Materialinių poreikių imperatyvumas Emmanuelio Levino etikoje
The Imperative of Material Needs in Emmanuel Levinas’ Ethics

Summary/Abstract: This article shows the intimate connection between ethics and materialism in Levinas’s philosophy, despite the apparent immateriality of the dimensions of transcendence, alterity and infinite responsibility essential to his ethics. First, the non-intentional structure of sensibility as “enjoyment” entails the irreducibility of corporality and material needs for subjectivity in its worldliness. Second, the inter-subjectivity originates in the inter-corporeality arising from the sensibility’s exposure and vulnerability. The suffering other disturbs my enjoyment, and this disturbance is called to awaken me to the responsibility for-the-other. So, the imperative to alleviate the suffering of the other means concretely my responsibility to satisfy the other’s material needs. Therefore, we can distinguish between the material needs of the self and those of the other, whereby the latter become my spiritual needs, i.e., my ethical obligations. The ethical command in Levinas’ philosophy, then, is not an empty request or purely formal maxim but always a concrete call to do something for someone.

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