From onto-theo-logy to the ethics of alterity, thinking God with Levinás

This book is the compilation of the author's undergraduate research in Philosophy. It aims to present a reflection on Western philosophical thought and to emphasise, above all, the criticism developed by Levinás of the philosophy of totality, which is at the basis of this tradition, and which has reduced the Other to the Same and has become an obstacle to ethical life - openness and acceptance of the Other. He wants to demonstrate that ethical life is only possible when the Same (I) responds to the call of sensitivity towards the Other. From this comes the encounter with exteriority and the possibility of ethical intersubjectivity - a relationship with the Face of the Other that awakens religiosity as a longing for God-Infinite revealed in the face of the Other and in his suffering, awakens in the Same the sense of acting in order to respond to the clamour of the Other who suffers. Levinás calls this relationship religion - an encounter between the Same and the Other in which both preserve themselves in the relationship, without annihilating each other. In this sense, religion can only be thought of in the ethical encounter with the Other, for it is through him that God comes to the idea of the Self.