Emmanuel Lévinas’s Notion of Desire

Abstract

Emmanuel Lévinas’s Notion of Desire. – The notion of desire is one of the key notions in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas. Desire as the original dynamis cannot be satisfied by consumption – on the contrary: It is the object of desire that actually makes desire more profound. Feeling desire does not mean extending possession or power, it rather means building up bonds towards otherness. Desire is the absence of the other; not a simple absence as pure vanity, but absence within the horizons of the future. Desire as a radical non-reciprocity, asymmetry, imperfectness without grasp, without ownership, free of amalgamation or realization, but rather an area where there is always enough room for hope.