The Mystery of the Other. E. Levinas
Levinas's philosophical views were shaped by Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as well as the dialogism of Martin Buber and, most importantly, Franz Rosenzweig, who largely shaped the thinking of Levinas's "mature" years.
The influence of Heidegger and Husserl is most clearly reflected in Levinas's early works: "The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology" (1930), "From Existence to the Existent" (1947), and "Discovering Existence with Husserl and Heidegger" (1949). However, as early as 1948, the book "Time and the Other" was published, in which Levinas first outlined his own philosophical conception, which included a critical reception of influences. Thus, Levinas's own position is clarified in the book's debate with Heidegger and the existentialism that dominated the French intellectual climate. The key intentions of Levinas's thought, first articulated in "Time and the Other," are further developed in his works "Totality and the Infinite: An Essay on Exteriority" (1961), "The Humanity of the Other Man" (1973), "Otherness, or Beyond Essence" (1974), "Diachrony and Representation" (1983), and others.
While thematizing Levinas's philosophical legacy is obviously problematic (for a number of reasons, it is impossible to unambiguously identify it with any particular intellectual movement), the problematic field of his philosophy can be explicated with sufficient certainty. Levinas's focus is on ethical issues, articulated through the paradigmatic figure of the Other. In the crisis of classical metaphysics in general, and the classical subject in particular, the self-identity of the Self, previously understood, implicitly or explicitly, as the unity of the empirical Self and the transcendental Self, fails to withstand the test of strength and can no longer serve as a guarantee of the subject's identity. Levinas demonstrates that the notions of transcendental consciousness, which fueled philosophy up until Husserl's phenomenological project, are illusory. The only possible form of transcendentality, according to him, is dialogue. Thus, for me, the Other is the only conceivable guarantor of my Self.