Already in his earlier works Levinas proposes a distinct phenomenological project which takes into consideration the radicality of the other and otherness by questioning intentionality and the validity of intersubjectivity within intentional consciousness. His move “towards Heidegger and against Husserl” was due primarily to Heidegger’s Dasein analysis, understanding of Being and being-with. However, in his major work, Totality and Infinity , Levinas proposes a new perspective on reading intersubjective relations with the Other which strongly contrasts with the Heideggerian concept of intersubjectivity. This paper addresses the question of the Other, intersubjectivity and ethics in the writings of Levinas and Heidegger respectively. It considers Levinas’s critique of intersubjectivity as provoked and developed by Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, and concentrates on Levinas’s specific understanding of intentionality in his account of metaphysics, metaphysical desire and the Other. It also takes up the question of temporality as a necessary condition for intersubjective relation and explores its implication for the self and the Other in Levinas’s and Heidegger’s respective philosophies.
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