Abstract

The essay aims to demonstrate that the deep Crisis of the European Consciousness experienced in the European Culture during the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, passed under the name of "Kulturkritik", is ultimately a crisis of the European Juridical Culture produced by the hitherto unsolved problem of the relationship and difference between law and ethics. Figures and vocabulary used by the author of "Totality and Infinite. Essay on Exteriority" and some oppositional concepts (exterior/interior; visible/invisible for instance) have been contextualized in the scientific paradigm of modernity stressing the original position of Lévinas, who considers hermeneutics as an aspect of the rationalist, totalizing thought. Loss of the dialogue would be the consequence of a strict application of Lévinas' paradigm. New studies on "Dialogicity" lead to rethink and reassess the theories of the "sources" of rights and the "Modern" paradigm of the "Individual" and "Sovereign" Subject with relevant consequences in the studies about cultures and values.