In Totality and Infinity, Levinas started his discussion of morality with its opposite. Levinas Stated: “Everyone will readily agree that it is the highest importance to know whether we are duped by morality. Does not lucidity, the minds opened upon the true, consist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of War” and also “War renders morality derisory” War is that which is opposite of morality and so, Levinas holds that one must understand war to know morality.
War for Levinas, is a totality. Totality came from “Totalitarianism” or “Total War”. War is an example of this totality, it “establishes an order from no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority …show more content…
Levinas opposes this view with a different kind of eschatology which “institutes a relation with being beyond the totality or beyond history” . Eschatology here is defined by Levinas as “a relation with a surplus always exterior to …show more content…
Infinity for Levinas is surpassing a limit; this limit is that of the same, which can only be achieved through the presence of the other as other, though it is in me yet it transcends this immanence.
Action and Intention for Levinas presupposes infinity. Action is a product of the surplus of the incarnated consciousness, this surplus moves the subject and this action passes thru the “barrier of immanence” thus infinity.
While intention is a directing of mind towards anything, it “presupposes the idea of infinity this intending is towards the other that will inevitably exceed the intended intention. And if so it intends something which is not itself, it reaches out to the intended object, and it basically involves ab excess which is in the relation with the other.
For Levinas, In morality, exteriority is maintained and the other remained as the other. The moral realm “proceed(s) from the experience of totality back to a situation where totality breaks up, a situation that conditions the totality itself, such situation is the gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face of the Other”
The Ego
For Levinas, An ego is the one who lives in the world, and the objects in it are its Enjoyment, it’s not true that it’s moved by need. The ego is moved by