Levinas: The Right To Be (English Subtitles)

"The Right to Be", section two of "Penser Aujourd'hui: Emmanuel Levinas" (1991).
Levinas discusses the idea that the "perseverance of Being" is the source of all evil and suffering. For Levinas, such perseverance is not to be understood in terms of the individual's right to be, but rather in relation to a perceived right to violence and excess. Levinas also discusses the Biblical Genesis story. In this account, evil, as the immoderate or excessive aspiration of man towards Being, is absent. Evil is subsequent to the Creation, which was "good"; evil is therefore of a secondary nature to the good and, Levinas claims, is solely manifested in relation to man.
Thanks again to Salmon Philippe [youtube user "salmonfishandships"] for assitance with the translation.

[@cloudmonkeys]

On being asked whether he was made of cheese Emmanuel Lévinas laughed, shook his head and said: “No.”

[@CaptainBluebear08]

Discover the Other in the Face...of the Palestinian, for instance and in particular. I'd say.

[@StephenDeagle]

Considering now that we've become a geological feature of this planet, maybe we should finally be taking seriously the possibilities of playing like God.

[@bitterly_sorrying]

Wise words.

[@c33raven]

What's the opening piano music?

[@pIERRO453]

Rachmaninov thrid concerto

[@TPath3]

Well return can only be meant in a way of coming back again and go through it. Nature is the book which god has already written, a lot can be learned of it again and again. It's the song we are wise to listen to and learn..The Kantian notion of pure thought and it's derivatives are blasphemy against this principle. How can a derived principle (and pure thought is a derivative of this particular universe) be a priori ? It's analogous in praxis, abstract value (as the practical god) is dead.

[@pIERRO453]

Third

[@Hamboarding]

Wow! Thanks for the upload!

[@TPath3]

No he showed on the cross, that at a certain point of development one has to consciously renounce omni-potence. Why because otherwise no further development is possible. Furthermore there's no insult to God's creation because it's infinite in all possible dimensions including time of course and therefore never finished. Christ is telling us that we are to become god's children, meaning we are to be the new of a kind able to divinly create and invent, evolution is now in our hands.

[@StephenDeagle]

While I like Levinas, I also have to disagree with him. I don't see any "good" nature to which we might return. We aspire towards Being, the ultimate insult to God's creation, thinking ourselves so worthy as to ask for more than what God has given. But we are worthy sometimes. We do deserve a better world. And God gave us the vision for that world when he died on the cross, trusting us to carry on the ghost of his creative capacities.

[@Youhavebewitchedme]

Agree.

[@Dayglodaydreams]

There seems to maybe be no room for authentic cultural hybridity with Levinas. Maybe Derrida, Lyotard or Grotowsky would be better for this.