From Statement to Ethics: Levinas Read by Lyotard

Abstract

The aim of this article is to introduce Russian readers to the noteworthy publication by Editions Verdier of Logique de Lévinas, a text in which Jean-François Lyotard expresses the value he attributes to the former’s philosophy. Picking up the Levinasian idea that the Other is incommensurable with the same, wherein the act of saying is opposed to what is said, Lyotard brings the pouvoir-dire (stating power) of semantics up to date by demonstrating its applicability in shedding light on Lévinas’s text. The aim here, then, is to lay out the principle axes of this dialogue between Lyotard and Lévinas, investigating, notably, the role of linguistic analysis in the ethical deduction of alterity and its incommensurability. However, the anti-Hegelianism that runs through Lévinas’s position vis-à-vis the ontological incommensurability of the Other brings out a certain number of tacit political and religious implications. By following the path traced out by these implications, we have sought to reconstruct the particular and contradictory place Judaism holds in the ethical thought of both philosophers.