond Politics,” in Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak (New York: Routledge, 1995), 27.
- 62.
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 234.
- 63.
Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 98.
- 64.
Ibid., 99.
- 65.
Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, 68.
- 66.
Ibid., 70.
- 67.
Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Michael B. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29.
- 68.
cf. Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972), 146.
- 69.
Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith (London: Collins, 1961), 41.
- 70.
Martin Buber, The Knowledge of Man, trans. Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965), 79.
- 71.
Buber, Between Man and Man, 47. For further discussion, see Avi Sagi, “The Category of the ‘Other’ and Its Implications for Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue,” Daat 13 (1984): 95–114 [Heb].
- 72.
Cohen, Religion of Reason, 134.
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
Ibid., 135.
- 75.
Ibid., 134–135.
- 76.
Ibid., 146.
- 77.
For a discussion of the “trace” concept, see ch. 6 below.
- 78.
Cohen, Religion of Reason, 146–147.
- 79.
Ibid., 114.
- 80.
Ibid.
- 81.
Ibid., 147.
- 82.
Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: The Orion Press, 1959), 21.
- 83.
Ibid., 123. Similar descriptions appear in Robert Antelme, L’espèce humaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 35–37.
- 84.
Axel Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Possibility of ‘Recognition,’” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 75 (2001), 111.
- 85.
Ibid., 112.
- 86.
Ibid., 113.
- 87.
Ibid., 116–126.
- 88.
Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, ID: Hackett, 1981), 14.
- 89.
Honneth, “Invisibility,” 121.
- 90.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 195.
- 91.
Ibid., 65.
- 92.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Pocket Books, 1978), 256–257.
- 93.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 75.
- 94.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 51.
- 95.
Ibid., 52 (emphases in original).
- 96.
Ibid., 187.
- 97.
Ibid., 186–187.
- 98.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 240.
- 99.
Ibid., 241.
- 100.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, trans. Carleton Dallery (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 167.
- 101.
Marion, In Excess, 30 (emphases in original).
- 102.
Ibid., 30–31.
- 103.
Ibid., 32.
- 104.
Ibid., 32–33.
- 105.
Ibid., 34 (emphases in original).
- 106.
Ibid., 56,115.
- 107.
Ibid., 57.
- 108.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 89–150.
- 109.
Ibid., 148–149.
- 110.
Ibid., 149.
- 111.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 255.
- 112.
See Robert Gibbs, “Height and Nearness: Jewish Dimensions of Radical Ethics, in Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak (New York: Routledge, 1995), 14–15.
- 113.
Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 82.
- 114.
Ibid., 86.
- 115.
Ibid., 86.
- 116.
Ibid., 86–87.
- 117.
Ibid., 183.
- 118.
Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London/New York: Verso, 2001), 40–44.
- 119.
Avi Sagi, A Challenge: Returning to Tradition (Jerusalem/ Tel Aviv: Shalom Hartman Institute/Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2003) [Heb].
- 120.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 113–115.
- 121.
Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other (and Additional Essays), trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 82.
- 122.
Marion, In Excess, 37.
- 123.
John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 93.
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Sagi, A. (2018). The Ethic of Loyalty to the Visible. In: Living With the Other. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_3
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