The "other" in the anthropology of E. Levinas

Abstract

The author exposes in this work the anthropology that underlies the work of E. Levinas. He argues that at the base of any ethical discourse there is a certain anthropological presupposition. There is no ethics without anthropology, just as there is no anthropology without ethics; both go hand in hand. Man’s relations with the world and with others are conditioned by his way of thinking about what man is and what meaning and orientation he wants to give to his life. The author exposes the dimensions of man from the perspective of E. Levinas: his historicity, that is, his vulnerability, corporeality, contingency, limitation. Everything happens to him in a circumstance that conditions him and defines him as a circumstantial being. On the other hand, man is a being open to the other and to others. This openness in Levinas is radical, to the point of considering man hostage of the other in his constitution as a subject. No one is human by himself alone, but by the other. Subjectivity comes from “outside”. The author advocates the value of anthropological discourse as a basis for an ethics that takes charge of the other from compassion.