Levinas

Like Husserl and Heidegger, Emmanuel Lévinas (1905-1995) is one of the great names in phenomenology. A Lithuanian-born philosopher and Jew, he contested the idea that the oldest and most eminent philosophical question is that of Being (Heidegger's thesis). With the insightful wisdom typical of Doctors of the Talmud, Lévinas systematically explored what for him was the primordial domain : ethics. His painstaking and demanding work reflects the profile of the one who in the field of ethics reigns as paradoxical master : the Other.From Totality and Infinity (1961) to Otherwise Than Being of Beyond Essence (1974), which both define human existence within the field of ethics, Lévinas developed a new kind of phenomenology which diverges from a strict ontology in order to redefine the concept of Subject. His work Quatre lectures talmudiques which aroused the disapproval of Heidegger's disciples who felt that it might trigger a return to subjective metaphysics restores the Subject as the " subject of responsibility " originating from the discovery of the Other. This Other, who always precedes the Subject, binds him to an experience older than that of Being. The concept of Subject signifies that to exist means to be called by an Otherness (the Other), which answers to our Being.François-David Sebbah, who holds an agrégation degree and is a doctor in Philosophy, teaches at the Université de Compiègne.