Abstract
The end of humanism, of metaphysics, the death of man, the death of God (or death to God!) — these are apocalyptic ideas or slogans of intellectual high society. Like all the manifestations of Parisian taste (or Parisian disgusts), these topics impose themselves with the tyranny of the last word, but become available to anyone and cheapened.
If I do not answer for myself, who will answer for me? But if I answer only for myself, am I still myself? (Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Aboth 6a)
“No Identity” was published in French in L’Ephémère 13 (1970): pp.27–44, and reprinted in Humanisme de l’autre homme, Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972, pp. 83–101. The notes in this chapter are by the author.
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Notes
Cf. Mikel Dufrenne’s fine book Pour l’homme (Paris: Seuil, 1968). Also the Revue Internationale de Philosophie, n. 85–86, in particular Louis Marin’s article. Yet one should note that Heidegger himself ranks logistics, sociology and psychology among the manifestations of nihilism and the will to power that belongs to metaphysics in its terminal phase. Cf. The Question of Being, trans. W. Kluback and J.T. Wilde (New York: Twayne, 1958), p. 47. Cf. note 4, infra.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Levinas, E. (1987). No Identity. In: Collected Philosophical Papers. Phaenomenologica, vol 100. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4364-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4364-3_9
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