Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicologia
ISSN 1808-4281
COELHO JUNIOR, Nelson. From phenomenology towards ethics as first philosophy: notes on the notion of otherness in E. Lévinas thought. Estud. pesqui. psicol. []. 2008, 8, 2. ISSN 1808-4281.
This paper focuses the relations between ethics and otherness in the work of Emmanuel Lévinas, Lithuanian philosopher, who took French nationality. The relevance of his conception of ethics and otherness for the psychological studies of the subjective constitution and of intersubjective relations will be singularized. For Lévinas, the concrete and singular other precedes and traumatizes the subject (yet in constitution). For Lévinas, an intersubjective relation necessarily implies a certain dislocation, splitting or modification of subjective experience. It is from assertions like this that a singular conception of ethics emerges, understood as the permanent recognition of the other that precedes us and makes us somebody. Thus, there is no ethical subjectivity unless a radical otherness precedes it and makes it possible.
: Ethics; Otherness; Subjectivity; Lévinas.