Abensour, Levinas e l’utopia come "epochè"

Abstract

This essay examines a proposal by Miguel Abensour that may be particularly relevant for rethinking the relationship between utopia and skepticism: the hypothesis that there is a close connection between utopia (a certain form of utopia) and the phenomenological epochè. To assess this proposal, it first considers some general characteristics of Abensour’s utopian thought, particularly the notion of the “new utopian spirit”. On this basis, the essay focuses on Abensour’s interpretation of Levinas. Indeed, it is by referring to Levinas’s works that Abensour advocates for a combined consideration of utopia and epochè. The discussion includes an exploration of Levinas’ distinctive understanding of epochè, alongside the specific conception of utopia identified by Abensour in Levinas: namely, a “utopia of the human”, characterized as a critical and open-ended project which challenges the Hobbesian paradigm of bellum omnium contra omnes and interrogates the presumed certainties of the present world.