According to Levinas, answering the question concerning the relation between recognition and intersubjectivity implies a critique of ontology. Indeed, from an ontological perspective, recognition reduces alterity to the self. The whole philosophical research undertaken by Levinas consists in investigating what ontology presupposes, that is to say an inquiry on what transcends ontology as well as constitutes its condition of possibility. This paper seeks to show how Levinas, through the critic of ontology, tries to solve the contradiction between the recognition of the other as singularity and the other as identity, and how this attempt implies a reflection on the concept of forgiveness.

Between 1865 and 1870, Peirce works on the concept of form, starting from Kant. According to Peirce, the form is “the respect in which the representation might stand for a thing”. The question of form is therefore deeply linked with the concept of aspect, because the form is the way in which the object presents itself through its qualities. The essay tries to show the way in which Peirce operates a semiotization of the aspect through the elaboration of the concept of form. Such semiotization consists in a displacement of the qualities of the object from the passive and neutral ground of perception to the productive e “informed” ground of representation.

This text analyzes the question of linguistic violence in J. Derrida and in J. Butler and shows how this question implies a consideration of the relation between language and body. The starting point is Derrida’s critic of Austin’s theory of speech acts. Through this critic Derrida establishes a relation between speech acts and writing. This connection brings to the fore the importance of the iterability as a structural feature of speech acts. The iterability becomes fundamental in Butler’s analysis of hate speech in Excitable Speech. In this book the iterability is interpreted as the ritual character of the hate speech, which reveals its political dimension. Comparing Butler and Derrida’s ideas of speech act, I try in this text to make emerge the idea of a textual body as the possibility of the resistance to the linguistic violence.