Ontologijos fundamentalumo klausimas: Levinas ir Heideggeris

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Atsakomybė; Būtis; Etika; Gėris; Kitas; Nesuinteresuotumas; Ontologija; Socialumas; Subjektas; Totalumas; Totalybė; Being; Disinterest; Ethics; Goodness; Ontology; Responsibility; Sociability; Subject; The other; Totality.

ENWithout a doubt, Emmanuel Levinas is one of the brightest and most original representatives of phenomenological movement. He used his philosophy of the social to continue and deepen, but also to criticize and correct the philosophical insights of his predecessors. Following the path of new Husserlian method, he could not bypass other advocates of phenomenological approach, and in particular Martin Heidegger, whose ontology he tried to fundamentally rethink or rather at least to reflect on being as such in opposition to traditional metaphysics that concentrated exclusively on that which exists, i.e., existents. Despite Levinas’ sympathetic opinion of the early Heidegger, he soon showed his originality by turning his philosophical interest elsewhe re. The ontological question of being in the world which is all-important for Heidegger, in Levinas’ thinking gains ethical aspects. The order of the good is established beyond being. This order does not contradict the rules of formal logic, but exceeds them as desire. Because of human spirituality, the categories of being reverse to different ones described as otherwise than being; not into being otherwise, for being otherwise still means being.The identity of human “I” is founded in responsibility. This burden, according to Levinas, is the highest dignity of individual human being as such. Therefore, the human evasion of being, the breach in being, the crisis of being, and otherwise than being, are marked by the reversal of that which is usually understood as the most natural into the most problematic. Do I have a right to be? Don’t I by my being in the world occupy someone else’s place? In such a way the naïve and continuous being is every time questioned and “broken”. To think otherwise means to radically change the direction of thought. Before looking at the world from the perspective of being, one has to question being itself, beginning from something other than being. Otherwise than being, the good, is prior to being and gives it significance. Significance is not simply ascribed to the subjective “I”, but received by one from the other human being, with whom one can agree, with one’s inexorable conscience already being responsible in front of that other human being. Ethics comes prior to ontology and is the condition of it. [From the publication]