Abstract

This thesis discerns in the work of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas a set of existential and ethical demands made upon the human being by the factical condition of finitude—one’s own finitude (Heidegger) or that of Others (Levinas). For Heidegger, a demand issues from the fact of mortality, which calls for the human being to take up the task of building a life that responds to its relative brevity. For Levinas, a demand issues from the infinite otherness and finitude of the Other, for whom one is called to take responsibility. This thesis shows that the demands of finitude found in the work of both philosophers constitute a common ground that overcomes the tendency among scholars to find a complete incompatibility between a Heideggerian ante-ethical ontology and a Levinasian ethics as first philosophy. The thesis concludes by reflecting how, existentially, the individual can respond to the co-demands of the finitude of being with others and being before death.