Levinas and the theology

This study seeks to approach the problem of the theology in Emmanuel Levinas's thought. At the beginning, we tried to weave a brief mapping of the different uses of the term theology by Levinas. With that, we looked for to evidence that Levinas proposes a new sense for the word in subject, different in relation to that in that it is defined as rational speech about God. Concomitantly, tried to show that the critical levinasiana goes above all to the rational theology, cause of its historical wedlock with the philosophy, whose essence is defined then in terms of an aspiration to the absolute unit. Bending to the rational demands of conceptual universality and leaning to the relative dissatisfaction to the knowledge, the theology would suffer of the temptation of abstaining of the suffering of somebody else, relegating the praxis responsible to second plan in relation to the primacy granted to the knowledge and the love to God. Identified the reasons by the which Levinas judges to criticize the rational theology, we intend to face the challenge of a possible characterization of the own speech levinasiano about God, defining him not in terms of negative theology, but as a speech supposedly "philosophical", since that there perceive the primacy of the ethics in relation to the ontology, but without the tension among the two levels of significance, the ethical and the ontological, be suppressed. With that, we tried to evidence which is the exact place that the theology occupies in the soul of the speech levinasiano, given the distinction that the author establishes between testimony and theology. To the theology while make rational speeches about God is prefixed a species sui generis of theophany, a revelation of God by the ethical encounter with the other human.