The paper undertakes a comparison of the philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Emmanuel L_vinas, focusing on their interpretation of skepticism and the crucial role of the problem of the other or other minds in the works of both. The comparison proceeds in three major steps: first, differences in their respective interpretations of Descartes’ stance on the problem of other minds are discussed. In the second section, Cavell’s examination of the intelligibility of someone else’s pain and L_vinas’ questioning of the sense (...) of suffering are juxtaposed. Finally, the author analyzes their respective treatment of skepticism. This results in the opening of an ethical dimension which grounds the dominating theoretical relationship towards the world and the other human being in epistemology and ontology. The periodical return and irrefutability of skepticism can thus be regarded not only as evidence of the inevitable limitation of knowledge, but as a consequence of the necessarily social or intersubjective structure of subjectivity itself. (shrink)

The essay reexamines the famous scene from Proust’s ›In Search of Lost Time‹ about the death of the writer Bergotte. In pointing out that the notorious ›patch of yellow wall‹ Bergotte claims to have discovered in Vermeer’s ›View of Delft‹ does not exist in the real painting, the article’s aim is to show that the scene is not to be read as an autobiographical recollection, but rather as a reflection on ›mimesis‹, i.e. on the transcendental conditions of perception and representation. (...) As such, it can be considered to have in large measure inspired the reorientation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological oeuvre towards a new ontology. On the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s recently published lecture notes, the essay locates the common concern of the writer and the philosopher in the idea of remembrance not as a derivative phenomenon, but as an originary mode of givenness. (shrink)