[Zhou Fuyan] Intangible cultural heritage protection and postmodern ethical awareness

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Important: The "community" that has been given extreme importance in the protection of human intangible cultural heritage is also at the core of the postmodern context of radical reflection on modern cultural politics.

From the expressions and value concerns of the Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Ethical Principles for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, we can see that the concept and practical awareness of intangible cultural heritage protection are consistent with the post-modern ethical stance represented by Levinas.

The ethical principles for the protection of intangible cultural heritage can be understood as an ethical principle of preservation ethics or a moral stance of preservation morality.

In fact, the protection of intangible cultural heritage recognizes the community ethical community and the dialogue mechanism it contains, in terms of family sense, beauty, unity, creativity and diversity, which enables it to join forces with the imagination of postmodern society and jointly serve cultural politics in the sense of "de-aggregation", promoting and expanding dialogue, and enhancing tolerance among people's groups.

Keywords: Intangible cultural heritage; postmodern ethical consciousness; Levinas; cultural and political community

Author: Zhou Fuyan, School of Liberal Arts, Liaoning University

In 2015, UNESCO reviewed and adopted 12 "Ethical Principles for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" to resist the endless tendencies of commercialization, consumerization and de-contextualization in protection practice that contradict the spirit of the Convention.

Among these tendencies, the meaning of the term "safeguard" is narrowly understood or even misinterpreted, resulting in the de facto destruction of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter referred to as "intangible cultural heritage ") in this materialized protection model, such as unsustainability due to commercial use and development; loss of vitality due to static and museum-based preservation, etc.

The issue of ethical principles is raised not only for specific protection measures, but also for protection concepts.

Its cultural and political significance is greater than the normative significance of its operations and methods.

These 12 principles call on all relevant entities to abide by them as operational guidelines for intangible cultural heritage protection practices in their implementation of the Convention and national legal frameworks.

On the surface, it is a direct response to issues such as work ethics, feasible rules and scope of application of intangible cultural heritage protection.

However, fundamentally speaking, it aims to supplement the affirmation of the value concerns implicit in the 2003 Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage (referred to as the "2003 Convention ").

It is an extension and elucidation of the core values of the Convention.

It is also a correction of cultural engineering thinking and imagination since modernity.

The expression of the 12 principles is run through a set of keywords, which reflect the distinctive postmodern color of intangible cultural heritage protection in terms of ethical awareness.

These principles first highlight the rights of cultural holders, namely indigenous communities/communities, groups and individuals, in identifying intangible cultural heritage and recognize their primary role in the production, protection, continuation and re-creation of intangible cultural heritage.

"Communities, groups and individuals" have and can identify the logical/meaningful connections between various special cultural practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills and their intangible cultural heritage.

Without their identification and construction activities, intangible cultural heritage does not exist., let alone have sustainability; secondly, these principles also reaffirm the value of human cultural diversity.

"Defending cultural diversity is an ethical imperative that cannot be separated from respect for human dignity." "Intangible cultural heritage is the main driving force of cultural diversity." In addition, these principles also emphasize that intangible cultural heritage protection represents and pursues the unity of universal human interests and the cultural demands of local communities.

These 12 principles have an intertextual relationship with the 2003 UNESCO Convention and the 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, and together with the latter have contributed to the expanding context of cultural practice and reflection in the contemporary world.

Extensively speaking, intangible culture is literally translated as "intangible culture"-overlaps with the local, traditional objectification system of daily life that includes the use of specific artificial objects, customs, and daily language and its conceptual products.

That is, folk culture in the broad sense.

What may be confusing here is the distinction between intangible culture and material culture, because it is clear that the former largely contains and even depends on the material part of culture.

However,"intangible culture" and "material culture" do not constitute typological opposition and complementarity, because the two belong to different horizons or discourse systems.

"Material culture" is mainly imagined in the economic discourse of technology/utility, while "intangible culture" is mainly understood in the discourse of symbols and ethics, and is associated with meaningful reproduction rather than functional consumption.

As we know, the use of purely material products is at best a form of consumption.

To reveal a person's cultural affiliation, we also need to obtain parameters such as what specific customs the goods are followed and in what specific language practice situations.

In symbols and ethical discourse, the world of things is the world of symbols as a spiritual intermediary, and is by no means the world of consumption of consumer goods plus raw materials.

People control things fundamentally to fulfill or create meaningful communication requirements that match the call of the situation.

The "untouchable culture" becomes touchable by this, so people's attitude towards things is a reflection of people's attitude towards people, and the world of things symbolizes the world of people.

Intangible culture is an objectification or expressive system of spirit, the kind of cultural reality that Hegel refers to in terms such as "objective spirit" and "ethical entity", the kind of spirit that appeals to the senses rather than being closed in the mind, which requires constant reproduction rather than constant consumption.

From the 12 "Ethical Principles for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" and the definition of intangible cultural heritage in the 2003 Convention, we can feel a kind of radical reflection on human moral civilization and lifestyle within the framework of legalization of politics by law., a worry about the enlightenment rationalism and technological imagination leading the reproduction of daily life and its consequences, a worry about saying goodbye to heteronomy groups, returning to historical imagination, The eagerness to return to a self-disciplined ethical community culture and moral intimacy is a cultural and political interest to rebuild the proper status and dignity of ethics, fashion, morality and aesthetics in the world of life.

Intangible culture has been regarded as an important carrier for undertaking this desire and emancipation.

The symbolic connection in intangible culture is not a connection between physics and ontology, but a connection of ethical nature.

It makes the human living world filled with ethical requirements such as never-ending symbolic responsibility and dialogue.

The values of cultural diversity and human creativity defended by the Convention and ethical principles are clearly ethical and aesthetic.

Cultural diversity is not an anthropological concept of empirical universality from the perspective of modernity.

It expresses a concern for the other, a desire for otherness, a moral impulse, or a postmodern internal perspective.

It is in this sense that the ethical principles of intangible cultural heritage protection can be understood as an ethical principle of protecting ethics or a moral stance of preserving morality.

Generally speaking, intangible culture is a local or local community culture that is derived from traditional lifestyles and is based on concrete and proximity relationships among community groups such as kin groups and neighbors.

This culture is naturally heterogeneous, but it is the true birthplace of "sociality".

It is a substantive ethical culture with love, beliefs, habits as the core of actions rather than free will, reason, and interests.

However, in modern cultural politics characterized by technological thinking of opposition between subject and object and oriented towards rationality/universality, the social reproduction power of this culture is taken over, deprived, or suppressed, and it is itself regarded as a representative of pre-modern cultural sites on the "disenchantment" list and waiting to be cleared.

In the process of modern civilization, institutionalized, homogeneous, group, functional, and reciprocal daily life has gradually marginalized traditional, specific, community, meaningful, and emotional daily life, revoking and taking over the latter's definition of individual ethical identity.

The cultural reform movement in the early days of modernity aimed to eradicate and destroy plural, diverse, and co-existing ways in the name of a unified, civilized, enlightened, legally supported model of life.

In this cultural and political perspective, cultural diversity is by no means an honor for mankind.

Instead, it is a flaw and an obstacle that will be overcome in efforts to build cultural homogeneity.

Rationality presupposes an ontology of social existence, conceiving social facts as objective and neutral facts that can be divorced from specific ethical norms, can be viewed only through cognition, and can be managed technically.

It does not understand that social facts cannot be isolated from ethical norms, that facts are externalization of ethical norms, and ethical norms are people's internalization of certain facts.

With the strengthening of moral heteronomy at the system level, individuals 'compliance with procedures and rules and their assigned roles are all, and there are few opportunities for moral judgment.

Reason suspends its moral judgment, although it retains its cognitive judgment.

However, in the absence of ethics and customs,"success" at the systemic or technical level-that is, success in making mutual coexistence a reality-does not undo the moral failure in modern social interactions, but rather exacerbates it.

By "opening the eyes of reason and letting passion go to sleep", modern cultural politics is systematically socialized Socialization replaces the sociality of face-to-face groups Sociality, replacing heterogeneous ethical communities with homogeneous functional groups, attacking sanctity with secularism, attacking individuality with totality, attacking spontaneity with management, and attacking emotion with rationality.

This technicalism and abstract universalism The path of "becoming us" has increasingly been proven to bear the main responsibility for the consequences of ethical decline and increased public risk in the modern world.

Based on an imaginary core of "all mankind", modern society liberates man from all "historical influences and restraints that undermine his deepest essence." This means "de-ethicizing" the individual, that is, reducing it to an independent, non-social moral existence, thereby relieving the individual of his true moral responsibilities and moral abilities, so as to facilitate "man himself"(man as such) The naked body and soul can wear clothes made by new, popular designers; It also overcomes diversity by expanding specific institutional forces, outlawing all intermediary forces considered to be customs and practices that hinder "universalization", and codifying morality, that is, reducing it to a set of formal requirements with only the nature of "common denominator".

However, this did not achieve the imagined moral unity, but led to the prevalence of narrow moral relativism under the mask of universal ethics.

Questioning and dissatisfied with this ethical crisis situation and seeking solutions are the focus of postmodern thought, and the proposal of the Convention on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage and ethical principles echo the postmodern reflective stance in both discourse and practice.

Post-modernity can be understood as a comprehensive questioning of modernity's cultural politics and its "view of people", a distrust of emotionless, computational rationality and its authority, and a "return to charm" of "disenchantment".

In a postmodern perspective, people restore the power and dignity of moral emotions, abandon the definition of rationality and its rationalistic rhetoric as validity out of context; re-accept moral abilities from their modern exile back into the human world, and emphasize that it is this moral ability to participate in society-and not other means that makes society, its continued existence, and social happiness possible; It reconfirmed the significance and value of re-publicizing ethics, affirmed the priority of community culture as an intermediary connecting individuals and the country over modern organized management, and began to replace it with the concept of "community of trust among people".

The concept of "universal obligation of human membership".

In terms of defending ethical life, Emmanuel Levinas Postmodern thinkers represented by Emmanuel Levinas have triggered radical reflection and criticism of the cultural politics of modernity and its consequences.

They emphasized the foundational and concreteness of ethical relations, emphasized the pre-existence and infinite nature of moral responsibility, and raised protests against modern humanism based on ontology and totality and its leading moral arguments, because the latter is far from being sufficiently "humane".

They are trying to develop a non-holistic view of humanitarianism.

Amid their criticism, a series of the most important words in modern cultural and political discourse-such as "reason","freedom","self","equality (symmetry/asymmetry)", etc.

-have been given new meaning.

Concepts that have been deprived or distorted of value connotations-"dialogue","community","intersubjectivity","sociality","love","creation","cultural diversity","universality", and "ethics" itself-have been restored to their vitality.

Postmodern ethics and cultural propositions are fully presented in the expression and practice of the Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and its ethical principles.

In the basic presupposition of postmodern ethical thought, moral phenomena are not rooted in practical reason as Kant believed.

On the contrary, they are a spontaneous emotional impulse that precedes reason and is the source of autonomous action.

Morality is and is destined to be "irrational." It avoids all codes, does not serve any purpose other than itself, does not participate in any relationship other than itself, and in fact, can it be called moral only if it takes precedence over the consideration of ends and the calculation of gains and losses; morality is essentially not subordinate to the rational order, does not fit into the system of "methods to achieve ends", cannot be managed, standardized and codified, and cannot be generalized (totality) or assimilated or expropriated by the horizon of existence that regards survival as the highest law; Morality also has a hopeless transcendental nature, and moral behavior can neither be guaranteed by a more suitable behavioral environment nor by a higher behavioral motivation; The uncertainty of moral choice is also destined to always accompany the moral self.

For the latter, few options are unambiguous good.

Not only do good and evil coexist at the center of man's original scene, but the "conflict between good and good" is also an almost inevitable conflict, which is enough to make one imagine the existence of "moral luck." Every moral impulse, if taken to its extremes, leads to immoral consequences.

When the impulse to care for others reaches an extreme, it will lead to the destruction of the autonomy of others, leading to rule and oppression.

However, in Levinas's view, it is this extremely heterogeneous nature of moral phenomena that cannot be integrated into rational order or existence that ensures that people can talk about "infinite responsibility" to or for others.

Like Kant, Levinas affirmed the unconditional nature of moral orders, but this unconditional nature does not refer to unconditional compliance with impersonal, neutral, and anonymous universalizable rules, but refers to the responsibility that an individual will bear unconditionally when encountering the other, prior to or external to all normative ideas and rational boundaries.

Therefore, it refers to the unconditional encounter with the other, or the unconditional nature of encountering the other.

"Prior" here means that moral responsibility and moral relationship precede ontology or existence, and also precede self and self-disciplined freedom, which are more primitive than the latter.

This "primacy" of morality does not mean the absence of ontology or existence, but the degradation of ontology or existence.

Morality is a transcendence or foundation for the latter.

Ethics is achieved by breaking down the self-satisfaction of ontology or existence.Levinas argues this through "the immorality of ontology."

For Levinas, ethical judgment precedes and is independent of ontological insights, because the latter presupposes a general perspective, a pattern of oppositional relations between subject and object, and a universal cognition that ethical doubts and moral considerations will resist.

Ethics-"this questioning of my spontaneity caused by the presence of others"-only accepts the traction of "infinity" in the sense of emotional holiness-the capital other-and refuses to obey the overall settlement of moral subjects in the intellectual sense.

In the "totality", the "other"'s alternity is revoked in my conceptualization of him, becoming the "image/representation" inherent in my thoughts, the impersonal "same", a neutral thing, a link in a relationship, and he loses his "face" and is assigned masks, roles, and functional positions in a social network woven of reciprocity and satisfiable "needs." This lower-case other is just a copy of the "general me" in ontology, whose otherness has also been revoked.

It is an "alter ego", a plural of "I", an "object" constructed by concepts and captured and possessed by cognition.

On the contrary, in "infinity", the "other" restores its absolute separation, otherness and externality, restores its irdefinable and irreplaceable face, and restores its existence as a "transcendence" and "desirable", which means the impossibility of attempting to identify and generalize the other in the ontological sense, and also means that anonymous power (even if it is understandable) constructs the cognitive representation of the community and its ethical connection.

As the "infinite" Other suspends my "negation" of playing a role in unity, power and control.

I can no longer construct the truth about the other in the sense of "unmasking of impersonal and neutral things." All I can do is to face the other, to let the other's face speak to me face face to face, that is, to be inspired and taught.

The "face" refused to be assigned an identity by me, the refusal was reduced to a known thing, and my perception of the face based on its intrinsic nature and my attempt to position it in the overall will eventually fail.

"It is not the deficiency of the self that prevents generalization, but the infinity of the other that prevents it." Without the epiphany of faces, without this presentation of infinity, finite thoughts would not know its finitude.

Faces affirm a fundamental moral or ethical rather than a theoretical or cognitive connection between the self and others.

This correlation has spilled over the concept of similarity and the overall cognitive schema of mutual "needs".

No conceptual community, no typology, no subject-object relationship, and species relationship can reflect it.

This connection is an ethical connection dominated by irrelevant and completely irrelevant "desire".

Unlike "needs" that stem from the emptiness of the subject and can be satisfied,"desires" are sought by the person who has nothing to lack.

They are born from the "desirable one"(the other) itself, stimulated and deepened by the latter's transcendence, other heterosexual and externality, and cannot be satisfied.

In this connection, the relationship connects not items that complement each other and therefore lack each other, but items that are self-sufficient.

"Faces speak to me and therefore invite me into a relationship that has no common measure with the power being exercised, whether it is enjoyment or recognition." "Encounter" with faces-which Levinas calls a "relationship without relationship"-challenges not the weakness of my power, but the ability of my power.

Call it a "relationship" because the encounter with the face occurs; call it a "non-relationship" because it prevents me from using any given relationship in the generalization to govern this encounter with the face.

Faces show the irreducible ultimate externality, the kind of externality that cannot be grasped by any corresponding thematic behavior or concept.

It frustrated my efforts to seek to defend my freedom in the general order, made me question the spontaneity of my freedom and feel ashamed of my solipsism freedom, and made me realize that my freedom is a freedom authorized by the presence of the infinite Other, a freedom with a foundation.

The infinity of the other, this extraordinary presence of others, sets the end for my power, the end for the imperialism of identity, but it sets the starting point for a non-exclusive relationship, a non-collective, compatible rather than exclusive ethical relationship and discourse.

"Morality begins when freedom feels arbitrary and violent, not when it defends itself."

By establishing the other as "infinite" and affirming the relationship with the transcendental as social relations, Levinas extended Durkheim's idea of "society is God." His ethical interpretation of the idea of infinity strips away the impersonal elements of totality or ontology that have long been attached to the latter, and opens the divine dimension in the face of mankind.

The totality or ontology concept of infinity represented by rational universalism is that infinity is something that embraces everything and is the whole one, while the "finite" existence separated from infinity is regarded as a whole.

Depreciation or disparaging of the whole is a kind of "degeneration" from infinity.

Correspondingly,"separation" is seen as a denial of infinity.

Levinas believes that the infinite understood in this sense obscures the original and most important connection between the finite and the infinite, that is, the connection dominated by "desire" rather than "need", an ethical connection that precedes existence.

According to Levinas, the infinite appearing in its face is the absolute externality as the essence of existence and cannot be reduced to internality.

It presupposes the "separation" of unity from the other or finite from the transcendence.

It is the original "multiplicity" rather than the whole one.

The idea of infinity occurs in the spillover of finite into its own finite nature, when the finite being realizes that beyond its closed egoism or internality there are always other and opposite sexes who resist being unified.

This separated situation does not imply opposition.

On the contrary, it immediately evokes "desire" and "good." "Limited negativity should be understood from the perspective of goodness.

Social relations breed a surplus in which goodness surpasses existence, and a surplus in which multiplicity surpasses unity."

Understanding existence as externality, understanding infinity as finite desire for it, and understanding world or society as original multiplicity reveals that the connection between unity and other, between finite and infinite is not an attribute.

The connection also declares the expansion of the whole and the end of the panoramic existence of existence.

The finite (the separated being) is not absorbed by the infinite.

It need not be a nostalgia for the infinite, a disease of returning; rather, it will reside in its own existence and act in this world, because its own otherness is also absolute and infinite.

The "infinity" with the presence of faces as its terminal makes the ethical connection between the self and others-"to the face"-the ultimate relationship in existence, which precedes both the existential relationship between the self and others and the existential relationship between the self and objects.

Infinitude is understood in this connection as height (supremacy), not quantity; finite is not less, but intrinsic towards sublimity and excellence.

This connection reveals that the origin of the world must appear as pluralism, as every expressed self.

Diversity is not a defect.

Diversity ultimately leads to peace through cultural politics motivated by promoting kindness as the subjectivity.

In this cultural politics, ethics no longer serves existence, but lays the foundation for existence; ethics is no longer a branch of philosophy, but the first philosophy.

According to Levinas, all social relations can be traced back as a derivative to the appearance of the other to the same.

This presentation is not mediated by any images or symbols, but is simply expressed through "faces".

The "face" does not need to be explained, because all explanations start from it.

Question "Who is this?" The person proposed to it is not satisfied by any content and knowledge that is represented, it simply points to a face that is presented by refusing to be included.

"Faces are not a mode of essence, not an answer to a question, but the relevant item that precedes all questions.

That that precedes all problems is no longer a problem, nor is it a priori knowledge, but a desire." Encountering others in the face is a primitive and pure experience of existence that leads separated beings into the realm of desire, a realm where knowledge and power will be questioned.

Others who appear in their faces remain infinite transcendence invite me to enter into a relationship with infinite others and opposites, a relationship that cannot be reduced to those relationships that govern the totality.

In this relationship, the face inspires and calls on the uniqueness of the self towards it, and it confirms the erotic relationship that is easily thrown into biology but is absolutely unique, presenting itself only to the subject in the erotic rather than as a subject of knowledge and power.

"The face turned to me for help, but broke up with the world."

Levinas called this relationship "teaching" or "ethics." Teaching presents spiritual things to and reconciles with those who are open to teaching.

It does not operate like Socratic intellectual maieutics, but continues to place the idea of infinity, the height of externality itself, into me.

The teaching presupposes a soul that has the ability to relate to externalities, the ability to constantly spill over from itself, and the ability to contain more than it can draw from itself.

Teaching is not as hurtful as opinion, authority, or magical supernatural phenomena.

It does not deny or violate identity, and it does not limit the internality of the person taught.

Restrictions arise only in a totality, but relationships with others break through the boundaries of the totality.

This relationship is fundamentally peaceful.

Unlike Socratic dialogue, teaching does not presuppose beings who will rule on words and have therefore accepted the rules of words; teaching has no rhetoric, flattery and seduction, and therefore no violence, but rather maintains the internality of the recipient.

In teaching, the other person is not opposed to me like another freedom that is similar to and therefore hostile to my freedom, not a freedom as arbitrary as my freedom-otherwise he would immediately cross the infinity that separates me from it and fall under the same concept.

Others do not completely deny themselves.

The temptation and attempt to completely deny themselves is "murder".

This complete denial refers to a prior relationship between others and me.

The only commandment stated in the teaching is "Thou shalt not kill." "Teaching is not a species in the genus called ruling, not a type of hegemony that functions in the totality, but an infinite presence that destroys the totality's closed circle."

It is this teaching as infinite presence that establishes and defines the nature of "language" and "reason".

It is in this kind of peaceful relationship face-to-face with the other, without borders and without negativity that it occurs in language.

Here, ethical relations and the rational characteristics of language reside and reproduce.

Levinas emphasized that only in the reception of the opposite hole, in the language derived from teaching, is reason possible, and will truly open itself to reason.

Language is different from "watching" in that it represents the connection between separate items.

It speaks and inspires others, not "letting exist." In the constructive activity of "viewing", I give a certain meaning to the "viewed" and integrate it into a world, making it my object or theme.

However, in the "discourse", a rift inevitably emerges between the constructed other as my subject and the other as my interlocutor that immediately questions the meaning I give to my interlocutor.

Faces show me through words the ethical "holiness" and inviolability of others.

Language is the original welcoming action and gesture.

Its essence is ethics.

It urges me to shoulder "symbolic responsibility" and act in the sense of symbolic ethics.

Language is not an adjunct to idealism.

Its mission is not to externalize the appearance of preexisting in me, to make my internality and my world common; it is not limited to the midwifery awakening of thoughts that are common to all beings, and does not promote the gradual inner maturity of a reason that is common to all beings.

Language is the first ethical action that introduces infinity-that is, others-into thought as an absolute new thing, and this is the work of "reason" itself.

Unlike the dominant opinion of modernity, Levinas believes that reason does not come from egoistic freedom as the subject of knowledge and power, nor does it come from some impersonal rule or neutral thing deduced through conceptualization and argument.

Only others as infinite beings can provide the original teachings of reason, and reason is born only in the language in which others present their faces and as teachings.

The relationship between action and transcendence, the relationship between questioning my crude spontaneity, exposes the willfulness and contingency of my egoism that has not yet defended itself.

It introduces into me objects that are not in me, and into my freedom.

However, this does not mean that my same freedom is restricted or violated; on the contrary, while elevating this freedom to responsibility, it also creates and justifies it, it puts an end to willfulness and chance, puts an end to violence, and in this sense it creates reason.

This sense of rationality arises from the "sociality" of human gatherings to "meet" and from the peaceful opposition of discourse.

It maintains a non-exclusive, constant "teaching/acceptance" relationship between the other as the face and the subject as the desire.

Levinas is convinced that only this reason born in meetings makes human society possible, and that it serves as a more existential standard for life and change, because of their capacity for innovation, desire, and social connection, than the reason that is assimilated into free will in ideologies.

The subject called by this rationality is an individual in the strict sense and a truly unique self.

It is capable of constantly accepting teachings, constantly opening up to the infinite, constantly overflowing from itself, and making "personal" and thus ethical responses to faces.

This ego breaks with prejudice about intellectual midwifery, but at the same time it does not break with rationalism, whose subjectivity (individuality) can be confirmed through "apology" in teaching and as the language of dialogue.

Defense does not blindly affirm itself, but has already appealed to others.

It is the original phenomenon of reason.

Reason, as a product of social connection, is precisely based on the premise of individuality or particularity that can defend itself.

These individualities or particularities are present as interlocutors, as faces, as irreplaceable beings unique in their type.

Only when my freedom is guaranteed by justiciability can reason, dialogue, and the assumption of unlimited responsibility to others beyond any boundaries determined by objective laws-that is,"justice"-be guaranteed at the same time.Levinas emphasized that freedom as the existent self is a special, individual but not willful freedom that can only be opened by the appearance of the face as the infinite other, and can only be born in an ethical rather than cognitive led "meeting".

Levinas rejects the idea that the self exists before encountering others, and does not understand the self as "consciousness","intentionality","internality","freedom of self-possession", and "commitment" or "choice." In his view, I am present in myself only by being close to others and by exposing myself to others.

Only others who appear with their faces can awaken the self and make the self emerge from the islands and sanctuaries of immanence or identity of existence, from the arbitrariness of isolated egoism, and become a moral self that "exists for the other"., become a personality.

This existence of the self is also different from the objective existence that is included in the anonymous universal or totality, the existence of the self that is the same as the law of abstract reason-the latter has actually lost its ego itself, it exists only as an individualization of a concept, and he represents himself, clearing his subjective entity.

Levinas admitted that the society composed of the latter as members will disappear as a society.

This kind of society emphasizes the primacy of "we" relative to the self, and the primacy of the situation relative to those who exist in the situation.

It honors a philosophy of neutral things and praises obedience that has no face to command.

In this unified, integrated society, it is needs, not desires, that dictate behavior.

People can no longer be guided by the desire for personality-a metaphysical desire not out of want, and can no longer encounter the face of the other as the source of all meanings.

There is no longer a need for dialogue between beings who obey the law of common reason, and all people will hear is endless monologues of the same.

The existence of the Being no longer plays out in the "meeting" connection between the Other and the Oneness, no longer is the logos of human speech.

The Other signalled through his "works" but did not present himself.

Levinas named this image of existence, in which faces are replaced by content and language is replaced by works,"Tyranny of works."

Although the work comes from language, it is not produced in meeting but only in immanence or labor.

It does not demand a response as urgently as a face.

The self cannot reach the outside simply through creation.

Works can be exchanged, placed in the anonymity of money, and bid farewell to the internality from which they originated.

Works do not support me in the venue like faces, listen to my arguments, and empower me freely.

On the contrary, I am absent from the works.

"Starting from the work, I have only been deduced and have been misunderstood, betrayed rather than expressed." If the author of the work-others-is approached from the perspective of the work, he will only be presented as "content." This content does not deviate from the context and system in which the works themselves are integrated, but answers questions about "what" based on its place in the system.

To ask "what" is to ask "as what" is not to regard manifestation as manifestation itself.

Others and I cannot meet in the work, even in a simulated meeting, because the question of "who is this" can only be replaced by the question of "what is it?"

Unlike the other's questioning and trial of me in his face, the trial of me in the work will not involve my individuality, that is, the irreducible individuality that lies outside the whole.

This kind of trial is always trial in absentia, trial without defense, and "objective" trial.

"An objective trial is declared by the very existence of the rational system.

It consists in subjecting the subjective will to the measurement of universal laws, which guide the subjective will to its objective meaning.

Thus, in the light of public order, the will exists in the equality ensured for it by the universality of the law.

But here the will recognizes another despotism: the despotism of works that are alienated and already alien to others.

A despotism of universal and impersonal things, an order that is inhuman, albeit different from barbaric." This powerful trial of "pure reason" is cruel, and its universal norms silence the uniqueness in which the defense lies and from which its arguments are drawn.

The will is in this kind of discourse, as it is in a kind of indirect speech; it loses its uniqueness and character of beginning, and loses its ability to speak.

In Levinas's view, this refusal to defend itself, the refusal to appear as the uniqueness, the disengagement from dialogue and ethics, the appeal to theorems and rules, and the appeal to totality or unity represents a kind of violence, a kind of violence that cannot be accepted by people.

This is why people still seek invisible, religious or transcendental judgments in addition to their visible, historical or legal judgments.

"When the will's fear of death turns into fear of murder, the will is under God's judgment."

Levinas deeply questioned and resisted this rationality, which ignored faces, unified others, and regarded universal and neutral things as its standard, and the moral principles and ethical norms it advocated.

All of his analysis aims to expose and accuse the harm this rationality causes to cultural life: It revokes true and profound equality with a form of equality, confiscates freedom as reality with a false freedom, replaces real dialogue with a pseudo-dialogue around the motivation of reciprocity, and replaces the fundamental diversity as a appendage and landscape as a whole, with a symmetrical and indifferent "co-existence".

Being with replaces the asymmetric, humane "being for" and uses a neutral intersubjectivity to expel the intersubjectivity that can truly shape and expand the "sense of us" and cultivate human cultural creativity.

Levinas's ethics does not provide a set of universal principles or a code of rules that we might hope to find.

He rejects the Kantian motivation that bases ethics on reason.

He emphasizes that what should really be protected is the cultural mechanism that makes possible the "surplus" of social connections, that is, the dialogue and ethics born in "meetings", which is the ultimate guarantee sufficient to counter totalization and re-publicize human ethical life.

Is the ultimate guarantee for rational life.

Ethics without rules puts forward new requirements for all aspects of culture.

It means that moral responsibility to others has no end.

What no rules express is the connotation that moral responsibility cannot be simplified or standardized.

Contrary to the Kantian totalitarian aspirations that dominate modern cultural politics, Levinas's stance on reason reflects a distinct postmodernist cultural concept.

He made a very representative appeal: reason should be defined by the face of others as infinitely present, rather than the face defined by the non-personal structure of reason; social connection should precede the emergence of non-personal structures such as principles, codes or static justice; Universality should command me as a manifestation of humanity in the eyes that gaze should appeal to my responsibilities and recognize my freedom; the pluralism of social connections should not disappear in the ascent to reason, it should become a condition for the latter; what reason ultimately should create not the impersonal thing in me, but the self itself, capable of having social connections.

The "surplus" that Levinas advocates and hopes for can make social connections, the diversity as existence, and the cultural mechanisms and ethical spaces that allow "meetings" and teaching/dialogue to take place are the "communities" that are placed first in the current protection of intangible cultural heritage.

Community is the area where human habitation and "meeting" occur, and the familiarity of the world develops here.

It is the original scene of the beginning of morality, the cradle and birthplace of the personality or moral self, and contains all possibilities for the same to emerge from the internality and establish transcendental relationships with others ("non-relational relationships").

Community is also the area where social "proximity" occurs.

Only in communities is it possible to see encounters with others not as encounters with "people" but as encounters with faces.

The community puts the subjectivity under trial while maintaining "speaking/defending".

In the usual sense, a community is a "face-to-face community without intermediaries", that is, a community that feels that others are beside you rather than opposite you.

In it, neither the other nor I are roles, but irreplaceable or unique selves.

This irreplaceability makes the mitsein that we are continuously bound together "moral"-that is, a connection maintained by intrinsic, non-reciprocal, unconditional obligations rather than by extrinsic, unconditional obligations and rules and laws.

The face of the neighbor means an irresistible responsibility to me, taking precedence over all commitments, all contracts and all signings.

In such a community, because everyone is irreplaceable and has the freedom to defend, our behavior cannot be distinguished into "egocentric" or "altruistic" in any way.

According to Levinas, this community is moral or good, first because it is a community created by language as the presence of faces, and is a solidarity facilitated by the ethical attributes of language rather than by biological or natural factors such as blood or geography; and second because it is characterized by "being for others" and intersubjectivity "asymmetry."

As mentioned earlier, the Other as infinite faceless presence interacts with the subject as desire in "teaching" and the "language" that is essentially dialogue.

The self and others participating in dialogue are always absolutely separated beings, and the other with which the self interacts is always the absolute other rather than the other as the alter ego.

They are connected into a community through language, but this does not constitute the unity of the genus, does not lead to collusion with preferred beings, nor does it lead to a self-sufficient "I/you" relationship that forgets the universal.

Language always maintains its openness and meaning, does not fall into the privacy of love, and does not turn into a smile or a whisper.

Even the natural community known as kinship is still a language/ethical community in the original sense.

"All men are brothers" cannot be explained by their similarities, nor can they be explained by a common cause.

"What constitutes the original fact of fraternity is my responsibility in the face of a man who is gazing at me like an absolute stranger."

Community is a common world continuously created by ethical language practices.

It is the language of dialogue that ensures the ethical substantiality, rationality and creativity of the community cultural community.

According to Levinas, the relationship with others or "transcendence" is to speak of the world to others.

Speech instructs things to others.

This is an ethical event that forms the basis of generalization and the original gift.

Through speech, a thing acquires universality from the vocabulary that separates it from the here and now, is "dispossessed", and is jointly grasped.

In an ethical sense, language creates a common world like a community through the generality of vocabulary.

Furthermore, the ethical nature of language also permeates into the public cognition of the community, making the objectivity of objects and their themes possible.

Although the foundation of objectivity was constructed in a purely subjective process in Husserl's opinion, since language is the intermediary of ethics, not the intermediary of Cartesian self-thinking that is absolutely independent of others, the foundation of objectivity is still ethical and inter-subjective.

Objectivity means that there is more consensus among subjects, and that my thoughts already contain more references to the thoughts of others.

The language and culture within the community establishes a logical space, a discourse order that gradually becomes a public through the specific language connection between the other and the self.

Any reporting and understanding of a certain event cannot but refer to this constructed common social reality itself.

If I say I have experienced God, whether people take my statement seriously depends on how the word "God" is used in my community.

The language as ethical dialogue and the specific vocabulary and culture it derives are signposts for the growth of later members of the community.

In particular, the "final vocabulary" outlines the boundary between the descriptiveness and identifiability of his life world-things independent of what people describe and identify do not exist.

In this sense, people and culture are both the embodied and concrete realization of language and vocabulary.

This also means that when people are trapped in the vocabulary brought by growth and cannot extricate themselves, when people want to resolve or quell doubts about their own character or their own culture, they can only return to the peaceful ethical dialogue that is the source of the vocabulary-that is, the "language" as a verb.

At this time, he will continue to return to the language as teaching and the face of the other as infinite presence, trying to change social practice by expanding vocabulary and consensus, by proposing a redescription, and by proposing useful and novel usages about symbols and sounds; He cannot imagine that this practice will be accomplished by acquiring an ability to produce mental images, by using a general language strategy, by rejecting the gaze of the other, by physical coercion or intellectual violence.

Community, a local ethic-language community, has also revealed that it has put forward rational requirements that are completely different from the overall and panoramic social construction, and has become a fortress against the overall cultural politics of modernity.

In a community,"speaking/dialogue" is both ethical and rational.

Always speaking ethically to others is itself "rationality".

The primary action of "existing for others" is to speak, and the speaking self is the self that assumes responsibility to the other.

"Rationality" here refers to what appears whenever people interact, whenever they try to prove their assertions to others, rather than threatening each other;"Rationality" here is not something behind the action that is perceived as authority, but the action itself of "talking/talking" and the consensus reached through speaking.

This position has in fact replaced the standard Platonic and Kantian binary division between reason and emotion with a degree of consensus overlap or sufficiency of dialogue.

"Irrationality" is no longer attributed to someone's failure to use his natural ability appropriately, but simply means that he does not seem to be in a common world with us opened up by discourse, does not share enough consensus with us, and does not allow for a potentially fruitful dialogue on the issue at issue.In the overall rational discourse of modernity, the term "irrationality" attributes a reprehensible practical anomie to a congenital faculty and becomes the secular equivalent of original sin.

It is a deliberate avoidance of the light and a free choice of evil; In the ethical rational discourse of community, the term "irrationality" simply refers to the inadequacy of dialogue or those doomed attempts to end dialogue.

"Reason" is beginning to be defined by conversations that are required to participate in rather than principles that are required to reconstruct, meaning that the goal of correctly grasping things will be replaced by the goal of expanding our communicative corpus of self-descriptions about individuals and cultures; It means that the concept of universal moral obligation arising from human membership and the panoramic social concept of building human existence will be replaced by the concept of infinite moral responsibility of mentally sound dialogue participants and the concept of building ethical community bonds between people.

Postmodernists believe that only this kind of ethical community between people that starts in communities or localities, continues to be constructed and expanded through dialogue, makes a global moral community achievable.

The emphasis on communities and their derived dialogue mechanisms in intangible cultural heritage protection and the emphasis on the concept of "global localization" are completely consistent with this postmodern reflective stance.

The reason why the community ethical language community is relied heavily on is not only that it can provide the cultural soil needed for the growth of communicative rationality based on dialogue, but also that it can strengthen an intersubjectivity characterized by "asymmetry", thereby freeing mankind from the totality and panoramic rule of modernity, making it possible to "exist for others" and a true moral life for mankind.

According to Levinas, in the teaching/dialogue relationship between the other and me, the other as infinite lies on the dimension of "glorious inferiority": it has the face of the powerless, and it also has the face of the master who is called to authorize and defend my freedom.

In the pure experience of "meeting", the other person enters the relationship while remaining in accordance with himself; he expresses himself, expressing himself beyond the possibility of being demurred by me from a perspective in a borrowed light.

This means both a separation and an "inequality" or "asymmetry".

The appearance of others in the face frees my place from dependence on all positions that others may take, exposing me to deep doubts about my moral integrity; others with whom I speak acquire a divine supremacy here.

Since he cannot be unified, objectified or constructed as another me, the responses he demands from me are directed to my desires rather than my needs, and therefore are not premised on my rational calculations and expectations of him.

This means that my responsibilities to others are one-way, non-interchangeable, non-reversible, and at the same time, there is no "reason", unquantifiable, and unlimited.

This "asymmetry" was a decisive feature of intersubjectivity in pre-existing ethical life.

Levinas called the situation in which ethical life is dominated by this "asymmetric" inter-subject relationship "being-for-the-other" to distinguish it from "mitsein" or "being-with-the-other" in Heidegger's ontology.

"To exist for others does not have to cause one to think of any purpose.

It does not involve a pre-setting of a value that I do not know about or an enhancement of it.

To exist for others is to become good.

When I exist for others, I exist in a different way than I exist for myself-this thing is morality itself." "In Heidegger, co-existence is established as a relationship with others, a relationship that cannot be reduced to objective knowledge, but it is ultimately based on a relationship with being in general, on understanding, and on ontology.

Heidegger has pre-established the basis of this existence as the horizon from which any being emerges, as if the horizon and the concepts it contains as the boundaries of viewing what is one's own, were the ultimate framework of relations.

In Heidegger's view, intersubjectivity is co-existence, a us that precedes self and other, a neutral intersubjectivity." In Levinas's view, Heidegger's "co-existence" has a symmetrical assumption of mutual expectation from the beginning.

This co-existence only comes from the commonality in the ontological dilemma that connects us-a system of "needs".

Therefore, this co-existence does not require moral agreement and moral commitment.

It even presents an inevitable ethical neutrality or indifference.

It is at best a kind of "side by side", but it is never a "face-to-face".

"Co-existence" is symmetrical, while "existing for others" is obviously asymmetrical.

This way of existence excludes not only "loneliness" in "co-existence", but also indifference.

"Existing for others" means that I am doing it for him, regardless of whether he is doing it for me.

He serves me for it is his problem.

Whether he serves me and how he serves me has no effect on me serving him at all.

My relationship with the other is irreversible.

If it happens to be interchangeable, from the perspective of my existence for the other, this interchange is just an accident.

Therefore, the "we" representing an ethical community such as a community is not a plural of "I", not a "we" formed as a plural by "summing", but a term that means a complex structure that connects individuals with diverse identities.

It means that in moral relationships, all possible responsibilities and rules are solely for me and binding on me.

"I am prepared to die for the other" is a moral statement, and "he should also be prepared to die for me" is obviously not a moral statement.

No matter how worthwhile it may be, it is not a moral imperative that others should sacrifice their lives for the motherland, for the party, or for any other reason.

Preparing to sacrifice for others places me on a responsibility that is moral precisely because I acknowledge that the command of sacrifice applies to me and only to me.

This command cannot be universalized or aggregated, and therefore cannot be shaken off my shoulders and landed on the shoulders of others.

It is the uniqueness-not universality-and non-interchangeability of this responsibility that places me in moral relationships.

As McIntyre put it: "A person who refuses to legislate for anyone but himself may be an ethical person."

"Being for others" means that I take responsibility for the blessings and woes of others as a "moral individual" and a "personality" and respond to the evils that afflict my neighbors, rather than fulfilling universal obligations to others as a "role".

Responsibility is intrinsic and makes humans individuals; obligation is extrinsic and tends to make individuals similar.

This "I" is born in the continuous "meetings" of the community ethical community and in the unmediated "intimacy/closeness" of social connections; morality here means all self-judgment.

It cannot be expressed as compliance with impersonal rules, nor as compliance with rules that can be universally recognized in principle.

It has no purpose, it does not contract, it is not reciprocal, it is subordinate to ethics rather than law, it is local and inevitably "irrational"-in the non-computable sense, therefore, the moral appeal is completely personal.

It calls on our responsibilities, and therefore the urgent demands of relationships, not alleviated and comforted by the knowledge that others are doing my part for me or that I have done my part by strictly abiding by what others have often done in the past.

"I always have more responsibilities than all others, and I can never fully fulfill my responsibilities to others"-only under this assumption can an ethical community exist.

In a peaceful "meeting" relationship in a community, the moral conscience born in the teaching of the stated commandment of "thou shalt not kill"-the ability to perceive the nonverbal pain of others through the face-can alone assume the task of instilling moral responsibility.

Moral responsibility-to consider others first before being able to get along with others-is the first existence of the self, the starting point of society rather than its product.

Whether it is through learning knowledge, evaluating, enduring suffering, or taking action, morality as responsibility precedes all promises made to others, so it has no reason, no determinant, no foundation, and is simply an act of self-determination.

It is an impulse like love, a moral instinct that has not yet been compressed by universal principles.

It does not need to justify itself.

It is its own necessary and sufficient reason.

Question "Why should we be moral?"-- This issue will hardly be raised in a community ethical community-it is the end of a moral stance, not its beginning.

Moral responsibility emerges before social management.

If I were to look for standards by which to measure my moral responsibility to match my moral impulses, I would not find such standards among the rules I reasonably ask others to follow.

Morality does not begin with laws or principles, but with the self that meets with others in the community ethical community, the self that has chosen to "exist for others", and the self that is able and prepared to continue to engage in dialogue.

It is this self, and nothing else, that makes ethical negotiation and consensus possible, restoring morality to the practice of negotiating between an ability to learn that can grow and a culture that can change.

As Michael Oakshot said: "Morality is neither a system of universal principles nor a code of rules, but a local language.

Universal principles, even rules, can be derived from morality, but morality (like other languages) is not the work of grammarians, but the creation of the speaker.

In moral education, what we learn is neither theorems (such as good deeds are fair acts or kindness) nor rules (such as 'must tell the truth'); it is how to speak the language skillfully.

Morality is not a device used to state judgments about behavior or to solve so-called moral problems.

Morality is a practice by which we think, choose, act and speak." The "repersonalization of morality" advocated by postmodern thinkers is to restore this practical freedom, release it from the hard armor of artificially created imperatives, and return the ethical process from where it ended (its exile) to its starting point (its state at home).

In their view, moral principles are reminders or abbreviations for such practices, rather than sufficient justification or justification for such practices.

They are at best supplementary materials for learning such practices.

The "community", which has been given extreme importance in the protection of intangible cultural heritage, is also at the core of the postmodern context of radical reflection on modernity's cultural politics, which prompts us to investigate some of the fundamental cultural concepts of the two.

In fact, from the expressions of the Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Ethical Principles for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and the values and concerns they have established, we can see that the concept and practical awareness of intangible cultural heritage protection are the same as the postmodern ethical positions and propositions represented by Levinas are very similar and consistent.

Different from other definitions of culture,"intangible culture" was proposed in the expansion of technological civilization and technological moral civilization, in the intensification of people's dependence on matter and the "alienation" and "materialization" of the relationship between people.

It itself carries the irony of reviewing the gains and losses of current civilization and restoring the inherent dignity of human existence, and carries the meaning of paying tribute to or at least humble sympathy for the pre-modern human way of life.

In the vision it opens up, people are guided to remain sensitive to any alternative lifestyle, especially the more distinctive ethical and aesthetic lifestyles, and to attempt to abolish this unification and generalization of the opposite sex.

Although "intangible culture" overlaps considerably with "folk culture"(or "folk culture"),"ethnic culture", etc.

in terms of extension, it is different from the latter in terms of connotation.

"Intangible culture" pays more attention to the fate of culture in civilization than all other definitions and classifications of "culture".

The context and vocabulary of "intangible culture" have fully proved this point.

The term "intangible cultural heritage" is a reaffirmation of the pre-modern local and local community culture that was once expelled and ignored by rationalist civilization in modern cultural politics.

It is a reaffirmation of the morality inherited from the pre-modern period-that is, the "morality of proximity".

This morality is the only morality that mankind has so far possessed, although it is so painfully inappropriate in a contemporary civilized society where all important behaviors are estrangement.

The protection of intangible cultural heritage frees the culture growing within the community ethical community from its long-standing state of being expelled, despised and expropriated.

It emphasizes the "safeguard guarding" of the latter, pays attention to its "vitality","viability" and "sustainability" of development, and makes it a "living heritage".

"Live protection" means "recall", which means no longer continuing to increase consumption content, even if this consumption is cultural consumption; it means no longer continuing to expropriate culture and make it serve civilization, but making intangible culture an effective part of modern public life.

The protection of intangible cultural heritage must protect the culture of the community ethical community, and ultimately achieve the protection of human cultural life itself under the conditions of modernity, by resisting or reversing the discipline of universal principles on moral impulses, the violation of "monologue" on "speaking", the expulsion of "total" to "infinity", and civilized etiquette to "social gregarious nature" The expulsion of social sociability, the substitution of "role" for "face", the encroachment of "non-person" on the moral self, the encroachment of "being with others" on "being for others", etc.

In fact, in Levinas's analytical framework, we can already see that the distinction between "totality" and "infinity","coexisting with others" and "existing for others" corresponds to the distinction between "civilization" and "culture." Many core vocabulary for intangible cultural heritage protection can be defined from this distinction.

For example,"mutual respect" and "fair treatment" are in a "cultural" sense rather than a "civilized" sense, and are directed to beings who are another rather than an alter ego.

For another example,"cultural diversity" is not the same as the diversity of "styles" of civilization.

The former is qualitative diversity as being, which presupposes the complete otherness of the other, and is therefore a multiplicity that is not unified in the totality; the latter is simply a numerical majority ("multiplicity"), which has no defense against totality, but is just the appearance of the totality and an insignificant decoration in the totality.

Intangible cultural heritage protection attaches importance to "communities, groups and individuals" as heritage holders; the emphasis on promoting "dialogue" and "mutual respect"; and the belief in safeguarding "world cultural diversity" and confirming "human cultural creativity" are all consistent with postmodern arguments against totalization.

References:

Bamoqubumo,"UNESCO: " Ethical Principles for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage ", translated by Zhang Ling," Research on Ethnic Literature ", No.

3, 2016.

2.Document ITH-15-EXP-2,TH/15/10.COM/15.a,Expert meeting on a model code of ethics for intangible cultural heritage，http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/10com，2016-12-07.

3.Emmanuel Levinas,Totality and Infinity:AnEssay on Exteriority.Leiden:Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,1979.

Richard Rorty,"Accidental, Irony and Unity", translated by Xu Wenrui, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2005

Siegmund Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, translated by Zhang Chenggang, Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2002

Agnes Heller, Theory of Modernity, translated by Li Ruihua, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2005

(The article was originally published in "Research on Ethnic Literature", No.

6, 2017.

Please refer to the original text for detailed annotations.)