Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

190865

Conclusions

Emmanuel Levinas

pp. 287-307

Abstract

This work has not sought to describe the psychological of the social relation, beneath which the eternal play of the fundamental categories reflected definitely in formal logic would be maintained. On the contrary the social relation, the idea of infinity, the presence in a container of a content exceeding its capacity, was described in this book as the logical plot of being. The specification of a concept the moment it issues in its individuation is not produced by adjunction of an ultimate specific difference, not even if it originates in matter. The individualities thus obtained within the ultimate species would be indiscernible. The Hegelian dialectic is all powerful to reduce this individuality of the τóδ∈ τí to the concept, since the act of pointing to a here and now implies references to the situation, in which the finger's movement is identified from the outside. The identity of the individual does not consist in being like to itself, and in letting itself be identified from the outside by the finger that points to it; it consists in being the same — being in oneself, in identifying oneself from within. There exists a logical passage from the like to the same; singularity logically arises from the logical sphere exposed to the gaze and organized in a totality by the reversion of this sphere into the interiority of the I, the reversion, so to speak, of convexity into the concavity.

Publication details

Published in:

Levinas Emmanuel (1991) Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority, 4th edn.. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 287-307

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9342-6_22

Full citation:

Levinas Emmanuel (1991) Conclusions, In: Totality and infinity, Dordrecht, Springer, 287–307.