This paper attempts to present the thought of Emmanuel Levinas in the context of Jacques Derrida’s critics leveled in his widely celebrated essay Violence and Metaphysics. The author argues that pedagogical reading of Levinas, often narrow and uncritical, must be supplemented by thorough reading of Derrida’s response which provides the unique possibility to encompass the great challenge that Levinasian thought raised before traditional philosophy, ethics and before itself. Two parts of Derridean essay are referred to: one devoted to Levinasian critique of Husserl’s phenomenology, and another one to his dialogue with Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. The author follows Derrida in claiming, contrary to Levinas, that the other cannot be conceived of as nonphenomenality, that only seen as an alter ego, he can be respected in his otherness. Derrida uses the same method to win Heidegger over Levinas showing that the latter unjustly reproaches Heidegger for making “Being” neutral and impersonal, in which the otherness shrinks. Derrida’s critique oscillates around the question: can any significant relation exist without acknowledging Heideggerian thought of being? Ultimately, the author contends that Levinas’s great and eminent oeuvre has often been subjected to reductive pedagogical reflection and demands that from now on it be approached with more critical consciousness, for which a thinker as Levinas fully deserves.
展开▼
