E. LEVINAS IR ETINĖS FILOSOFIJOS ĮTEISINIMAS - ATSAKYMAS A. MICKŪNUI
E. LEVINAS AND LEGITIMATION OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY – AN ANSWER TO A. MICKŪNAS

Summary/Abstract: This article presents counter-arguments to Algis Mickūnas’s critique of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy, delving into the question whether thinking based on radical exteriority can remain philosophy. First, Mickūnas argues that there is an erroneous speculation in Levinas’s phenomenology which leads out of philosophy into theology. Second, he argues that the ethical relation, central to Levinas’s thought, is but another ontological discourse of power. The present article shows that Mickūnas’s criticism comes from his concept of philosophy which is free from transcendence as well as Western metaphysics. The author argues that the specific notion of transcendence in Levinas is not the same as is found in speculative theology, which is concerned with God, but is rather the one required by the pursuit of phenomenological research of inter-subjectivity to its limits. The author also argues that the ethical metaphysics defended by Levinas is not the discourse of power nor does it reject Western philosophy. Rather, by recognizing the full significance of inter-subjectivity deeper ethical dimension of meaning is revealed, and hence Western philosophy is deepend and Levinas kept within the bounds of philosophy.

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