Moteriškumas, erosas ir etika Emmanuelio Levino filosofijoje
Femininity, Eros and Ethics in Emmanuel Levinas’ Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of ethics, according to which subjectivity is defined in terms of the relationship with the other and his or her radical otherness. Levinas defines the relationship with otherness in different ways: he refers to the otherness of death, the feminine, and paternity. It is precisely this definition of the feminine as otherness which seems the most problematic for feminist theorists: as Simone de Beauvoir pointed out in The Second Sex, by defining the feminine in terms of otherness Levinas deliberately takes a man’s point of view, disregarding the reciprocity of subjects. Similarly Irigaray criticizes the Levinasian “phenomenology of Eros”, pointing out that the Levinasian subject needs the feminine other to reassert his own subjectivity. Hence, in analyzing the Levinasian notion of the feminine as otherness we are faced with a dilemma: does this notion reinforce the traditional stereotypes of the feminine, as Beauvoir and Irigaray suggest, or, by contrast, does this notion enable the very notion of subjectivity to be reshaped? These questions are analyzed by introducing the critical insights formulated by Beauvoir, Irigaray and Jacques Derrida and by examining them in the broader context of the Levinasian philosophical project.

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