Abstract

Levinas' thinking in Totality and Infinity is centered on the relation with the Infinite. This relation is paradoxical. To be possible, the experience of a separated subject is postulated as a transcendental presupposition. But this separation is at the same time unthinkable without the Infinite. In his main work, The Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig stimulates the thinking of this relation. The renewal of Levinas' thinking of the paradox is made possible by phaenomenology. But the confrontation with Husserl indicates the limit of Levinas' thinking: the asymmetrical relation with the Infinite is unthinkable without the acceptance of some kind of symmetry.