Beyond being or other than being happens

Lévinas' critique of Western ontology lies in its failure to adequately address the question of the Other and the ethical question. He emphasizes that his relationship with the infinity of the Other ultimately remains beyond discussion. Nevertheless, he sees it as the task of philosophy to give language to this relationship. Lévinas takes the crisis of modern humanism so seriously that in the struggle for the meaningfulness of an extreme silence, the appeal to a previously defined Conditio humana becomes audible. Its place is the sensibility and vulnerability of humans, and its determination is an "irreplaceable passivity," for which one cannot be represented any more than for one's own dying.