The Ethics of the Encounter in Levinas and Maldiney

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the works of Emmanuel Levinas and those of Henri Maldiney. Both phenomenologists engaged throughout their careers with the issue of the encounter, providing at the same time an ethical appraisal of it, which is centered around the notion of personal uniqueness. While Levinas breaks off with Martin Buber's so-called symmetrical account of interhuman relatedness, by advancing an asymmetrical theory of interpersonal relationships, Maldiney tackles mostly the question of phenomenological aesthetics, in an attempt to rigorously apply the core concepts of Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology onto the experience of the work of art. Even though Levinas's main concern was that of a phenomenologically inspired ethics, Maldiney's few and scattered remarks concerning the problem of alterity might help to shed light on the complex yet rarely explored relation between the two abovementioned authors. This paper sets forth the thesis that the encounter with otherness can be subsumed under the notion of event as it was described in the works of Maldiney. Moreover, if the Levinasian concept of encounter is seen through the prism of the notion of event, this brings along utterly important consequences vis-à-vis the ethical relation with the other. Therefore, I am going to argue, using mostly the phenomenological framework of these two authors, that the event of the encounter is that specific interhuman happening thanks to which the uniqueness of the other is revealed.