Abstract

Inspired by Levinas, but in constant dialogue with Heidegger, Feron considers death to be a phenomenon that lies within the reach of phenomenology. The act of the other's death is essentially a decease, a break affecting the identity. It forces man to consider the fundamental intersubjectivity inscribed in his temporality. Viewed in this way, death does not look merely like the term of life coming to an end. Nor is it a passage to `somewhere beyond'. Rather, it lies at the core of the act of relationship. In its search in the space between sense and non-sense, this phenomenology of death reveals the fundamentally relational dimension of the humane and sketches the main features of this paradoxical `intersubjectivity': the position of third party that is taken by man, the calling of son that he has been selected for and - midway between passivity (Levinas) and possibility (Heidegger) - the condition of `liability' to which he is dedicated and of which he is also worthy.