From the Metamorphosis of Intentionality to the Metamorphosis of Sense – a Reading of Levinas

Abstract

When one reads Levinas, the impression often had is that his thought is elaborated as if from “the outside within”, in which one reaches the most technical and punctual questions not by means of an internal necessity of argumentation, but by an external need of fidelity to the higher philosophical-motivational movement of reflection  as a whole. The aim of the present essay is to illustrate some aspects of this dialectic, which end up converging in a rereading of the very idea of sense. As such, we examine the essay “Humanism and An-archy” in order to show how what follows the proposal of an ethical metamorphosis of intentionality – present there, as it were –, is a higher proposal on the metamorphosis of the sense of philosophizing per se.