ABSTRACT
Modern theories of justice are generally based on an imperative of equality whose necessity is usually justified as being the condition of impartiality. This chapter aims at precising the nature of these central concepts in E. Levinas's thought as they constitute the basis of his two-dimensional conception of justice. First, the Ego, or the same, is in Levinas a being completely enclosed on itself so that it refers to totality and admits equality as its principle. Second, the Other, that refers to infinity and involves a structure of inequality, appears as absolute exteriority and as the new point of view that philosophy should take to understand subjectivity and freedom, as it is the encounter with the Other that frees the self. The chapter explores the idea of a reversal in the being's subjectivity through the understanding of Levinas's radical conception of the responsibility for the other.
