Lévinas y la libertad del amor

Abstract

The person is understood from its responsibility for the Other, not only as distinct from me but as being the origin of its own subjectivity. The coherence of Lévinas' thinking, his radicalness and the alternative character he wants to endow his philosophy with are undeniable. He, like no one else, has denounced the limitations of a philosophy focused on conscience and the immanent character of the main contemporary philosophical trends. Prominent are his critique of the conception of liberty as self-affirmation and autonomy, the emphasis he gives to responsibility in ethical thinking and the disparity, inaccessibility and primacy of the Other. The responsibility toward the Other is the raison d'être of the subject. Nevertheless, what type of responsibility is that which is conceived as previous to liberty and in which the subject must be responsible for the Other forced by a metaphysical necessity? The author of this article criticizes Lévinas's conception of liberty and love. Some moral feelings such as compassion, affection and love lose their meaning. Far from an ethics of love, it is rather an ethics of the acceptance of the precept, of the command to put oneself at the service of the Other. Anyhow, Levinas's denouncing voice, which proclaims the oblivion of the Other, deserves being heard.