Christian Hebraist Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) received a letter in Hebrew from his teacher, the Hebrew grammarian Elia Levita ( אליהו בן אשר הלוי זי ð 1469-1549 ;אשכ ), and published it in 1531 under the title Epistola Eliae Levitae ad Sebastianum Munsterum, eruditione non vacans, together with David Kimḥi's Commentary on Amos, for the convenience of Hebrew learners. It is a valuable historical document that gives a glimpse into their relationship and the situation at the time. This article first provides an overview of the live of Levita and his relationship with Munster, and then introduce the contents of the letter and discuss two points.

The first concerns the publication of the Moshe Kimḥi's Hebrew Grammar with Levita's Commentary, with a Münster's Latin translation. The date and content of the letter and the publication suggest that while Levita's proofreading was not done before publication, Münster may have received the letter prior to publication.

The second concerns Münster's Trilingual Dictionary ( ו ת ð :שילוש לשו Dictionarium Trilingue). Criticism of the book from Levita is considered to highlight the different stances of this master and disciple towards the three languages—Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

In 'Violence and Metaphysics' (1964/67), responding to Levinas's criticism of Heidegger's ontology, Derrida rather discusses the 'proximity' betweenbHeidegger's thought of Being (das Sein / l'être) and Levinas's thought of infinity. In this context, Derrida refers to Gilson's interpretation of Scotus in John Duns Scotus (1952). According to Gilson, the polemic concerning the thesis on the analogy of Being (analogia entis), which originated with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus's thesis on the univocity of Being can be resolved if one considers how both sides apply the term 'to be'. Clarifying the differences in these applications demonstrates that the two sides are far from being in conflict; rather, as Gilson argues, they are thoroughly compatible. By presenting Gilson's argument, Derrida suggests the compatibility between Heidegger's and Levinas's thoughts, given that the verb 'to be' can be applied to different ranges of uses.

The first part of this paper refers to Gilson's explication of Scotus’s notion of Being and its univocity. It also explores how this doctrine, by establishing the univocal Being for both the infinite and the creature, can avoid the danger of subsuming the infinite and the creature under the same umbrella of being (ens). The danger is avoided by claiming that being is not a genus that subsumes different species under itself. To illustrate this argument, this paper discusses Aristotle's demonstration that being (τὸ ὄν) is not a genus, and Scotus's inheritance of this argument with the simultaneous conversion of the analogy of Being to the univocity of Being. This clarification enables us to comprehend Derrida's view on the compatibility of thought of Being and that of infinity.

Now, if, according to Derrida, both Heidegger's thought of Being and Levinas's thought of infinity have 'proximity' to each other, it is in the sense that both thoughts open the possibility of thinking about ontological difference. Here, Derrida suggests the 'proximity' between the two different sorts of undeterminability, that is, the undeterminability of Being and that of infinity. However, Derrida's fluid description does not detail how undeterminability in the second sense allows us to think about ontological difference, and it may consequently give impression that it invites confusion between the two sorts of undeterminability. To address this ambiguity, the second part of this paper refers to Boulnois's interpretation of Henry of Ghent and Scotus. Boulnois illustrates how Henry of Ghent faces the problem of this confusion and how Scotus resolved it by introducing the univocity of Being. Thus, a detour to Boulnois's investigation clarifies the compatibility between the two sorts of undeterminability, that of infinity and that of Being, which opens the possibility of considering ontological difference.

To this end, the second part focusses on the two aporias that Duns Scotus resolves in the process of dispelling the confusion about two types of underterminability, and this solution is closely tied to his introduction of the univocity of Being. The first aporia consists in the incompatibility of two definitions of 'the first philosophy' in Aristotle's Metaphysics, books Γ and Ε; the former qualifies the first philosophy the science on being qua being, while the second calls it the science of the divine. The second aporia consists in the incompatibility of three of Aristotle's theses on science: first, all science treats a univocal genus; second, being is equivocal and not a genus; and third, the first philosophy should nonetheless be the science of being as being.

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