ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contemporary discourse in the light of remarks of Jean-François Lyotard and, especially, of Emmanuel Levinas. A critical factor in Rousseau’s profound and revolutionary thought is the way that this relocation of authority in the inner self lays the way, to our immense benefit, for a principle of equality, and indirectly, and to our cost, for the subjectivism. Politics tends toward reciprocal recognition, that is, toward equality; it ensures happiness. And political law concludes and sanctions the struggle for recognition. Religion is Desire and not struggle for recognition. Levinas wants to overturn the primacy of ontology, even where this is conceived in terms that overcome the subject – object dichotomy.
