The Demand of the Infinite: Ethics and the Other in Levinas

• Grant number: 25/04652-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Reinaldo Furlan
• Grantee: Lucca Miguel Gallo Godoi
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research seeks to investigate the status of alterity and its importance to the critique of ontological phenomenology based on the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, taking as primary references two of his works: Totality and Infinity and Entre Nous: Essays on Alterity. In these works, Levinas puts into question the primacy of ontology among the disciplines of knowledge, identifying it to what the author calls the idea of totality, a supposed prima philosophia that subordinates and marginalizes the Other's uniqueness. Among the authors who legitimize ontology's privilege, Lévinas highlights two as the starting point for his critiques: Husserl and Heidegger. In their work, phenomenology and ontology converge as an egological project, that is, as an exercise of the consciousness of the I, of a ratio that, before anything else, apprehends the object under its reductive comprehension. Even the Dasein, in this sense, would hold the prerogative of the Self before the Other who is encountered in its openness of the world. In an opposite direction, Lévinas intends to demonstrate how ontological research is, in fact, a derivative order of reason, and that the fundamental significance of the world stems from the relation to the Other and their face, an absolute alterity that comes from outside of the world of the Self and establishes, above all, not a comprehensive dimension, but and Ethics. The other confronts me in their radical alterity as coming from outside of my world, and their word represents the opening of reason onto the world in which I exist. It is the advent of the Other's alterity that simultaneously establishes Reason, questioning the prerogative of the knowledge of the Same in its world, and Desire, that which moves the I, or the Same, toward its absolute alterity, expressed by the concept of Infinity, a dimension Lévinas calls Metaphysics, which must assume the position of prima philosophia by founding the relation between the Same and the Other. We will seek to understand and highlight the role of Desire, particularly engaging in a discussion with its platonic conception, such as it appears in the dialogue Phaedrus, given that Plato is one of Lévinas's major references in the two works of his that will be addressed. In addition to deepening the comprehension of the concept of Desire, which, for Lévinas, denotes the fundamental bond of interpersonal association, this research also aims to recuperate the levinasian critique of the philosophical paradigm of its time, emphasizing the importance of ethical reflection in the face of a contemporary reality marked by violences of different nature. Thus, by investigating these themes, it is the objective of this project to demonstrate how Emmanuel Lévinas's thought draws our attention to injustices that are concealed and latent in the philosophical logos. (AU)