Levinas on Love

Sudden realization: I haven't blogged this week. Good thing that revelation just came to me...otherwise...my life would be no fun...

Ok, so in our class a week ago, Professor Mack brought up some neat philosophy from a French/Jewish philosopher named Levinas. Basically, his philosophy is that when we see people, we look at them in one of two ways: totality and infinity. I wanted to blog about this because it's been inspiring me with uplifting thoughts.

Totality
With a totality perspective, I see someone like a pie chart. For example, I met a guy at the bus stop yesterday. I asked him how he was doing. He said well. If I had a totality view, I would have thought, "Bingo! I know this guy half a percent! Only 99.5% to get to know! Cool!" So then I asked what his name is. It is Minh. (Sweet! 99% left!) And I continued talking with him. He's a finance major. (5% down. 95% left) He lives near me. (90% left! Yessss!) And I continued getting to know him with my objective of knowing him 100% coming closer and closer. And then, when I feel like I know him 100%, I can slap a label on him because I totally know him completely. Soo, I could say, "Minh is from Vietnam. Asian! I get him! *Assumption, assumption, assumption because I know Minh completely now*, blah, blah, blah..."

The unfortunate thing about totality view is that when I slap that label on, I stop seeing Minh as a person, I see him as an object. And that's bad.

Infinity
I see people as infinite beings. I can't label them because I understand that I can never really get to know them 100%. It's impossible. So I do my best to get to know someone, but not as an interrogator. I become familiar with them in gentle, loving ways. It just allows a lot more room for love.

Ok, so thoughts inspired by this philosophy:

1. First Thought: RELIEF. I don't know why, but when I make comments in class I'm scared because I feel like people will interpret my comments and make judgments about me. Ok, actually I do know why I'm scared. I'm just really bad at expressing myself so I feel like everything I say comes out wrong, therefore everyone will have a skewed perspective of who I am. But after this explanation, I relaxed a bit because I hope that people would view me as an infinite being and wouldn't slap a label on me from one comment. Yeah. Feel free to do it after you read my blog though...hahaha. Just kidding.

2. Second Thought: Relief again. But this one is different. I've been sort of at war with myself because I've been trying to determine what I should think of Hernán Cortés. I guess the viewpoint that I learned in school is that he was a heartless bad man that killed basically everyone in South America for gold. But sometimes when I read the excerpts from Victors and Vanquished, I come across things that are confusing.

"Indeed, when we least expected it, they came to say that [Montezuma] was dead. Cortés wept for him..." (Schwartz, Victors and Vanquished, 172)

Why would Cortés weep for someone that he was conquering? Did he love him? Or was it because it put  Cortés in a sticky situation? (There were more things but that was the only quote I could find right now.) So I guess the relief I feel is that I don't need to put a label on Cortés. Who am I to judge Hernán Cortés? How could I decide what kind of person he was because, honestly, I really, really don't know him at all. He's an infinite being and I have no idea what caused him to do the things he did.

This view from Levinas changed the way I look at people. Does this philosophy change how you see people too?