Abstract

Reading Husserl was from the beginning for Lévinas a way of doing philosophy. The aim of this essay is to explore the profile of Lévinas as a reader of Husserl. Lévinas'' first interpretation of is already marked by the influence of Sein und Zeit. This Heidegger''s work enabled Lévinas not only to criticise Husserl''s phenomenology , but also to read it as an ontology. It will be analysed how Lévinas'' reading of Husserl changed later on, interpreting his phenomenology as a philosophy of meaning above all and using it in his polemics against Heidegger. Husserl''s philosophy becomes one in which the subject remains free from the hold of history on it, but open to meaning of which it is not the author. In this way the evolution of Lévinas'' Husserl reading accompanies and prepares the formation of his own philosophy