The aim of the present paper is to exemplify the diachronic structure of Speech through the interpretation of Lévinas’ claim according to which the Speech precedes the Spoken. On the basis of comparison between the primordiality of the Speech and Merleau-Ponty’s gestual meaning which precedes the conceptual meaning, we will point out the correspondence – within the frame of the ethical signifi ance – between the diachrony of Speech and the origin of language in corporeality. We shall conclude by refl exion of the problem of articulation between Speech as a modality of ethical signifi ance and between Lévinas’ philosophical discourse itself, which remains a modality of the Spoken despite its refl exion on the Speech. and Ziel des vorliegenden Artikels ist es, dem Leser die diachrone Struktur des Sagens mit Hilfe der Interpretation von Levinas’ These, dass dem Sagen das Gesagte vorausgeht, näher zu bringen. Durch den Vergleich der vor-Ursprünglichkeit des Sagens mit Merleau-Pontys gestischem Sinn, der dem Begriff ssinn vorausgeht, zeige ich im Rahmen der ethischen Signifi kanz den Zusammenhang zwischen der Diachronie des Sagens und dem Ursprung der Sprache in der Leiblichkeit auf. Dies führt mich zum Schluss des Artikels zu dem Problem der Artikulierung des Sagens als Modalität der ethischen Signifi kanz der Bedeutendheit und zu Levinas’ philosophischem Diskurs, der, obgleich er ein Zeugnis vom Sagen bietet, dennoch eine Modalität des Gesagten bleibt.
Our article focuses on the late philosophy of Levinas, which can be characterized as an ethics of radical passivity, and on its limits (especially in the relationship between ethics/society). The aim is not, however, to overcome the dichotomy of passiv-ity/activity as other phenomenological authors attempt to do, but to deepen this differentiation to such an abysmal level that any sort of philosophy of action is eliminated from this late project of the ethics of passivity. Such a thorough separation of the ethics of responsibility from the entirety of the philosophy of action, one of the main aspects of Levinas’s late works, also has its limitations in Levinas’s thought itself. These limitations are associated with the entrance of the so-called “third party” into the sphere of the infinite responsibility for the Other. We attempt to interpret this contradiction of infinite ethics and finite Justice with the help of Foucault’s concepts of decisions, division, and exclusion.