Resumen

PINARDI, Sandra. Notes around  the saying and the said  in Levinas´ thought. EPISTEME [online]. 2010, vol.30, n.2, pp.33-48. ISSN 0798-4324.

This text proposes an inquiry regarding the distinction between the Saying and the Said in Emmanuel Levinas works. Levinas uses this dis tinction to propose an ethical understanding of language, where significance and expression are capable of overcoming the limitations of ontology`s sys- tematic language, of the being, and the essences. On the basis of that “the language of ontology” is impertinent to understand, express, or communicate this “ethical experience” fundamental for the “face to face encounter” with the Face of the Other: the experience of significance itself, Levinas proposes a pre-ontologic understanding of language. This pre-ontologic understanding would be capable of answering the following questions: What is the language, the word itself of that passive subject, that subject who is a hostage of the Other (the fellow man) who is attached to him? Which is the language of giving oneself, which word can take charge of what is always non appropriable? What kind of language will it be that tries to say the other of the being, that language able to “translate” the significance given in the original ethical experience, that where the “irreplaceable uniqueness of a person is being exposed to another person”? In this respect, we propose that the Saying is, regarding the said, its having-occurred, the possibility itself of communicating and expressing, where the passive condition of the subject is exposed. On the other hand, in the measure that the Saying is the expression of the significance which occurs in the proximity with the Other, the Saying is always testimonial.

Palabras clave : the Saying and the Said; Ethical language; Testimony.

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