METHOD AND THE THIRD: BRIDGES BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERATION AND TRANSCENDENTAL PRAGMATICS. Michael D. Barber St. Louis University - E.U.A. In confrontation with Karl-Otto Apel`s transcendental pragmatic, Enrique Dussel has suggested and expansion of pragmatic speech act theory including a distinctive interpellative speech act, whereby the Other interrupts self- enclosed opressive totalities. Dussel remains faithful, though, to be Levinasian inspiration of liberation of philosophy by placing all communicative action within the context of the practical relationship with the Other, wich also includes nonlinguistic erotic and economic moments(1). While Dussel`s strategy amplifies Apel` framework, it does not answer adequately the following objections frequently raised from transcendental-pragmatic quarters: 1) The philosophy, of liberation inspired in part by a thinker mmersed in postmodern contemporary French philosophy, represents another version of anti-rationalism, 2) As a result, the philosophy of liberation cannot provide a rational grounding for its own ethical claims, 3) In urging that one subject oneself to the etical demands of the Other, the philosophy of liberation encourages uncritical heteronomy, (2), 4) transcendental pragmatics can replace the philosophy of liberation since its nonnaturalistic concept of self-critical rationality can achieve the very solidarity and openess to the Other for which the philosophy of liberation calls. To respond to these objections and to pintpoint the complementary and differences between transcendental pragmatics and the philosophy of liberation, I will discuss Levina`s phenomenological methodology and his concept of the Third. These aspects of Levina`s thought underpin the philosophy of liberation, wich, however, has creatively transformed Levina`s thought in many other ways. Given my limitations, I cannot take up the many important questions regarding the linkages of these philosophical theories to underlying economic relationships. 1.Levina`s Phenomenological Methodology In his preface to Totality and Infinity, Levinas acknowledge without reservation his fenomenological methodology. "We were impressed by the opposition to the idea of totality in Franz Rosenzweig`s Stern der Erl”sung. a work too often present in this book to be cited. But the presentation and development of the notions employed owe everything to the phenomenological method. Intentional analysis is the search for the concrete. Notions held under the direct gaze of the thought that defines them are nevertheless, unbeknown to this naive thought, revealed to be implanted in horizons unsuspected by this thought, these horizons endow them with a meaning -- such is the essential teaching of Husserl. What does it matter if in the Husserlian phenomenology taken literally these unsuspected horizons are in their turn interpreted as thoughs aiming at objects! What counts is the idea of the overflowing of objectifying thought by a forgotten experience from wich it lives"(3). This dynamic questioning of horizons reflects the later Husserl`s struggle to move beyond self-sufficient logics and sciences that, because of their thematic foci, neglect their own horizons and forget the anonymous, universal lifeworld, wich they presupose a priori and from wich they arise. As Husserl noted in "The Vienna lecture", if these supposedly rational sciences refuse to question philosophically such horizons, they succumb to a kind of irrationality(4). In a similar fashion, Apel repeatedly endorses the later Wittgenstein`s and Heidegger`overcoming of the sicentistic understanding of language in purely syntatic-semantic terms. Such scientistic abstractions themselves lack scientific adequacy in they abstract from the prior pragmatic- hermeneutic dimensions of experience from wich science itself commences,(5) Although rightly recognizing Heidegger`s epistemological emphasis on the original Verstehen from wich science begins, Apel, like Husserl, never considers in depth the ethical horizons prior theory, at the level of the lifeword. apel aims at developing a theoretical ethics at the transcendental level in opposition to the merely socio-historically conditioned ethics of hermeneutically described precomprehensions of the world. Levinas, on the other hand, focuses precisely on the nonrelativized ethical structure of these ethical horizons prior to theory(6). In addition to the above crucial prefatory note, Levinas follows in other ways Husserl`s method, regressivaly uncovering the forgotten experiences from which theory arises that. He attempts to break through age-old philosophical biases that obscure the fundamental phenomenon of how the Other comes to appearance in dyadic relationships. According to Levina`s fresh phenomenological description, irrepeatable within this limited space, the irreducible Other calls in to question my spontaneity and appears as a Master who judges me, who is not on the same plane with me, who commands me from a position of height, who speaks to me as a first word "you shall not commit murder," who offers me the resistance of what has no resistance--ethical resistance, and who demands not to be left without food. Insistead of the usual philosophical procedure of deriving intersubjectivity from epistemology or ontology. Section I of Totality and Infinity demonstrates that this often overlooked dyadic ethical relationship forms the originary context from wich emerge questions of human freedom, ontology, religion and epistemology. Just as Husserl unveiled the rich intentional processes constituting taken for granted objects in everyday life, so Levina`s "reduction" goes back to the hither side of being, behind what is said on the surface, to the underlying saying activity (i,e,, to the ethico-pratical relationship with the Other) that produces every said. In Otherwise than Being, Levinas, describes this pratical human relationship as occurring at the level of bodily sensibility that, like Merleau-Ponty`s analysis of bodiliness, is not constituted by a Cartesian consciousness deciding to establish a relationship with its own body or with the Other. Rather this sensibility consists in exposure to others, vulnerability to them, and responsability in proximity to them prior to thematization, apophansis, willed responses, and consciousness conscious of consciouness. Since this condition of being called to serve the Other in this practical relationship underlies all pity and compassion, even the simple "After you, sir" of everyday life, it is clear that Levina`s method parallels Husserl`s return to the lifeworld preceding theory. However, Levina`s depiction of the infinite demands of the Other in a practical relationship, diverges radically from the usual cognitive accounts of the lifeworld and would only suffer domestication within them. Because Husserl`pretheorical was protheorical in the sense that sicentific theory would become more rational in facing up to its hidden presuppositions, might not Levina`s pretheoretical also be seenv as pretheoretical? In Levinas`s, view, the aspiration to radical exteriority that cannot be subjected to closed (and so untruthfull) sistems of thought not only animates all his work but also "constitutes truth" and evinces his allegiance to the "intellectualism of reason". This experience of being called into question in the ethical relationship evokes an original self-criticism upon wich knowing builds by requiring further restraint of drives and impulses and an unnatural distrust of self. Furthermore, t