Abstract

My paper will deal with a topic which interests both hermeneutics and phenomenology, as well as ethics and theory of image. This topic is the request of the Other. Speaking and thinking starting from the request of the Other implies a thinking which conceives of ethics as a "prima philosophia", as Levinas has shown. On its turn, speaking and think-ing starting from the image‟s request implies a thinking which attempts to speak about an image, by responding to its calling. Both these two registers of response are not absolute and solely ethically conceived, as ethos without pathos would be lifeless, and pathos with-out ethos would probably be dubious. Furthermore, both of them cannot do without logos when it comes to making ourselves understandable to others. Of course, it makes a huge difference whether we speak and think starting from one and not the other kind of request. However, Other and image converge on the fact that they both share the character of re-quest, and this to the point that image, indeed, affects us, hits us in a pathic way and even compels us to answer. Hence, one may ask: is the image event a version of the “request of the Other”, a modality of encountering the alien? Or, rather, is the request of the Other a modality between image and the other human being, so that this same modality allows us to think the character of phenomenality that image and Other share? To a “humanist of the Other” this proximity to image would appear dangerous, as the Other could run the risk of being taken “only as an image”. In other words, the risk here is that we might end up dealing only with images instead of dealing with the actual request of the Other. Yet we may ask: does the image event actually hit less than the request of the Other? Of course, there are deep differences between the theory of image and ethics. However, they have one point in common: they both share the pathic and ethical character of event, starting from which one can speak and think. Then: image and Other, image as Other, or Other as image?