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Mansfield (kathleen beauchamp, dite katherine), 1888-1923 --- Nouvelles (genre litteraire) anglaises --- 20e siecle

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My thesis addresses the question: what is the philosophical sense of transcendence ? Transcendence is a movement, an exceeding of boundaries, a crossing beyond. But beyond what, and into what? What are these boundaries, and what lies within and without them? What direction does the movement of transcendence take? What is the source of this movement? How does it affect us? And what can it come to mean for us? These are the questions hidden within the question of the "sense" of transcendence, sense as meaning , to be sure, but also as direction and sensibility or affectivity . Particularly with respect to philosophy, one can ask: What meaning can transcendence have in philosophy? What direction – organization and order does it give to philosophy? And how does transcendence affect, touch or inspire philosophical thinking? These questions are posed within a contemporary philosophical context set by Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, where philosophy is defined in terms of phenomenology and ontology, and philosophical truth and sense in general come to be synonymous with manifestation in the light of human consciousness. Transcendence, in such a picture, has philosophical sense as an activity of human consciousness surpassing and returning to itself. But surely there is more to transcendence than self-referential activity. What of our relations with other human beings? And what of the religion, God or divinity so often associated with transcendence in the history of philosophical and religious thought? I turn to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and his so-called "return" to Platonism to seek out a way back towards an ethical (interpersonal or intersubjective) and religious approach to transcendence that would come to have sense in philosophy without being subordinated to the self-referential activities of human consciousness and without simply falling back into a special or onto-theological metaphysical language about God that philosophy has attempted to leave behind after Kant and Heidegger. Levinas uses the language of the beyond or Otherwise than being to speak of this ethically and religiously invested transcendence. What does Levinas mean by the beyond or Otherwise than being? And is he saying something new or simply renewing a path towards transcendence that has already been trodden in philosophy?   Indeed, Levinas is hardly the first to speak of a beyond being. We find reference to such a beyond being at the very inception of philosophical thinking on transcendence in Plato's Good beyond being and in the Neo-Platonic assimilation and transformation of this Platonic notion into the One beyond being. For this reason, a passage through Platonic and Neo-Platonic approaches to transcendence is necessary in coming to an understanding of Levinas's own approach to transcendence. What is meant by the Good or the One beyond being in all these thinkers? I dwell particularly on the relation between Platonic eros and Levinasian Desire as affective inspiration of the movement of transcendence and way towards the Good. In reading Plato and Levinas with a focus on love and affectivity, the sapiential direction of philosophy – concerned with wisdom – rather than its scientific direction – concerned with knowledge – is brought to the fore, and it is in this sapiential direction that we can discover a meeting place for ethics, religion and philosophy in reflecting on transcendence. Yet, the Greek influence is not the only influence to be discovered in Levinas's language of the beyond and Otherwise than being. I argue that one needs to consider Levinas's "return" to Platonism against several other backdrops. First, the contemporary phenomenological and ontological context already mentioned above: Levinas's rather negative interpretation of Heideggerian being and of philosophical ontology in general sets the stage for his placing of transcendence beyond being; but the valorization of time and the temporalization of being in Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger also come to play an important positive role in an approach to transcendence that turns out to be decidedly un-Platonic in some of its aspects. Second, Cartesian metaphysics with its idea of God as an Infinite that pierces through the finitude of human consciousness is also to be taken into account. Finally, the influence of Judaism on Levinas, especially in his later approach to Desire and transcendence in prophetic and messianic religious terms, is not to be ignored. Looking for the philosophical sense of transcendence in Levinas's thought entails unraveling all the different sources of transcendence one finds therein as well as evaluating each of these sources with respect to their philosophical tenor. This task, which I undertake in my thesis, requires not only a questioning into the sense of transcendence, but a putting into question of philosophy itself. Philosophy is put into question by an incessant reflection on philosophy's own self-definition. It is further put into question through a consideration of the points of contact between philosophy and other spheres of human life – particularly religion – that may be said to be exterior to philosophical thought at least in some sense. We can find a philosophical way of access to these transcendent spheres through Levinas and Plato's reflections on love and desire. Any reflection on human affectivity, however, also brings us up to the limits of philosophical thought and suggests that there are senses to transcendence that will always escape formulation in philosophical language.