L'altérité totale selon Levinas. Au-delà de Hegel
Abstract
Levinas’s opposition to Hegel is well known. Hegel is the representative of teleological ontology which must be overcome in order to reach a true thought of alterity. However, Levinas also often acknowledges that Hegel is the true thinker of alterity, one who does not understand others outside the world. This is why a thought of total alterity must constantly confront Hegel, and this is what Levinas does in Totality and Infinity. It is both against Hegel and with him that Levinas can explain the life of meaning. Reading Levinas from his permanent confrontation with Hegel is to understand that the absolute master is not death but gift. The theses of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit allow us to understand that obligation cannot be separated from concrete life. This also leads to a questioning of Levinas's thinking on the possibility of pure ethical experience.