The Status Of “The Other” In Levinas’ Philosophy And Significance

Levinas is an outstanding philosopher among contemporary philosophers, devoted his life to oppose the philosophy of “the same” and “the other” is the core concept of Levinas’ s philosophy. Levinas’ s philosophy is relatively obscure, and its language is full of metaphor and peculiar language. O n the one hand, it relates to his rebelling against the target o f the traditional philosophy; on the other hand, it is influenced by the characteristic of “the other”. Thus through the interpretation and analysis of the concept of “the other”, it is helpful to understand the basic content and the inherent meaning of Ge levinas’ s philosophy and the inherent meaning of assistant. Starting from the point of view of Levinas’ philosophy, this essay analyzes that the problem Levinas’ philosophy needs to solve is the traditional metaphysics and the philosophy of "the same", and the basic idea of solving the problem is to call for “the other”. Through carding the concept of “the other”, it presents the differences between Levinas’ “the other” and “alter ego/object” in the traditional sense, in order to get the basic meaning and value connotation of Levinas’ “the other”.For Levinas’ “the other”, “absolute exteriority” and “absolute heterogeneity(absolute alterity) " are its two important characteristics, and it is because of those that “the other” becomes itself, breaking through and escaping from the philosophy of “the same”. A breakthrough for the philosophy of “the same” is to escape from “existence” and “totality”. Therefore “the other” is “infinite”, “God”, and the absolute extrinsic " alterity”. Besides, to rebel against the philosophy of “the same”, Levinas tries to establish “Ethical of metaphysics” which is completely different from the traditional metaphysics, and is based on “the other” Therefore, Levinas’ ethics is the ethics of “the other”; it is about the responsibility, the call to “face” and the “proximity” to “neighbor” and “trace” of “the other”.In the end, after he accepted the academic criticism sincerely, Levinas’ s later thoughts changed significantly. So the author will focus on the analysis of Levinas’ s response to the criticism and the late changes.