Responsibility as an essential structure of the subjectivity by Emmanuel Levinas

• Main Author: Stanislaw BARSZCZAK
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitatea "Stefan cel Mare" Suceava 2013-12-01
• Series: Annals of Philosophy, Social and Human Disciplines
• Subjects: Transcendence; Fundamental Ontology; Participation; Beyond Relational Externality; Hypostasis; Immanence; the Neighbor’s Radical Responsibility; Substitution.
• Online Access: http://www.apshus.usv.ro/arhiva/2013II/002.%20pp.%2019-51.pdf

Emmanuel Lévinas’ central thesis was that ethics is first philosophy. His work has had a profound impact on a number of fields outside philosophy, such as theology, Jewish studies, literature and cultural theory, and political theory. His thinking is an interpretive, phenomenological description of the repetition of the face-to-face encounter, the intersubjective relation at its precognitive core, being called by another and responding to that other. In a phenomenology it is a taking into account the experience related to free human action. Our goal is to take what is irreducible in man that may be developed thanks to the free acts of individuals. Lévinas’ assertion of the transcendence of the face should be understood as the most telling point of departure to a respect and human responsibility. This struggle for esteem occurs in the context of different spheres of life: at work, the struggle to prevail, to protect one’s rank in the hierarchy of authority; at home, relations of neighborhood and proximity. Basically, the author describes Lévinas’ notions: the transition from ontology to the thinking of transcendence, the time and death, the philosophy of dialogue, ethics and religion, another and the metaphysics of Good. Since attempts to overcome the fundamental ontology, outlining the same time as the concept of an identity with the Other, the author proceeds to present Lévinas’ reflection on the face, which ‘says’ no transcendence, but contact with my neighbor, immanence.