Batey asked:

I would like to know, how different is Levinas from Heidegger in your opinion? Levinas talks about the
Other and thinks that this is a new idea that Heidegger has missed, do you think this is fair to
Heidegger? and could you please use some of Levinas examples of the Other, such as other people,
God, "mysterious" women and ones own children to clarify my question?

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Levinas is very different from Heidegger and this seems to be because the writings are deeply
informed by religion and ethics and his objection to Heidegger is that ontology cannot give rise to
values.

It is not that Heidegger 'missed' something, but that his project of thematization and the reduction of
being to ontology does not reflect what is to dwell in a world where much is a mystery. The Other
cannot be thematized because it is that which is beyond the realm of understanding, which is why
Levinas uses a great deal of metaphorical language. While Heidegger distinguishes between beings
and being, and thought that we could attempt the meaning of being, Levinas argues that there is also
the 'otherwise than being' which is not ontological because it is the transcendent ethical relation which
is infinite and non-graspable.

While for Heidegger, we experience being as being in time and so we experience being towards
death, for Levinas we don't experience the infinite, but have unlimited responsibility towards the other,
and so we do not have anxiety simply for our own death, but for the death of others, and that this is
so is beyond representation. The difference here is that Heidegger looks at what can be said about
subjective experience and can be represented and understood while Levinas moves beyond the
simply subjective which gives rise only to concern for oneself and places man in a dwelling which is
also metaphysical.

I'm not sure how fair Levinas's criticism of Heidegger is. Heidegger was limiting himself to a
phenomenological description of how our experience can be represented or understood. Levinas
wants to talk about that which cannot be reduced to representation and so cannot say that is
experience as such but he offers a different account of our dwelling in the world which is more
mystical. I think all that can be said is that you will favour one philosopher or the other depending on
your own attitude to the non-representational, or whether your commitment is to the mystical or the
rational.

God is other because he is not the 'thematization of the thinkable'. It is because of His transcendence
and non-presence that atheism is possible. It is in our responsibility for other persons that we hear the
word or command of God. This responsibility is shown in our recognition of 'Thou Shalt not Kill' and
that we are ready to die for others.

The other person is also other as he not reducible to an ontological object. Another person is both
closer than an object can be (think of kinship and the caress) and yet he also totally evades us in that
he is more than we can perceive.

Levinas says that 'the other is par excellence the feminine' or the maternal, which is both a metaphor
for responsibility but also for the mystery of otherness. 'Equivocation constitutes the epiphany of the
feminine'. The idea of woman is something ambiguous that cannot be tied down because it is
non-signifying suggesting both tenderness and fragility as well as responsibility for the vulnerability of
others. The other, as with the feminine, is both non-definitive and infinite.

The parental relationship also puts us into a relation with infinity, or the future, as a promise of eternal
life which will be ours, and yet not ours.

Rachel Browne