Abstract
The paper is comparing Sartre's and Lévinas' approaches to the elusive alterity of the Other. The proposed comparison is based on the opposition between the gaze (in Sartre) and the speech (in Lévinas) as two competing paradigms for understanding the encounter with the Other.
In the same time, Lévinas' relation to Sartre's account of Being-for-others is not presented in terms of sheer refusal, but rather as an original development and radicalization of Sartre's most fundamental insights: if objectifying the other through the gaze is an always present possibility, the ethical consequence emphasized by Lévinas consists precisely in resisting such a temptation and letting myself to be addressed by Other's speech and vulnerability. Such an approach allows us to identify the common themes shared by the two phenomenologists: a) the ground of my being does not lie within myself, b) the encounter of the other has a traumatic effect on the self-centered consciousness, arousing from his ability to question my spontaneous self-projecting and c) my own freedom becomes not only constrained, but also problematized and in the end "invested" by the unsettling presence of the other.
In conclusion, both Sartre and Lévinas are criticized for having omitted the socially and politically articulated interlocutory scene on which any concrete encounter with the other takes places and which shapes to a large extent the course of their mutual exchange.