Ciocan C. (2009), The Problem of Embodiment in the Early Writings of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas Studies: An Annual Review, Volume 4
Is there a philosophy of flesh in Levinas? Has this French philosopher actually developed a phenomenology of embodiment that we can place in relation to those of Husserl or Merleau-Ponty? Through what aspects of the ethical subject has Levinas described an incarnate subject? How does living embodiment determine the subjectivity of the subject? What are the corporeal phenomena that play a part in Levinasian thought, and how does he articulate these phenomena? In attempting to clarify these questions, my paper will follow this problem chronologically, focusing only on the writing of the early Levinas. I will discuss first two essays written in the 1930s, “Some Thoughts on the Philosophy of Hitlerism” and “On Escape”. Then, I will investigate the works written shortly after the Second World War, namely Existence and Existents, and Time and the Other. I will show that the Levinasian problem of embodiment contains several thematic nodes placed in a problematic network: the body proper and an identification with the self, an enchainment that reveals the ontological adversity; yet simultaneously, the paradigmatic relation with the other is nudity, the feminine, eros.