Between dialogue and love: debts and distances from Levinas to Buber and Marcel

Abstract

The philosophy of dialogue proposed, among others, by Buber and Marcel, is an indispensable
point of reference for understanding Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of otherness. Indeed,
if it is accepted that dialogue and love are such if they are intersubjective, then both realities are
two ways to approach the complete otherness of the Other. On the one hand, Levinas recognizes
in Buber his approach to the I-Thou relation, not as ‘experience’ with the world of objects, but
as ‘encounter’; but he distances from Buber for whom encounter implies symmetry and reciprocity.
On the other hand, Levinas admires Marcel’s approach to intersubjective love, where the
subject is not autarchic or self-sufficient, but called to exist for-the-Other; and, at the same time,
Levinas points out the limits of the ontological basis in which Marcel rooted love and encounter.