Levinas’s Ethical Discourse Between Individuation and Universality

Abstract

For Levinas ethics is based on the radical asymmetry of a responsibility which is ImineD beyond any possible generalization. But in the very particularity of such an unmediated obligation which singularizes me, there also lies a dimension of universality transcending the Inic et nuncD of my individuality. This paper, first draft of a book in French (ITranscendence et ethique Essai sur LevinasD, Brussels, 1989) finds in Levinas's reflections on the IpropheticD and the ImessianicD a possible issue to the dilemma of the universality of ethics and its irreducible origin in the asymmetry of my own individuation.