Contextualizing Rosenzweig’s and Levinas’ notions of the Оther by Derrida’s construal of difference

Thus, the genealogy itself of national philosophies leads to the understanding of the relationships between the particular and the universal as the paradigm for the construal of the Other in the Jewish philosophy that formally proceeds from exactly the same premises as the other national philosophies, though. Therein, one should by no means miss the point of the problem of the Other that, being the problem of inclusion and exclusion and therefore requiring the philosophical reflection on a certain form of social conflict, has to do, first of all, with the conditions of entry of social and cultural outside into the exemplary modernity itself. Meanwhile, this aspect of the problem is the most significant, since it puts the question of the reinterpretation of the otherness in such a way that could leastwise smooth over the contradictions between the modernity and its Other and render possible the mutual recognition of the opposite sides.

It goes without saying that this aspect of the problem concerns not only Jews, but for the variety of reasons it was indeed for the first time realized and, what is not of less importance, explicitly conceptualized exactly in the Jewish philosophy. It is precisely this fact that explains why the notion of the Other, having noticed attention of national philosophies and the general philosophy as well, symbolizes not the border, but the permeable borderland between them all. Hereupon Derrida who does not formally belong to the Jewish philosophy, could afford to summarize within the framework of reputedly universal philosophical tradition the logic of Rozenzweig's and Levinas' construal of the concept of the Other, and in so doing to make a valuable contribution to both general and Jewish philosophy. The larger context of Derrida's overarching vision implies that the shift from Rosenzweig's to Levinas' notion of the Other corresponds to the change in the essentialist understanding of identity and difference that ended in the prevalence of the antiessentialist stance.

Firstly, it is the transition from the polarities of metaphysics to equipollent and thus independent opposites in the wake of Rosenzweig's critical appraisal of metaphysical thinking. Just this attitude created an affinity between Rosenzweig and Heidegger that is universally recognized, and at the same time it gave rise to the state of “otherwise” taking into account the antipodal conclusions that were formed in the final analysis by Heidegger, on the one hand, and Rosenzweig, on the other hand. Secondly, it is the theoretical model of the fusion between not equipollent and already specifically interrelated opposites in Levinas as the sought- for state that is supposedly “otherwise than Being”, but also otherwise than Heidegger's aiming at the passage from the “overcoming of metaphysics” to the “other beginning”. Thirdly, this succession results in the anti-essentialist and anti- representational stance of Derrida regarding identity and difference which, to be sure, is “otherwise” than the thinking based on the “metaphysics of presence” as the metaphysics of essence and but again “otherwise” than Heidegger's antimetaphysical project of the “other beginning”.

These multiple “otherwise” indicate the peculiarity of Jewish philosophy, but they also uncover the clash of opinions within its own boundaries. Derrida's summarizing consideration of this problem stated the fact that the borders between I and the Other indeed became “porous” and permeable. This change corresponds to the modification of the regime of symbolization at all levels of the symbolic substitutions in society and culture. It seems plausible, that in the late modernity the regime of symbolization obviously manifests itself through the ubiquitous separating of the signifier from the signified, since, according to Heidegger's finding, the “suprasensous is let loose” [29. P. 92]. This implies that the previous understanding of identity and difference is becoming impossible just like the paradigm of the relationships between the particular and the general in the context of the problem of the Other clearly falls away.

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