Le projet d'E. Lévinas — manifester l'intelligibilité de la transcendance — le conduit à rencontrer, comme une figure exemplaire, l'expression cartésienne de l'extérionté, le thème de l'idée de l'infini. Jusqu'où va cette similitude ? Selon Lévinas, la responsabilité — pour autrui — inscrit déjà la transcendance, comme relation avec un au-delà, dans l'immanence à soi de la conscience, en tant que son en deçà, sa condition. « Par suite, l'idée de l'infini est le mode d'être, l'infinition même de l'infini ». (...) Ici apparaît la divergence : le substantialisme cartésien ne permet pas d'affirmer avec Lévinas que : « Il n'y a pas d'idée de Dieu ou Dieu est sa propre idée ». E. Lévinas' philosophical attempt to make clear the intelligibility of transcendence leads him to Descartes' version of the concept of metaphysical exteriority, i.e. to his theme of the idea of the infinite. How far does this resemblance reach ? According to Lévinas, the responsibility — for — others already places transcendence, as a relation with a beyond, within the immanence in oneself which characterizes consciousness, as its condition. Consequently, « the idea of infinite is the mode, of existence, the infinition itself of the infinite ». Here, the difference points out : cartesian substantialism does not allow to assert, as Lévinas does, that « either there is no idea of God, or God is the idea of himself ». (shrink)

And yet, in these very texts Sallis identifies outbreaks of spacing that would disrupt the tranquil space of reason. Rather than closure, he finds an opening of reason to imagination.

This book addresses the question of deconstruction by asking what it is and discussing its alternatives. To what extent does deconstruction derive from a philosophical stance, and to what extent does it depend upon a set of strategies, moves, and rhetorical practices that result in criticism? Special attention is given to the formulations offered by Jacques Derrida and by Paul de Man . And what, in deconstructive terms, does it mean to translate from one textual corpus into another? Is it (...) a matter of different theories of translation or of different practices? And what of difference itself? Does not difference already invoke the possibility of deconstruction’s “others”? Althusser, Adorno, and Deleuze are offered as exemplary cases. The essays in this volume examine in detail these differences and alternatives. The Textual Sublime is particularly concerned with how a text sets its own limits, borders, and margins, how it delimits what constitutes the text per se and how it invokes at the same time what is not determinately in the text. The textual sublime is that aspect of a text that deconstruction shows to be both an element of the text and what surpasses the text, what takes it outside itself and what ties it to differing philosophical, rhetorical, historical, and critical practices. (shrink)