Abstract

In Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas sets out to criticize the anonymous dimension of the State. Close to Franz Rosenzweig’s gesture in The Star of Redemption, which links the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit with the Principles of the Philosophy of Right, Levinas’ critique is aimed above all at Hegelian political philosophy. However, for Levinas — as opposed to Rosenzweig — it is not only a question of denouncing the development of Reason in Western thought, but more fundamentally the ontology from which this reason has become possible. In doing so, it is a question of detecting the points of coincidences as well as the differences between the two philosophers with regard to the political. In this respect, it is a question of clarifying a turning point in Levinas’ approach that implies a revaluation of the political.