Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is an investigation of the logic or the formal construction of the ethical relation described by Levinas. I argue that this relation has two forms: one in which the Other operates as a transcendent figure excluded from immanence, which I name exclusive separation, and the other, where it operates within immanence, which I name inclusive separation. This first form of the ethical relation is the basis of Levinas' theory of language in Totality and Infinity, and probably constitutes the "orthodox" reading of Levinas' work. The second form of the relation can be traced from the the idea of the infinity to the descriptions of the self in Otherwise than Being. The second part approaches the difficult status of writing in Levinas' work. It is only in terms of second form of the ethical relation, and guided by Blanchot's reading of Levinas in L'Entretien infini , that the apparent conflict between writing and the demand of ethical responsibility can be thought. I suggest that the relation between ethics and writing ought to be conceived in terms of the practice of ambiguity or alternance, which Levinas himself outlines in his texts