ABSTRACT
Levinasian relation to the Other is Speech. It is Speech that conditions thought, but Speech not conceived in its physical materialness but as a contact. Such Speech gives rise to meanings. Speech is a live expression, ethical openness to the Other, a response to a call. Speech is the presence of the Face. As significantly and consistently emphasized by Skarga in his interpretations of Levinas for Levinas, a mute and blocked language. The first word is commitment and no inwardness permits avoiding the commitment. The excendent Individual can neither walk away from the Face. It is only such Speech, marked by commitment in this way, which becomes Speech compelling the Individual to conversation. Socrates maintained that the form of communication between the Individual and any Other is always aporetic, impassable. In this way he expressed an assertion that a speaker, who knows that he knows nothing before starting a dialogue, always finishes the dialogic relation being enriched in some way.
