Publication Details

Abstract

The aim of the paper is the comparison of the conceptions of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, which should serve as a basis of the further contemplation of the relationship between the thinking and experience. The shared critical view of the phenomenological interpretation of experience leads both philosophers to an alter- native conception, in which experience transcends thinking and in face of such an experience the reality is an alterity. However, the experience of alterity, which under- lines the wholeness and temporal unity of all human thinking, is conceived differently, resulting in different conceptions of subjectivity: With Levinas the domi- nating role is played by humankind as the opposite of the nonhuman, while with Blanchot the dichotomy is dissolved. His conception is thus a challenge to conceive the experience, thinking and reality beyond the human/nonhuman dichotomy.