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October 21, 2006
In his article on Levinas entitled 'Excursus: Levinas' ethics of the Other' Michael Eldred says that Levinas, in his early article entitled 'Is Ontology Fundamental?', claims that in spite of Heidegger's fundamental ontology locating itself in the midst of lived existence, it nevertheless interprets existence narrowly as understanding. Eldred says that it is:
plain to any reader of Sein und Zeit that understanding is only one mode in which the world opens up to Dasein; the other, equiprimordial mode is moodedness or disposition (Befindlichkeit), the mode in which Dasein is how it is and how it has been cast. Levinas even makes mention of attunement (Gestimmtheit) in passing but returns nonetheless to the claim that understanding is all-dominating in fundamental ontology
Eldred says that moodedness opens Dasein up to the world more deeply than knowing it, and moodedness is on a par with understanding in opening up the world. Levinas does not acknowledge this, and even uses the terms 'understanding' and 'knowing' interchangeably, which only causes more confusion.
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I noticed that comment when you first pointed to Eldred's piece. It's a fair criticism of Levinas, I think, but I also think a lot of readers of Heidegger take away a similar understanding, that human existence is a being concerned with understanding itself, and this tends to eclipse any sense of disposition being a primordial mode of existence. In my view the thinker who has most systematically and radically addressed the question of disposition is Pierre Bourdieu, who, like Levinas, was both indebted to and fiercely critical of Heidegger.