Fraternity Challenges

Anthropo-phallo-logo-centric assumption in question rethinking human and humanism with Lévinas and Derrida

Abstract

Aware that the greatest challenge today posed to the responsibility of (philosophical) thought is to rethink the assumptions of (carno‑phallo‑logo‑centric) western civilization, Desafios da fraternidade seeks, at first (cf. § 1 Challenges of fraternity), to highlight the risks and challenges of the, nevertheless, beautiful dream of fraternity: it does so by stressing the anthropocentric‑humanist or, more precisely, anthropo‑phallo‑logo‑centric assumption: an assumption established by the (self‑)proclamation sovereignty of the human‑man and, ipso facto, in the dual (and hierarchical) opposition man‑woman and man‑animal – a dual opposition from which some of the most pressing concerns that are on the order of the day emerge: from the so‑called gender equality to environmental issues, from animal life to those of tele‑technologies and globalization.
Secondly (cf. § 2 The challenges of E. Lévinas’ ethical fraternity), it will be shown how, in the course of its long history, whose emergence and whose anthropo‑onto‑theo‑logical profile is very briefly recalled (cf. § 1), the idea of fraternity may not necessarily be linked to natural, biological, literal, genetically or sexually determined fraternity ‑ beyond its dominant scheme, and therefore already in a certain rupture of tradition (but still) in the patriarchal tradition, fraternity can also have a spiritual, symbolic, universalist connotation, and merge with humanity itself. Denoting “a humanization of man reflected in fraternity”, the history of fraternity thus merges with the history of humanity itself – so to meditate on the meaning of fraternity is implicitly to meditate on the meaning and un‑condition of the human himself. This is, for example, what Emmanuel Lévinas (1906‑1995) does in contemporary, albeit meta‑ethically, rethinking both ethics and fraternity itself – beyond the strict anthropo‑biological consanguinity, therefore –, he thinks them in terms of (meta‑‑)ethical responsibility and takes them as synonymous of «humanity».

Finally (cf. 3 Feminist hyperbole or the feminine beyond sexual difference and § 4 Feminizing Fraternity), it will be shown how, despite operating a significant rupture – an ethical‑metaphysical rupture – with this tradition of the history of fraternity, though not without ambiguity, Levinas re‑edits it: he still re‑edits it in the anthropo‑andro‑centric register of his humanism of the other man which, however, paradoxically, the philosopher’s own work and thought also allow us to rethink and transcend through his hyperbole of the feminine (Derrida). A hyperbole that, as we try to show, embodies a kind of «avant la lettre feminism» in order to think a (sexed) human before and beyond gender and, therefore, before and beyond sexual difference itself (thought in dual and, therefore, hierarchical terms), thus fighting both indifferent neutrality as well as the essentialism of the one identity and the ideologism of any and all “ism”: it is an ageless, untimely feminism, bearer of the dream of «the multiplicity of sexually marked voices» and as liberating and emancipating of women as of men.
It is this thought and this struggle that, in our view, create the condition of possibility and the promise of a singular feminization of the phallo‑patriarchal fraternity with an onto‑bio‑logical nature and, consequently, of the human, as, for Lévinas, the history of fraternity is confused with that of humanity itself (ethics) – a humanity unconditionally hospitable and caring for the other.