Epstein's book traces Levinas' philosophical ideas from his earliest links to Husserl, Heidegger and ontology, to the consolidation of Levinasian ethics. He tries to show how Levinas takes phenomenology beyond the strict theoretical bounds demarcated by Husserl, in order to "discover the meaning of human life, first beyond consciousness and then beyond being itself."

Heidegger refers to two crucial litmus tests for the understanding of the issues of ontology. The first is to break with the deeply ingrained modes of thinking that proceed from conceiving a subject encapsulated in its consciousness and separated from the world. The second is to defuse the idea that Dasein, because it exists “for the sake of itself” (Umwillen seiner selbst) is egoistic. Lévinas is a victim especially of this second misunderstanding because, apart from refusing to shift from the metaphysics of subjectivity to a consideration of human being as Dasein, he adamantly insists on a fundamental casting of human being as egoistic, i.e. as an egoistic subject, into which he then introduces the imperative, absolute ethics of the other. On the other hand, it still has to be shown that fundamental ontology à la Heidegger leaves room for, or can be twisted into, the problematic of the other’s freedom. The freedom of the other, i.e. freedomsharing in the world, is the issue and not, as Lévinas claims, ethical responsibility for the other.

Heidegger and Lévinas agree that the issue is what lies beyond being, but whereas the latter interprets the beyond of being ethically and theologically with an intervention of the Infinite, the Absolute, the former is at pains to show that the transcendental dimension beyond beings in their being is freedom, if not freedomsharing. The freedom of the other is the missing link that separates Heidegger’s thinking from Lévinas’ thinking. The issue is the following: if there lies beyond being the Idea of the Good, and this is translated as the Umwillen des Daseins, i.e. the for-the-sake-of Dasein’s self, how is this for-the-sake-of-self to be reconciled with the freedom of the other, who likewise exists for the sake of self? This is a far more subtle and perplexing question for thinking than Lévinas’ demand — via the injunction of the Infinite that breaks with the (ontic-causal) Totality — that ethical responsibility be assumed for the other and that a certain conception of justice prevail, for it requires that the question of being itself be folded and unfolded richly enough for the other as other to appear — albeit scarcely and non-substantially — in the folds in adequate concepts that do not misrecognize it as a being in the third person, which has been its fate hitherto within the long tradition of the metaphysics of whatness.

¶ 9:28 AM