ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses Levinas’ attempt to overcome the problems associated with the apparent duality of the ontological and the ethical subjectivity through a rethinking of justice as a primarily ontological moment. However, in doing so, the ultimate aim of the analysis is to demonstrate that the question of justice is not only linked to a question of being but also to an ethical event. The first half of the chapter discusses the relation between being, truth and justice, suggesting that the significance of Levinas’ reversal of truth and justice should be read in the light of Heidegger’s interpretation of these terms. I look at Heidegger’s interpretation of justice in The Anaximander Fragment and argue that Levinas’ basic objection to this notion of being’s justice is its subordination of the ethical moment to a necessity which Heidegger thinks in terms of to chreon or the dispensing of justice.
