Abstract
This doctoral thesis address two of the most prominent figures of 20th century continental philosophy in Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Paul Sartre. Because the idea to critically compare them has indeed been realized before, and the available literature pertaining to this topic is already substantial, I selected a specific reduction of the comparison’s scope. The means of this reduction was anchored in Kris Sealey’s Moments of Disruption: Levinas, Sartre, and the Question of Transcendence, book from 2013 that brings into central focus their notions of transcendence.
While building on her insights in many ways, I set my goal as to highlight the methodological aspects of their work, which I – in its overlapping – attribute in large part to their Husserlian influence. The lineage of arguments I explore begins from cogito and its methodological connotations (phenomenological reduction) to the nature of intentional consciousness developed by Levinas and Sartre, to finally their constitution of subjectivity and phenomenal description of the intersubjective encounter.
Keywords: epoché; phenomenology; intersubjectivity; Edmund Husserl; Levinas and Sartre; Kris Sealey
