Abstract

The aim of my article is to juxtapose and compare the concept of man immersed in the finite and on the other hand transcending towards the infinite. My task is to extract and analyse the fabulously contrasting moments in the thought of Heidegger and Levinas on the question of the connec-tion and interpenetration of time and death. Both philosophers grow out of the phenomenological tradition, but their analyses of the problem of the connection between time and death go in different directions. The experiences of time and death are inextricably linked, but for Heidegger time is the ontological horizon of being, and for Levinas time is a way of being beyond being. For Heidegger, dying is about coming to the fullness of being. For Levinas, facing death is a struggle and even a war, a transcendence towards the infinite. While for Heidegger death is the completion of the end, for Levinas death means an encounter with radical otherness, it is an opening and not a closing.