Essence and disinterest

pp. 3-20

in: Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than being or beyond essence, Berlin, Springer, 1991

Abstract

If transcendence has meaning, it can only signify the fact that the event of being, the esse, the essence,¹ passes over to what is other than being. But what is Being's other? Among the five "genera" of the Sophist a genus opposed to being is lacking, even though since the Republic there had been question of what is beyond essence. And what can the fact of passing over mean here, where the passing over, ending at being's other, can only undo its facticity during such a passage?