Hi:
 
If you want to be technical, the first words of _Totality and Infinity_ are
"Everyone will readily agree.."  As for the first sentence of the introductory
chapter, it is a play on a Rimbaud poem called "A Season in Hell," which can be
found at this link: http://tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/French/Rimbaud3.htm .
 
In that poem Rimbaud writes, "The true life is absent. But we are not in this
world."  Levinas contradicts this by writing "The true life is absent. But we
are in the world."  My rough interpretation of this is that Levinas is
challenging metaphysical positions that either take the individual out of the
world or speak of reality in no way that refers back to the world we
experience.  Levinas begins with the relationship with the world as the starting
point for a metaphysics of human existence.
 
Regards.


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A web search brings up: *The presence of Being and Time in *<goog_1259864584832>
*Totality and Infinity <http://ghansel.free.fr/taminiaux.html> *by Jacques
Taminiaux

"Right at the beginning of subsection *A*, Levinas quotes a verse of
Rimbaud: «The true life is absent»..."


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Hello!

I am doing my pro gradu work of Levinas´ philsophy of Ethics as first philsophy.
Now I am reading his book ´Totality and Infinity´. I am wondering the first
sentence of this book - it is written inside quation marks. ("The true life is
absent" / "La vraie vie is absente") Why is this? Is Levinas using here somebody
else´s words?

Eija Toiviala
Finland / Helsinki
Philosophy student of Joensuu University

http://www.arch.columbia.edu/event/gsapp-event/iannis-xenakis-interdisciplinary-\
connections

Iannis Xenakis: Interdisciplinary Connections
10.16.09
7:00PM - 9:00PM
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Mark Wigley

Panel Discussion and Performance

In conjunction with Miller Theatre's Composer Portrait of Iannis
Xenakis, a consortium of artists and experts join together for a panel
discussion focusing on the interdisciplinary connections between his
music and his related work as a mathematician, architect, physicist,
and political activist. Percussionist Steven Schick performs the early
percussion masterpiece Psappha followed by a conversation with
panelists including composer David Lang; musicologist and Xenakis
biographer Sharon Kanach; and Mark Wigley, Dean of Columbia's Graduate
School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Arts journalist and
scholar Lara Pellegrinelli will moderate.

Artists and program subject to change.

Free - No tickets required
Location: Miller Theatre at Columbia University

This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Iannis
Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary at The Drawing Center. Visit
www.drawingcenter.org for more details