The phenomenological sources of Levinas' ethics

This article explicitates the fundamental inquiry in the ethics of Levinas. It shows that this ethics is by no means disembodied, as some have claimed, and that its source is a phenomenological issue. It suggests that returning to this issue makes it possible to discern how the ethics of Levinas constitute a decisive break with Husserl's phenomenology An understanding of this break makes it possible in turn to cast new light on the ethics of Levinas by making it possible to grasp more satisfactorily the radical nature of his criticism of philosophical tradition (transl. J. Dudley).