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Document Details :

Title: Ein empirischer Ursprung der Rationalität
Subtitle: Die Geburt des Logos aus dem Antlitz des Anderen
Author(s): ZIEGLER, Robert Hugo
Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie
Volume: 82    Issue: 4   Date: 2020   
Pages: 699-726
DOI: 10.2143/TVF.82.4.3289183

Abstract :
Levinas’ description of the encounter with the Other is read as proposing a theory of a purely empirical genesis of rationality. The fundamentally ethical experience of the Other comprises five aspects traditionally associated with the idea of rationality: contact with reality, truth, language, objectivity and logic. It is Levinas’ metaphysics — in which separated beings communicate through asymmetrical relationships — that enable him to keep at bay all apriorism while at the same time eluding the oversimplifications and contradictions of many conventional empirical explanations. This description of the face of the Other as the origin of rationality may thus serve as a model for an 'absolute empiricism': a philosophy that attempts to explain the world of experience by the means of this same world only.

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