Lenart Škof

Breath of hospitality Silence, listening, care

In this paper we outline the possibilities of an ethic of care based on our self-affection and subjectivity in the ethical spaces between-two. In this we first refer to three Irigarayan concepts – breath, silence and listening from the third phase of her philosophy, and discuss them within the methodological framework of an ethics of intersubjectivity and interiority. Together with attentiveness, we analyse them as four categories of our ethical becoming. Furthermore, we argue that self-affection is based on our inchoate receptivity for the needs of the other(s) and is thus dialectical in its character. In this we critically confront some epistemological views of our ethical becoming. We wind up this paper with a proposal for an ethics towards two autonomous subjects, based on care and our shared ethical becoming – both as signs of our deepest hospitality towards the other.

Divine Violence? Radical Ethics and Politics of Nonviolence

The chapter “Divine Violence? Radical Ethics and Politics of Nonviolence” brings to the fore two recurrences of an idea—as a mode of an ethical temporality within the very relation between politics and ethics. Here we tackle Badiou’s and Žižek’s ontological claims concerning violence, also accompanied with two complementary remarks on the dissipation of violence. A difficult relation of ethics and politics in Levinas is also analysed in this context. Against both constellations we argue for another recurrence, which, by excluding the logic of competition or force—which still remains a part of even Levinas’ political legacies—concludes this chapter.

Breath of Silence

The chapter “Breath of Silence” brings three meditations on silence and peace. First a dichotomy between power and ideals is discussed. Then we follow Agamben and his genealogy of a pure gesture. We relate this to the concept of mesocosm, as developed in our previous analyzes. Then silence in the Vedas is discussed and compared by Heidegger’s reading of G. Trakl’s poem Winter evening, also with the help of Heidegger’s concept of the threshold. This chapter ends with the meditation on Irigaray’s philosophy as presented in her later works, and finally, in this chapter, the mesocosm is presented as an atmosphere of ethics.

Ethics of Breath and the Atmosphere of Politics

In this chapter, we summarise some of our previous arguments and propose—also with the help of a series of models—a new and original thought based on our mesocosmic (and essentially intercultural) awareness of breath and the related atmosphere of politics. We propose that thinking the way of peace (and nonviolence) could be reachable only through dynamics of a triadic structure(s), as proposed in the concluding chapter of this book. This thought really originates from Josiah Royce’s original observations on C. S. Peirce’s semiotics and its triadic scheme (intepreter–interpretant–interpretee) from the essay “The Neighbor: Love and Hate”, which concludes this chapter.

Feuerbach’s “Pneumatische Wasserheilkunde”

In this chapter, we follow Feuerbach’s teaching on the elements of water (and air) and his original philosophy of sensibility. We interpret the role of water and air within Feuerbach’s “pneumatic water therapy” (pneumatische Wasserheilkunde). We interpret the role of the water in its capability to serve as a mediator between the newly invented ritual space of the human body itself. Just as in Christianity water plays a mediating role between our bodies and the Holy Spirit, in a philosophically ritualised sense it is precisely water that has a strong mediating role between the body/Nature and thought/sensibility (Sinnlichkeit). Feuerbach’s philosophy is interpreted as a key mediating stage between the classical German Idalism and new trends in philosophy (materialism, elements, breath, sensibility, corporeality).

A New Way of Gesture (G. H. Mead)

In this chapter, the idiosyncratic theory of a gesture in G.H. Mead is presented. In this interpretation, we do not follow interpretations paving a way of gesture, as it were, towards an orthodox view of his theory of symbolic interactionism—either from a sociological or psychological view. Rather, we insist on a more hidden link of his thought with the philosophy of inwardness (Innerlichkeit), i.e., the philosophy that is sensitive to our internal layers in the construction of any social reality. In this we closely relate Mead’s theory to the question of time, or ethical temporality in Kierkegaard. With the help of Kierkegaard a new interpretation of Mead’s philosophy of gesture(s) is proposed, also with some interesting intercultural elements. The germ of sociality, according to our interpretation of Mead, lies in our interiority (Innerlichkeit): the self already has sociality within itself. A key result of our investigation is a new view on intersubjectivity and time, paving the way towards philosophy of the elements and ethics of breath, as proposed in the second part of the book.

Schelling, or from the Abyss of Ethics

In this chapter we propose a close comparative reading of Schelling and the Vedas, more precisely, the Creation hymn from the Ṛgveda. In this analysis, we seek for the first opening of the World of two-ness, or, first constellation of a between-us. We show that for Schelling, breath (der Hauch) is the first name of love. For this purpose, we analyze the way how Schelling tackles the body-mind question and relegates both parts of this dichotomy to the more original constellation and emanation of the most gentle corporeality/sensibility from the origins of the world. We show that with this gesture Schelling moves towards the nascence of being and secures the place where the first mesocosmic gesture of the between-two can be born: breath as the atmosphere of being.

Rorty and Irigaray: On a Culture of Love and Peace

In this chapter we attempt to rethink the issue of democratic experimentalism from an ethical point of view and look at its potential for the future by way of drawing on two key thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. First we explore the experimentalist character in Irigaray’s later thought and point to a pragmatist link in her works. We dynamize her original theory of sexual difference by pointing to G. H. Mead’s symbolic interactionism. In the second section of this chapter a revolutionary character of Irigaray’s thought is defended by focusing on her interventions into the very core of Western philosophy and in particular its Hegelian heritage. In the third section, by introducing Rorty into the debate, we finally pledge for a new democratic culture of love and nonviolence as a “spiritual” mode of democratic experimentalism needed in our times. Finally, we conclude by showing that both in Irigaray’s and Rorty’s thought there is an affinity toward intercultural thinking, bearing important consequences for an ethico-spiritual project of democratic experimentalism.

Ethics of Breath: Derrida, Lévinas and Irigaray

In this chapter the ethics of breath is discussed by reading the excerpts from Derrida’s, Levinas’ and Irigaray’s writings. Based on previous elaborations on breath in its mesocosmic constellation, and also on Feuerbach’s and Heidegger’s philosophies of the elements, this chapter introduces a possibility for an ethics that reaches beyond the empirical-transcendental divide. Firstly Derrida’s thinking on breath is presented: we refer to On Spirit, the essay on Levinas (“Violence and Metaphysics”) and The Animal That Therefore I am. Then we proceed towards Levinas and Irigaray where we really become aware of the possibility for an ethics of breath. In our reading, Levinas’ philosophy first testifies for an extreme sensitivity not only for the Other but also for the phenomenon of breathing. But especially important are final sentences from Otherwise than Being, or Beyond the Essence, where Levinas hypostasises lungs to an ethical organ. We interpret this as a newly invented “material” phenomenology—now thought of as pneumatology of the other, based on breathing. This chapter ends with Irigaray’s rich elaborations on breath and breathing as a key topic in the third phase of her work. Irigaray’s idea for the Age of the Breath is analyzed and presented and here feminist based philosophy of breathing is analyzed from the viewpoint of a new theory of intersubjectivity as proposed in the book.

Towards Mesocosmic Rituals in the Vedas

In this chapter the ancient Vedic world is presented through a critical intercultural approach. Through a reading of the Indian philosopher J. L. Mehta it is our aim to open a path toward the primary cosmic gesture, as proposed in a comparative reading of the Upaniṣads with Heidegger. This happens in the close vicinity of the poetic thought of the Upaniṣads (brahman and akṣara) and Heidegger. In order to approach this origin, it is first necessary to revitalise the ancient Upaniṣadic thinking as well as the comparative thinking as proposed by Mehta and Heidegger himself.