Subject, infinity, and death in the work of E. Husserl and E. Lévinas

Abstract

This paper aims at a reflection upon Emmanuel Levinas' phenomenological concept of infinity, insofar as it concerns subjectivity and self- experience. In this regard the originality of Levinas consists in reversing the metaphysical meaning of infinity when applied to a subject: either this concept was reserved for the potential openness of an «absolute I» or it was used to denote God's actual infinity. But Levinas conceives infinity in terms of an ethical experience of a passive self- transcendence, of an exposure to the absolute otherness of the other. The experience of the own mortality underlies this experience of the infinity: I know that I'm mortal not just because I know I will die. I make the experience that I'm mortal because my responsibility for the other can go up to give my life for him. Seemingly there's nothing alike in Husserl's phenomenology of an endless living present and the transcendental I that belongs to it. However I will argue that Husserl knows about a paradoxical presentiment of death that doesn't have to mean certitude about being or non-being, but rather an inquietude questioning a pure immanent continuity of the «I».