摘要：The article focuses on the fundamental principles inherent in Levinas’ and Lingis’ philosophical orientations and their essential differences. Levinas’ initial phenomenological orientation was an implicit speculative theology that was inaccessible to awareness, although posited as a universal ground of a priori value that takes precedence over ontology. This means that any awareness of Being must be mediated by theological demands. Lingis regards such a direction as a forgetfulness of the unique, “this there” singular, whether human or otherwise, presence with its own needs and requirements. In this sense, any intermediary between any unique being is a distortion of our awareness and submission to an unknown and unknowable infinite alien.
