2009 Güz Sayı 13

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From the ontological subject to the ethical "I"
(Uludağ Üniversitesi, 2009) Küçükalp, Kasım; İlahiyat Fakültesi; Felsefe Tarihi
This study focuses on Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical metaphysics, which gives priority to ethics over traditional Western philosophical approaches that begin first with ontology, the knowledge of being. Because ontology, as knowledge or the theory of being, includes an epistemology at the beginning, and every question about being requires an epistemology, Levinas’s conception of ontology cannot be separated from its epistemological implications. By all means, the Levinasian critique of Western philosophy is not merely a critique and an analysis of ontology and epistemology in a neutral style, but it shows that every ontological question about being fails to recognize the very ethical relation and depends upon an egoistic relation of the Self to the Other. According to Levinas, based upon human reason, the ontological or epistemological approaches of Western philosophy have not only failed to recognize the Other but reduced the Other to the Self. Contrary to Western philosophical approaches, Levinas finds the possibility of real ethical relation to the Other in the face-to-face relationship with the Other, in which the face of the Other awakens the Self.