Temporal aspect: The self and the other from Husserl, Heidegger to Levinas

Author: Wang Heng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: The French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas is one of the greatest ethicists of 20th-century Europe. He radically opposed the entire Western philosophical tradition since ancient Greece and, on this basis, proposed an innovative theory of the "Other," becoming a primary theoretical resource for almost all contemporary radical currents. This book provides a scholarly examination of this discourse of the Other and is the first comprehensive study in China tracing the philosophical thought of Levinas as a phenomenologist. Its main argument is that the issue of time is a persistent fundamental in the phenomenological tradition. For Husserl, the consciousness of time is the very subjectivity itself; Heidegger considers temporality to be the realm of existence. For Levinas, however, it is in time that the true Other appears, or the relationship with the Other truly manifests its temporal dimension. The mystery of time is the mystery of the subject, and it is the mystery of the Other. It is precisely on the basis of time that Levinas established the concept of the "subject as Other," a key tenet of postmodern ethics. This book is suitable for researchers and those interested in German and French philosophy, postmodern thought, ethics, and related fields.