Ethics or Ontology: Levinas and Heidegger

Abstract

In totality and infinity, Levinas criticizes heidegger for subordinating ethics (the inter-Personal) to ontology (the impersonal). I argue that levinas' criticism is based on a misreading of heidegger's analysis of the being-Process. I detail how heidegger might answer levinas' polemic and I conclude that heidegger's thought complements and grounds levinas' phenomenology of ethics.