For Emmanuel Levinas, to study human nature is to ‘liberate human beings from the categories adapted uniquely for things’. This, paradoxically, is to occupy a standpoint where the human ‘no longer offers itself to our powers’: to go beyond the category-thinking of cultural construction and to put what one consciously supposes – Self, Society, Culture, Nature – into question. The ‘liberation’ of human nature is an unconscious process that does not have the structure of intentionality but rather the character of inspiration. Examining the possible accommodation of a Levinasian philosophy within anthropology, this article pays particular attention to the human ‘density of being’ that, for Levinas, accompanies any individual life. It is impossible for Ego to know the Other, Levinas insists – subjectivity is ‘secret’, identity is ‘invisible’ – but otherness can nevertheless ‘inspire’ recognition and respect through its physical proximity. The article argues that a ‘cosmopolitan’ anthropology devoted to discerning the nature of a universal humanity might practise an artistry sufficient to identify the outline of that invisibility: the silhouette even if not the substance. Here are the traces of otherness that are evident, willy-nilly, when the densities of being of individual human lives impact upon one another in social milieux.

中文翻译：

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追踪人类的密度：通过列维纳斯的无形他者人类学

对于伊曼纽尔·列维纳斯 (Emmanuel Levinas) 而言，研究人性就是“将人类从专门适应事物的范畴中解放出来”。矛盾的是，这是站在一个人类“不再将自己献给我们的力量”的立场上：超越文化建构的范畴思维，并对一个人有意识地假设的东西——自我、社会、文化、自然——提出质疑. 人性的“解放”是一种无意识的过程，它不具有意向性结构，而是具有灵感性。本文考察了人类学对列维纳斯哲学的可能适应性，特别关注人类“存在密度”，对于列维纳斯而言，它伴随着任何个人生活。自我不可能认识他者，列维纳斯坚持认为——主观性是“秘密的”，身份是“不可见的”——但差异性仍然可以通过其身体上的接近性来“激发”认可和尊重。这篇文章认为，致力于辨别普遍人性本质的“世界主义”人类学可能会实践一种足以识别这种不可见性的轮廓的艺术：即使不是实质，也只是轮廓。当个体人类生命的密度在社会环境中相互影响时，无论情愿与否，差异性的痕迹是显而易见的。