ABSTRACT
This is the first chapter in a section that explores how phenomenology can help us to understand the traumatised subject. In this chapter, we explore general definitions of phenomenology, as proposed by philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricœur. Phenomenology is the lens through which we will explore the interconnected experience of trauma. The focus on this chapter, however, soon becomes evident: here we are interested in understanding how Lévinas’ phenomenology, as being-for-the-other, helps us to situate trauma in the relation of responsibility. This relation he defines as ethics, which is the first movement of philosophy. In interpreting the self as becoming subject to the other’s call for help, we are introduced to questions such as separation and limit, useful and useless suffering and the problem of freedom. Lévinas offers a philosophical framework of subjectivity that can help us to understand the varieties of definitions of traumatic experience.
