The Alterity Of Aesthet(h)ics In Levinas

Levinas is famous for his research of "the Other" which has become the core of his philosophical thought. "The Other", as a philosophical theme, cannot be thematized. It means there is a paradox in such a discussion that when we talk about "the Other", because Levinas understands that who can speak in "philosophy" is only "the self. By telling the "story" of Levinas' thought and Levinas in philosophical prospect, we reveal Levinas' "alterity"-"way" that it is based on and transcends phenomenology, and through it all Levinas opens up "the intersubjective space", and encountering "the Other" by "face to face" in it. And then, we will comb the headstream and its genealogies in the problem of the Other, which could highlight Levinas' "alterity" of "the Other" and the "asymmetry" of his social ethic intersubjectivity. In this context, we can enter into and explore Levinas' aesthetics, and it is helpful for us to discerm the relationship between "the Beauty" and "the Good", and so we can give Levinas' aesthetics with the "alterity" orientation, designating aesthetics as a carefully crafted part in Levinas' "ethical" auffassung. Thereby, we can say that there is a communication between the "Beauty" and the "Good", and it must be communication, because it commonly point at the secret of the humanity. Aesthetics should become "the ethics of life in the future", and ethics should be "the aesthetics of life in the future". In this way, the real life of the man could be completeness and harmony, like the formulation of "Art Life" and "The Art of Life". It perhaps could be regarded as the value of Levinas' aesthetical research.