Death, time and alterity: beyond ontology. Reflections on the philosophy of M. Heidegger and E. Levinas

Abstract

The analysis of finitude that Heidegger held in his earlier work has being questioned by Emmanuel Levinas in his ethics of otherness, which involves a new aproach to subjectivity, the relationship with others and the opening of time. We will show that in the work of E. Levinas the reflections on time are preceded and conditioned by the encounter with the otherness of another man (Autrui), that in the diachrony of his break set up the temporary experience as unassumable in the present of representation. There for, death as origin of time and the privilege of future in the work of Heidegger is denied: death is the impossibility of possibility, and man, rather than a being-towards-death, is a being-against-death. The finitude acquires a new meaning in the death of the others, that highlights the ethical orientation which fundamental ontology lacks.