This dissertation explores Levinas’s phenomenology of death in order to unveil the religious dimension in his ethical thought through examining the political moment of the third party. I argue that death is neither a pure phenomenon transparently intelligible in the noema-noesis structure of intentionality nor a mere non-phenomenon totally irrelevant to the phenomenological investigation. Rather, death is a para-phenomenon whose unfathomable feature calls into question Levinas’s two important philosophical precedents: 1) Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, in a methodological sense, and 2) Heidegger’s (...) ontological interpretation of death, in a thematical sense. On the one hand, Levinas faces in the para-phenomenality of death the failure of phenomenology in the sense that phenomenology fails to capture a para-doxical feature of death in terms of a noetico-noematic correlation. On the other hand, Levinas ceaselessly contests Heidegger’s ontological thematization, which neutralizes the para-phenomenality of death and thereby reduces the enigmatic mystery of death into the heroic mastery of death; in sum, the para-phenomenality of death is subsumed under the doxical architecture of ontology. By appealing to the para-doxical character of death, this dissertation claims that the architectonic structure of Heidegger’s ontology dissimulates or covers up a more primordial and exigent signification of the death of the other than the ontological mineness [Jemeinigkeit] of death. Therefore, Levinas’s phenomenology of death justifies its raison d'être not in its adroit achievement to thematize death but rather in its failure to thematize and make sense of it since the ethical meaning of death emerges from the miscarriage of the doxical-ontological thematization of death. In order to disclose the ethical signification of death that remains concealed, obscured, and suppressed in the “Sein-topped" architecture of ontology, Levinas endeavors to uncover what ontology has covered up—i.e., the brutal nakedness of being [être] that is concretized in the ethical encounter with the other who commands: “Thou shalt not kill.” This primordial interdiction obsesses and overwhelms me [moi] more than the anxiety [Angst] for my death does, as if the death of the other would matter to me even more than my own. The ethical signification of death comes from the primordial call inscribed in the face of the other, which makes me vigilant, restless, and non-indifferent to the death of the other. However, the advent of the third party puts into question my exclusive, unconditional, or unquestioned responsibility for the other and orders what the other orders: “Me voici.” Nevertheless, the political interrogation of the third party never compromises the ethical structure but, on the contrary, makes it possible for ethics to remain ethical without relapsing into an impotent, silent, or angelic form of ethics, which entails violent, apolitical, and anti-ethical rapprochements. This dissertation insists that the radical peculiarity of Levinas’s phenomenology of death culminates in his para-doxical conception of religion, “rapport sans rapport,” in which the ethical rapport always remains as a question par excellence within the political context. To be religious does not require an ontological question of “to be or not to be,” of being or non-being; rather, it is otherwise than being, beyond essence, or beyond the conatus essendi, in which Levinas recognizes the primordial signification of death, such as substitution, sacrifice, or dying for others. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)