Giorgia Vasari

This article analyzes the Levinasian concept of the “feminine” with the intent of bringing out its anti-idealistic bearing, while at the same time highlighting its theoretic originality. Indeed, Levinas’ thought is characterized by its contrast to the totalizing logic of Being, which in its path to the Absolute assimilates otherness to the point of annihilating it. In this theoretical framework, whose motivation and aims are of a practical nature, the figure of the feminine expresses otherness as such, not an otherness which can be objectified or one which can be brought back within the I’s horizon of comprehension. This analysis focuses, on the one hand, on the erotic phenomenon, which is to say, an opening up to that which remains mysterious, and which thus cannot be possessed. On the other hand, it is argued that the accomplishment of the figure of the feminine occurs in the figure of the “dwelling”, the place in which the subject’s suspension of the assimilation of differences permits the I to recognize its debt to the Other.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the disgust of which Sartre's “nausea” is an expression, by identifying its ontological significance and its role within Sartre's thought. Particular attention is devoted to the phenomenological themes of vision and conversion of the gaze, in the strict correlation they have with disgust. My claim is that Sartre, in his early philosophical work, elaborated a response to the Heideggerian problematic of the correlation between Befindlichkeit and Faktizität. To verify such claim, my paper will analyse the differences between Sartrean and Heideggerian thought with regard to these concepts, and show the extent of the influence that Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas and Aurel Kolnai had on Sartre.