Lighthouses are not in the sacrifice business

Bradford McCormick 03:00 (52 minutes ago) to Richard

"Seedcorn scattered to the wind, knowledge for whoever finds" (Norbert Elias)
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I read like I would be Maxwell's Demon (reversing entropy), or a mousetrap.

I have been having my fantasy conversation with Emmanuel Levinas in reading your book. I really am wary that Levinas asks me to nail myself to a cross when "my" childrearers and schoolmarms (of male gender) did their best to hurt me (either by malicious intent or ignorance) already.

But on page 168, I read: "In order to be generous I must have something to give"..

Two recent YouTube videos I watched:

(1) Parishioner$ in an up$cale church all eager to meet their new Head Minister one $unday morning. A bum walks into the church and everybody just wants this creep who is spoiling their day and their edifice to just go away. Bum finally walks up to the altar, pulls off his disguise and tells everybody to go home and think about what they did.

(2) Rich woman offers to give a real homeless man a meal. He tells her to shove it because he does not like being humiliated. Woman persists and finally with the aid of a cop, gets the man into a restaurant. Restaurant manager says to get him out of his place because he will likely turn customers away. Woman asks manager if he hosts a weekly meeting of certain business executives (:"Yes:"). Woman tells manager she owns the company. She then asks the homeless man if he remembers the day, long ago, when she came in that restaurant and asked if she could work for a meal, and the man had been behind the counter and said no but fixed her a big roast beef sandwich and put her at a corner table and paid for the sandwich himself. She reminded him that she was that woman, and she gave the man her business card and said her HR Department could probably find him a position in the office and advance him some money and if any problems he should contact her directly.

Finally, lighthouses are not in the sacrifice business, Professor Levinas, and I quote your own book to you, page 48 in the English translation.

"...to have substituted for the magical communion of species and the confusion of distinct orders a spiritual relation in which beings remain at their post but communicate among themselves will have been the imperishable merit of the 'admirable Greek people,' and the very institution of philosophy." (Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 48)

I have long believed that from those to whom much is given much should be expected. JFK. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr philandered and loved silk shirts (so I read). Professor Levinas, do you want me to be so self sacrificing that I would have to be ignorant, because it is a luxury good to be privileged to know that Marcel Duchamp created a work of art "The bride stripped bare by her bachelors even" when I could have been taking a knife and cutting out some of my flesh to feed the poor?

Such are thoughts I have in reading (which, when I was "gainfully employed" I was losing the ability to have each day). Great book. Crescit eundo.'

Hope you are well in pandemic!

Addendum

"It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field." (John Wild quoting William James)