Transcendantal autrement dit. Kant en tant que réponse de Lévinas à la critique de Derrida

Transcendental in Other Words. Kant as Levinas’ Response to Derrida’s Critique Starting from the primacy of practical philosophy, and thus from the possibility of locating metaphysics in the moral sphere, the thought of Emmanuel Lévinas presents many aspects in which it is comparable to Kantism. However, his explicit references to transcendental philosophy are rather sporadic. All the more relevant, then, is the fact that, in a short text dedicated to Jacques Derrida, Lévinas evokes Kant in a way that is instead significant. The text, entitled Tout autrement, constitutes the only explicit response to Derrida’s long and articulate critique of Totalité et infini in Violence et métaphysique. Lévinas uses Kant to respond to Derrida, who had accused him of falling into the same self-contradictions typical of scepticism. But the accusation, Lévinas argues, could also be levelled at Derrida’s thought: to be true to itself, Derrida must instead move towards a meta-level that overcomes the dichotomy between dogmatism and scepticism, just as Kant’s transcendental philosophy had already done. A watershed between two epochs, Derrida must take up and radicalise transcendental philosophy, freeing it from all metaphysical illusions.