Levinas, "Reflections on the Philosophy ..."

[Dave Monroe]

... was just reminded of this, something I read a decade or so ago which
I see now has much influenced my take on certain issues here, but, as I
don't have the full translation at hand, am posting Paul Gilroy's
discussion thereof from Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond
the Color Line (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000), pub. in the UK under
what is proving to be the more appropriate title of Between Camps:
Nations, Cultures and the Allure of  Race (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
2000), Chapter 4, "Hitler Wore Khakis," pp. 137-76 (UK pagination may
differ) ...

In 1928, and long before Riefenstahl brought its visual culture to life,
Emmanuel Levinas struggled to make sense of the philosophy of
Hitlerism.  He drew particular attention to a feeling of identity
between selves and bodies that was being constructed where the fascist
movements gave the body and its pleasures back to people who had been
schooled in the cultural and spiritual assumptions of Christianity and
liberalism.  These doctrines told them that their sense of embodiment
and corporeal constraint was a stage to be passed through en route to a
higher and more valuable sense of freedom associated with the ideas of
the soul and the spirit.  In contrast to these traditions, Levinas
warned, Hitlerism finds and founds a new definition of freedom from an
acceptance of being constrained by the body.  The soul or spirit does
not disappear, but its essence is redefined by the fact that it is
chained to the body: "Man's essence no longer lies in freedom, but in a
kind of bondage.  To be truly oneself ... means becoming aware of the
ineluctable original chain that is unique to our bodies, and above all
accepting this chaining." (175-6)

... Gilroy is here paraphrasing ...

Levinas, Emmanuel.  "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism."
    Trans. Sean Hand.  Critical Inquiry Vol. 17, No. 1 (Autumn 1990):
    62-71.

... the citation is from p. 69.  I believe the essay was first published
in 1934, though perhaps it was first written in 1928 ...