The purpose of the following article is to juxtapose and compare the concept of shame as seen by two contemporary French philosophers, Jean Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas. The fundamental problem that is posed in this article concerns the role and significance of the impact of shame on the formation of human subjectivity. For both J.P. Sartre and E. Levinas, the subject attempts to bear the burden of being in a heroic way and the experience of shame proves to be (...) an important experience in this process. Is it an ontological or ethical experience? Or perhaps metaphysical? For both J.P. Sartre and E. Levinas, shame is a relational experience, i.e., it occurs in relation to You. But does this Other have to come to me from outside? In Sartre’s case, shame appears in the experience of the gaze of the Other, and it is a traumatic experience. The Other interferes with my freedom and challenges me as a subject. The experience of shame makes me aware of my subjugation by the Other. In Levinas, the experience of shame comes originally from within myself. The shame of my own existence demands justification. I can be ashamed in relation to myself. I can be a menace of myself. I don’t need the presence of another human being for this. What unites and what separates the two philosophers in interpreting the experience of shame for human subjectivity? (shrink)

The purpose of the following article is to juxtapose and compare the concept of shame as seen by two contemporary French philosophers, Jean Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas. The fundamental problem that is posed in this article concerns the role and significance of the impact of shame on the formation of human subjectivity. For both J.P. Sartre and E. Levinas, the subject attempts to bear the burden of being in a heroic way and the experience of shame proves to be (...) an important experience in this process. Is it an ontological or ethical experience? Or perhaps metaphysical? For both J.P. Sartre and E. Levinas, shame is a relational experience, i.e., it occurs in relation to You. But does this Other have to come to me from outside? In Sartre’s case, shame appears in the experience of the gaze of the Other, and it is a traumatic experience. The Other interferes with my freedom and challenges me as a subject. The experience of shame makes me aware of my subjugation by the Other. In Levinas, the experience of shame comes originally from within myself. The shame of my own existence demands justification. I can be ashamed in relation to myself. I can be a menace of myself. I don’t need the presence of another human being for this. What unites and what separates the two philosophers in interpreting the experience of shame for human subjectivity? (shrink)

The aim of my article is to juxtapose and compare the concept of man immersed in the finite and on the other hand transcending towards the infinite. My task is to extract and analyse the fabulously contrasting moments in the thought of Heidegger and Levinas on the question of the connec-tion and interpenetration of time and death. Both philosophers grow out of the phenomenological tradition, but their analyses of the problem of the connection between time and death go in different (...) directions. The experiences of time and death are inextricably linked, but for Heidegger time is the ontological horizon of being, and for Levinas time is a way of being beyond being. For Heidegger, dying is about coming to the fullness of being. For Levinas, facing death is a struggle and even a war, a transcendence towards the infinite. While for Heidegger death is the completion of the end, for Levinas death means an encounter with radical otherness, it is an opening and not a closing. (shrink)