Levinas, chauvinism, disinterest

I perform an internal critique of Levinas's distinction between ethics and ontology. My critique proceeds in two steps, one formal, one practical. First, I show that Levinas falls into performative contradiction on the question of (1) the priority of ethics (especially in Totality & Infinity ) and (2) the immediacy of moral election (in Otherwise than Being). Contrary to his claims, Levinas must and in fact does presuppose and perform an ontology in his (1a) description of the face-to-face, and (2a) the mediation of thought in the event of moral sense. I concretely show that Levinas's general claims can only work by identifying sensuous and semantic immediacy, or by alternate and circular appeals to empirico-ontological and transcendental presence. With my formal critique in hand, I conduct a reading of Levinas's more controversial political and religious texts; specifically, texts said to be chauvinist or Eurocentric. I show how the formal inconsistency of his philosophical work accounts for the arbitrarity evident in his political and religious writings.