Fundamental Differences Between Levinas's Philosophy and Soyo Existence Ethics — Chapter 92

Existence itself is Ethics.

“Soyo Existence Ethics is a new 21st-century integrative framework of philosophy, ethics, and theology that transcends the limitations of traditional philosophies which fragmented the human being through deconstruction, restoring the wholeness of human existence through the trembling of conscience and the love of God.”

1. Levinas's Existential Phenomenology and Its Limits

Levinas's Concept of Phenomenology

For Levinas, phenomenology is the task of dissecting the mode in which experiences appear to consciousness. Human beings see, feel, perceive, imagine, and experience everything within the field of consciousness.

Thus, phenomenology seeks to analyze the following mental events:

• cognition

• perception

• emotion

• psychic processes

Soyo's Interpretation

Soyo Existence Ethics interprets it differently:

Phenomenology explains only the flow of emotions and perceptions within human consciousness (the mind), yet it can never reach the inner realm of conscience and ethics.

The entire domain that phenomenology studies—what humans see, feel, and endure remains confined to the surface of consciousness. For that reason, it cannot access:

• the essence of life

• the depth of conscience

• the mystery of death

Limits — Soyo's Critique

Phenomenology may assist human understanding, but it fails to address the fundamental problems:

1. The Meaning of Death: Phenomenology cannot surpass the "absence of experience" regarding death.

2. The Ground of Conscience: Emotion and perception are individual phenomena; they cannot define the essence of life.

3. Universal Meaning of Existence: Because consciousness is deeply personal, it cannot reach the universal dimension of existence.

Conclusion

Phenomenal consciousness is insufficient to disclose the essence of existence. Soyo Existence Ethics goes beyond phenomenology into: Conscience — life — divine personality.

2. Levinas's Ethics — An Ethics of the Other, Yet Beginning and Ending in Humanity

Levinas famously asserts his core thesis: "The existence of the Other is ethics itself."

"The Other awakens my existence, demands responsibility, and the face of the Other becomes the absolute source of ethical obligation."

Soyo Existence Ethics states a fundamental critique:

Levinas's ethics begins with human beings and ends with human beings. He excludes God and places the human being above the divine.

Problems

1. Locating ethics in humans — a fundamental error.  Humans envy, hate, destroy, and harm one another. How then can humans be the source of ethics for other humans?

2. If the Other is the root of ethics, then humans must become gods to one another. This is an apparent anthropocentric fallacy.

3. No divine personality. The true origin of ethics is not the human being but conscience, and conscience arises from the breath of God.

Levinas: "The Other is ethics" - Ethics is found in the human Other → humanism

This is not merely a conceptual distinction—it is a foundational metaphysical divide.

Soyo asserts the essential difference:

"Existence itself is Ethics." (Ethics originates in the divine personality imprinted within human existence.)

3. Levinas's Ontology — A "Philosophy of Wound and Violence."

Levinas writes: "Every philosophy that seeks to understand everything contains a violence that erases the Other."

Soyo's Analysis

This statement flows directly from Levinas's own traumatic experiences:

• Nazi concentration camps

• Death of his family

• Suffering as a Jew

• The silence of God

Soyo summarizes Levinas's ontology as follows:

It is "a philosophy born from wound, suffering, and responsibility. Though Levinas speaks of the Other, he ultimately elevates his own suffering to the essence of existence."

Problems

1. He never explains the grounds of responsibility.

He speaks of responsibility without asking, "Why does responsibility exist at all?"

2. Mistaking experience for essence.

Wound is experience, not the essence of being.

3. Emotion overwhelms ontology.

Levinas's "Other" remains tied to emotional reaction.

4. The Jewish Background of Levinas — Not Theology but the Memory of Wound

Levinas's philosophy is deeply connected to three central Jewish concepts:

• memory (Shoah)

• justice

• responsibility

However, he relocates all of these into anthropology rather than theology.

Soyo's Judgment

Levinas's entire framework is based on an ethical phenomenology born from the Jewish memory of suffering, yet stripped of divine personality.

And the most decisive critique:

Levinas's ethics does not place the human under God; it places God under the human. His language of "holiness" finally collapses into human-to-human responsibility, not a divine-to-human relationship.

5. The Alternative Proposed by Soyo Existence Ethics

"Human existence does not originate from the Other."

1) Existence is not constituted by the Other

The relationship with the Other is a condition of human relations, not a condition of existence itself.

2) Humans cannot define the value of existence

The root of existence is the breath of divine personality placed within the conscience.

3) Humans cannot judge other humans

Levinas bases ethics on human-to-human evaluation, while Soyo Existence Ethics asserts:

Only God can define human beings. Human judgment carries no ultimate authority.

4) Ethics is not emotion — it is an eternal matter

Levinas's ethics uses the language of emotion, wound, and responsibility. Soyo Existence Ethics uses the language of life, conscience, and divine personality.

Levinas’s notion of the “face of the Other” was an attempt to locate the ethics of human existence within external relationships. Soyo Existence Ethics, however, declares that such ethics already reside within the human being, within the deepest trembling of conscience.

Where Levinas discovered ethical responsibility in the external Other, Soyo Existence Ethics understands the human being itself as a whole infused with the breath of God, and it asserts that the truthfulness of existence must be restored even before the encounter with the Other. Thus, the two writings today’s reflection on Levinas and tomorrow’s exploration of the wholeness philosophy has lost are connected by a single, unbroken question:

Why did philosophy lose the human being, and how can humanity return to oneness within the embrace of love?

→ “Next essay: The Whole Philosophy Lost, and the Path Back to the Love of God.”

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo Existence Ethics. Author of "The Silence of Existence," "The Flame of Truth"

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