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94 ] THE Puttosopny or Eco-Pouirics
perhaps art does just this: it gives things a face.? László Tengelyi
believed Lévinas’ attempt to absolutise the responsibility principle to be
premature, because ,,it can hardly be taken as self-evident that the silent
challenge which every experience of reality poses us could in every case
be interpreted as a claim for a response, which gives us something to
answer”. In his opinion, in the majority of cases, we would seek in vain
for the manifestation to us of an alien meaning that awaits a response
behind the raw facts of experience.
Lévinas appeals to Martin Buber. “Although Buber accords a
privileged status to the purely intersubjective aspects of the I — Thou
relation the reciprocity of which may be expressed in language, the
meaning is also construed as a relation with God as well as with things.
For we can behave towards God, too, as if we were called, and the tree,
too, instead of being of use to me or dissolving into a series of
phenomenal appearances, can confront me in person, speak to me and
elicit an answer.”®’ As an example for such a personal answer, he again
gives the work of art, which is brought to life by the non-ethical
commitment to the object. “Man’s response is a formative vision,” he
writes and calls it, with Buber’s words, ,,a formative fidelity dedicated
to what is unknown and which collaborates with the latter; fidelity is
not devoted to the phenomenon but to the inaccessible being with
whom we are in communication.” (...) According to Buber, this
communication is perception itself, which is more real than the
perceiving subject or the perceived object themselves. “My perceptions
are acts in the natural order” .*°
In this work, Lévinas develops the foundation of his own ethical
worldview point by point with reference to the thoughts of Buber. He
finds acceptable the explanation that the “Thou-radiation” is imposed
on the personal relations between man and the non-human as well, i.e.,
“...the relation between humans — as soon as the Thou has a human face
— has a privileged status and even conditions all other relations...“ Is
not the result of all this that for a being who is the creation of a
8 „Can things take on a face? Is not art and activity that lends face to things? Does not the
facade of a house regard us? The analysis thus far does not suffice for an answer.” Emmanuel
Lévinas: Is Ontology Fundamental? In Adrian T. Peperzak et al eds: Emmanuel Lévinas: Basic
Philosophical Writings, p. 10. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1996.
8 Läszlé Tengelyi Idid. p. 168.
87 Emmanuel Lévinas: Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge. The Levinas Reader,
p.170. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989.
88 Jhid. p.70-71.
89 Ibid. p.71.