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(1999) Levinas between ethics and politics, Dordrecht, Springer.
In the previous chapters I have argued that the philosophical project of Levinas was never to elaborate a new fundamental ontology. Neither did it attempt to define being by opposing the ontic self to an other, "higher' being. Insofar as there is a consistent conception of being and beings in TI, this conception plays upon its own ambiguities to affirm the closure of being to transcendence. Moreover, Levinas' conception of being functions to prepare the step beyond being which is taken with the welcome of the other. Being and ontology, as we have seen, have a certain ambiguity in Levinas' ethics, because of the dual levels of transcendence there. However, the ultimate meaning of being as an order becomes clear only with the transcending of this order. For example, as indistinctness, being is identified with the il y a, or "there is'. A phenomenology of the il y a, is offered in the nocturnal experience of horror before temporal and topological indeterminacy. On the other hand, being, understood as a world of elements such as sunlight and wind, is presupposed in Levinas' descriptions of enjoyment and labor. But, as we know, it is not the being of the world that grounds pleasure, work, or the relation with the other.1
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2077-9_5
Full citation:
Bergo, B. (1999). Intersubjectivity in totality and infinity, in Levinas between ethics and politics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 82-104.
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