letters
i guess here's my underlying concern with this aspect of levinas (i'm only musing here, so you can tell me what you think because you've worked so much more on this): i really do wonder to what extent ethics as necessity or universal duty and this vision of existence as inherently tragic go hand in hand. in other words, i just wonder if these two commitments condition each other to some degree (this all is in some strange ways related to the problem of fatalism, btw). on the other hand, it is fascinating that if evil is not *nothing*, there is in fact something to respond to. the fact that philosophers like to respond to something utterly vague and content-less is simply depressing.
with regard to the role of the body, it is also very interesting. suffering may be a bit difficult to situate viz. materiality--ophir has a few things to say about it, as i recall. and while i've personally moved away from psychoanalysis (even though i was mainly interested in showing its limits to begin with), this idea that psyche and body are *not* the same seems entirely relevant, even at the most mundane level...
re what you said about arendt: it seems that her stuff on thinking has a lot to do with the fact that eichmann was able to say that he 'had nothing against jews' and yet act in the way he did. and so did many germans who most likely kept thinking that, in theory, they also had nothing against jews and things could be different in a different time... i think she was really struck by this horrifying gap between what people do and what they tell themselves and i certainly couldn't agree more with that. it is not even disavowal, contrary to what psychoanalysts and andy say... :) now, whether thinking can address this issue is a different question. perhaps thinking is nothing but an opportunity, an empty instant where one at least has the chance of noticing and understanding something (and yet one doesn't, not so much really).