The possibilities of Meaning and Radical Alterity: an archeological overview through Lévinas thinking

Abstract

This work inquires into Meaning and Alterity based on E. Lévinas thinking. We articulate a short path that goes from levinasian’s critique to Occidental’s philosophical thought as a contrast point to his thinking, in order to introduce a first distinction between the meaning/ alterity relationship, where meaning –tied to the «common sense»– acts neutralizing otherness. We make a second distinction, where the first glimmers of a levinasian’s meaning appear holding a «provisional alterity» in the world. In this way we arrive to the third -and most relevantdistinction of the meaning/alterity relationship: visualize how the origin of meaning reconfigures in relationship to a new notion of otherness: Radical Alterity. A meaning of «meaning» is constituted at the time of the encounter with the Other –Radical Alterity–. It appears that for a new configuration of the notion of otherness, it is necessary –at the same time– a new paradigm for the constitution of meaning.