In this thesis, I investigate the work and interrelation of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Blanchot to show the deconstructive nature of the action of reading/writing in order to establish reading/writing as an exemplary ethical action that renovates itself in its development. After World War II and the Holocaust, many European thinkers endeavored to establish a new ethical and philosophical system in order to break with the \"Western philosophical tradition\" with its emphasis on the empirical ego. Levinas challenged the philosophy of the ego, or egology (egologie), by prioritizing the absolute alterity of the transcendental Other (l'Autrui). Sympathetic to Levinas's challenge to the Western metaphysical tradition, Derrida also investigated the possible alternative to egology, but he criticized Levinas's unmediated ethical encounter with the transcendental Other. Their debate in the 1960s gives rise to a fundamental question of egology: how can we engage with the (transcendent) event/thing without the contamination of the ego-logical acknowledgement? I answer this question by discussing Maurice Blanchot's literature and its contribution to Levinas's and Derrida's transitions in their later works. The fundamental goal of this thesis is to construct the action of reading/writing as an exemplary deconstructive power that challenges the definite ego-logical acknowledgement by welcoming the question to come.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Transcendental ethics","Deconstruction","Literary testimony"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 23950