Levinas : la sensibilité ou la vie de la raison

Abstract

In the article “Levinas: sensibility or reason’s life”, Paulo Lorelle proposes to enlighten Levinas’ ambition of an enlargement of reason. Indeed, through the prism of this declaration, appears in Levinas’ work the constant equivocity of the concepts of “reason” and “rationality” thus divided into a “suspect reason” — that negates alterity — and a “new reason” that arises from alterity. One will here consider this enlargement of reason from Levinas’ later work, in terms of a “sensibilization”. If Totalité et infini already contains a significant number of references to this other rationality, this latter still unfolds beyond sensibility. This new rationality appears on the contrary in Autrement qu’être, as a sensible reason. And, in texts from the 70s published in De Dieu qui vient à l’idée and Entre nous, Levinas conceives reason’s sensibilization in terms of a wakefulness (éveil). So that the equivocity of the concept of “reason” now points to two different moments of one and the same process — a process of lethargy and wakefulness, of insensibilization and sensibilization of reason.