In the Face of Suffering: Lévinas's Inter-human Order Animated through Tomatsu's Hibakusha Photographs
AbstractFor Emmanuel Lévinas, concrete circumstances of human suffering problematize abstract conceptions of God. Lévinas considers the face of the suffering Other to be the locus of ethical action and ethics as the realm of transcendence. This article relates Lévinas's conception of the Other&...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
[2019]
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| In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2019, Volume: 23, Issue: 4, Pages: 360-383 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Lévinas, Emmanuel 1906-1995
/ Suffering
/ Meaninglessness
/ Tōmatsu, Shōmei 1930-2012
/ Photography
/ Atomic bomb dropping
/ War victims
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion |
| Further subjects: | B
Photography
B Lévinas B Tomatsu B inter-human order B Suffering B Nagasaki B hibakusha B Other |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | AbstractFor Emmanuel Lévinas, concrete circumstances of human suffering problematize abstract conceptions of God. Lévinas considers the face of the suffering Other to be the locus of ethical action and ethics as the realm of transcendence. This article relates Lévinas's conception of the Other's suffering face to pragmatic observations about humans' capacity to respond to suffering, and explores whether artwork depicting faces, photography specifically, may uniquely provoke empathetic, ethical responses in an observer. I argue, using examples from twentieth-century Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu's images of Nagasaki nuclear bomb survivors, that images have the capacity to reveal hidden dimensions of human experience and provoke humility through estrangement. Tomatsu's photographs may renew a viewer's vulnerability to the pain of others and re-orient a viewer's self towards relational selfhood. Ultimately, if God is present in the fabric of face-to-face encounters, as Lévinas suggests, artwork that fosters empathetic human relations bears transcendent significance. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and the arts
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02304002 |