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Levinas and Intellectual Property

Submitted by Jim Brown on November 7, 2007 - 11:44pm.

So, I've been writing away at this chapter on intellectual property and Levinasian ethics, and I've stumbled upon some ideas that actually might not suck. Here is the opening to the chapter as it stands now...two quotes by way of epigraph followed by a few paragraphs...


Chapter 3 – ‘Like a Thief’: Hospitality, the Commons, and Intellectual Property

An ambivalence that is the exception and the subjectivity of the subject, its very psychism, the possibility of inspiration: to be the author of what was, without my knowledge, inspired in me—to have received, whence we know not, that of which I am the author. In the responsibility for the other, we are at the heart of this ambiguity of inspiration. The unheard-of saying is enigmatic in its an-archic response, in my responsibility for the other. This ambiguity within the subject is the trace of the infinite, alternately beginning and intermediary, the diachronic ambivalence that makes ethics possible.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, “Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony”

A lot of the great art of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there may only be one name on the wall next it in the museum.
— Paul Graham, Hackers and Painters

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"The atoms, as their own weight bears them down plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, in scarce determined places, from their course decline a little- call it, so to speak, mere changed trend. For were it not their wont thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; and then collisions ne'er could be nor blows among the primal elements; and thus nature would never have created aught."

-Lucretius, Of The Nature of Things

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My name is Jim Brown and I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric at the University of Texas. I teach courses in Rhetoric, Literature, and New Media. This blog mostly focuses on my academic work, but you'll also find occasional posts about music or baseball. I also maintain two other blogs, and you can see all of my blog writings by viewing this RSS feed. I'm a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. This lets you know that I'm kind of a masochist and explains the name of my dog.

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