Mutual Enjoyment: A Levinasian Conception of Freedom

Author

Aaron Darrisaw, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

12-1-2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

Steinbock, Anthony

Second Advisor

Stikkers, Kenneth

Abstract

Established scholars typically regard the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas as one that offers a morally elevated, and even religious, sense to the meaning of ethics. He uses many descriptions to encapsulate his understanding of ethics, but a common shorthand is “the calling into question of freedom.” This dissertation aims to answer the following question: What becomes of freedom after it has been submitted to Levinas’s ethical critique? Engaging this question emphasizes the distinctively political significance of Levinas’s philosophy, a significance that is often regarded as lacking. However, my project treats freedom as a unique prism through which to interpret Levinas’s philosophy. Focusing on his analyses of the organic body and enjoyment (jouissance), I argue that his conception of the sensible body reveals the limit at which the liberal tradition becomes incapable of securing the freedom it promises. Where liberalism fails in this regard, I propose the idea of “mutual enjoyment,” which summarizes an interpretation of Levinas’s thought that emphasizes the materiality of social freedom. Part of this endeavor requires countering those interpretations that tend to stress the “absoluteness” of Levinasian alterity and the “height” of “the Other.” By attending more closely to the organic body—and less “the face”—we find in Levinas a notion of responsibility “for the Other” that is concretely conceptualized as a form of human solidarity, oriented towards the satisfaction of mutually sustained and articulated social needs.