Subjectivity and orientation in Levinas and Kant

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 433-449

  Dalton, Stuart ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD   (United States)

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EID: 53149099726     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010083004255     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney. "Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas." Face to Face with Levinas. Ed. Richard A. Cohen. Albany: SUNY, 1985, 13-34.
2. Éthique et infini. Paris: Fayard, 1982.
3. English: Ethics and Infinity. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985.
4. "Sans identité." Humanisme de l'autre homme. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1972, 93-113.
5. English: "No Identity." Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1987, 141-152.
6. Autrement qu 'être ou au-delà de l'essence. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974.
7. English: Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.
8. "La philosophie et l'idée de l'infini." En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin, 1974, 165-178.
9. English: "Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity." Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1987, 47-59.
10. "Signature."Difficile liberté. Paris: Albin Michel, 1963, 321-327.
11. English: "Signature." Trans. Mary Ellen Petrisko. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak. Research in Phenomenology 8 (1978): 175-189.
12. Totalité et infini. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961.
13. English: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969.
14. All German texts are taken from Kant's gesammelte Schriften. Hrsg. von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 29 Vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-1983.
15. "Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft." (Ak. XX).
16. English: "First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment." Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987, 385-441.
17. Kritik der Urtheilskraft. (Ak. V).
18. English: Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.
19. "Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren?" (Ak. VIII).
20. English: "What is Orientation in Thinking?" Trans. H.S. Nisbet. Kant's Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 237-249.
21. Rudolf Makkreel. Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: the Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
22. In addition to IIK, Makkreel's analysis of the orientational quality of reflective judgments can also be found in "Transcendental Reflection, Orientation and Reflective Judgment," Inmitten der Zeit: Beiträge zur europäischen Cegenwartsphilosophie, hrsg. Thomas Grethlein and Heinrich Leitner. Wurzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996, 291-303;
23. "Tradition and Orientation in Hermeneutics," Research in Phenomenology 16 (1986) 73-85. I am indebted to all of these texts for my own understanding of these topics.
24. The significance of Levinas's views on subjectivity to the continental philosophical tradition in general is analyzed by Simon Critchley in his "Prolegomena to any Post-Deconstructive Subjectivity," Deconstructive Subjectivities, ed. Simon Critchley and Peter Dews. Albany: SUNY, 1996, 13-46.
25. Karl Ameriks analyzes the contemporary attack on subjectivity by continental philosophy inspired by Heidegger, by social theory, and by analytic philosophy, and argues that Kant's theory of apperception in the first Critique has greater relevance to the defense of subjectivity than has been generally realized in his article "From Kant to Frank: The Ineliminable Subject," The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks. Albany: SUNY, 1995.
26. For a much more complete critique of Heidegger with regard to his influence on the current widespread dismissal of subjectivity in the Continental tradition, see David Carr, "The Question of the Subject: Heidegger and the Transcendental Tradition," Human Studies 17.4 (1994-1995) 403-418.
27. Fabio Polidori directly compares Heidegger and Levinas with regard to subjectivity, and argues that Levinas may in fact have been influenced by Being and Time in his own approach to the subject, in, "Heidegger e Levinas: un confronto sulla soggettivitá," Intorno a Levinas, ed. Pier Aldo Rovatti. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 1987, 177-190.
28. This description of ethical subjectivity as "youthful" resonates with much of Lyotard's recent work, where he speaks of a certain "infancy" - a subjectivity that belongs to the past of all of us - which must be recognized in all of our attempts to respond to injustice. As Lyotard writes in, Lectures d'enfance (Paris: Galilée, 1991), this in-fans is that strange creature which is "human," (or so we say), and yet it cannot speak. It is an infancy "which is not an age of life and which does not pass away. It haunts discourse. Discourse does not cease to push it aside, it is its separation. But at the same time discourse persists in constituting infancy, as something lost. In this way, unknown to discourse, it shelters it. Infancy is the residue [reste] of discourse. If infancy resides in this residue, this is due to nothing but the fact that it remains in the adult" (9).
29. The disagreement with Heidegger in this respect is obvious, and I think completely intentional on the part of Levinas. Section II of Totality and Infinity, where Levinas discusses enjoyment in the greatest detail, can be read as a rewriting and a critique of the Existential Analytic in Being and Time, with Levinas substituting "'enjoyment" for "fallenness" as the mode of Dasein's average everydayness.
30. Peter Kemp compares this stage of the development of subjectivity to Heideggerian Angst in his "La crainte pour autrui," Philosophica 52.2 (1993) 49-61.
31. Richard Cohen shows the connections between this first stage of subjectivity and Husserlian phenomenology, in his "Emmanuel Levinas: Happiness is a Sensational Time," Philosophy Today 25:3 (Fall 1981) 196-203.
32. Joseph Libertson analyzes the emergence of the self for the first time within the economy of egoistic enjoyment, and argues that the occurrence of subjectivity is due to the inability of this economy to totalize its discontinuity, in his, "La recurrence chez Levinas," Revue philosophique de Louvain 79 (1981) 212-251.
33. Levinas refers to the asymmetry of intersubjective relations as the chief difference between his work and that of Martin Buber. For Buber the I and the Thou are always on the same plane, always connected by an essential symmetry (cf. TI, 64-65/68-69; DK, 31). For a more complete analysis of the connection between Levinas and Buber, see Robert Bernasconi, "Failure of Communication as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue Between Buber and Levinas," The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, ed. Robert Bernasconi and David Wood. London: Routledge, 1988, 100-135.
34. César A. Moreno Marquez argues that the social and political dimensions of Levinas's thought are rooted in the basic fact of intersubjective asymmetry in his, "The Curvature of Intersubjective Space: Sociality and Responsibility in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," Analecta Husserliana 22 (1987), ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1987, 343-352.
35. For another, non-Levinasian version of the idea of "ethical space," see Roger Poole's very interesting book, Towards Deep Subjectivity. London: Penguin Press, 1972, 3-43.
36. Another analysis of space with regard to issues of subjectivity can be found in Kathleen M. Kirby, Indifferent Boundaries: Spatial Concepts of Human Subjectivity. London: Guilford, 1996.
37. This same theme is also explored in the essays collected in Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, ed. Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift. London: Routledge, 1995.
38. Françoise Mies argues that intersubjective asymmetry does not preclude reciprocity in "Asymétrie et réciprocité qui est le Messie?" Levinas en contrastes, ed. Michel Dupuis. Bruxelles: De Boeck, 1994, 119-135.
39. Adriaan Peperzak argues for the same conclusion in To the Other. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1993, 26-32.
40. Beyond the question of intersubjective equality (or its absence) that I have briefly focused on here, Brian Schroeder provides a detailed study of other important dimensions of Levinasian intersubjectivity in his Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence. London: Routledge, 1996.
41. That the autonomy of egoism is understood by Levinas as "capricious" points out an interesting contrast between Levinas's concept of autonomy and that of Kant in the second Critique. For Kant the autonomous subject cannot be capricious because its autonomy is a matter of dictating a rational law to itself, and rational laws must always be consistent and universal. For Levinas the autonomous ego is capricious because its autonomy is not a matter of following rational laws, but rather merely a matter of pursuing its own enjoyment without heed for anything exterior to its own egoistic economy. The autonomy of egoism for Levinas is a function of jouissance, not Vernunft.
42. Other interesting studies of the stages of subjectivity in Levinas can be found in the following texts: Federica Sossi analyzes the transition from egoism to subjectivity in Levinas's thought in, "L'ordine straordinario. A proposito del soggetto in Levinas," Intorno a Levinas, ed. Pier Aldo Rovatti. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 1987, 201-211.
43. Silvano Petrosino and Jacques Rolland analyze the stages of subjectivity in Levinas in their, La vérité nomade. Paris: La découverte, 1984, 17-52.
44. Gérard Bailhache analyzes the implicit theory of subjectivity in Levinas's ethics in his Le sujet chez Emmanuel Levinas: fragilité et subjectivité. Paris: PUF, 1994. Hans Georg von Manz argues that Levinas resembles Fichte in the way that he makes subjectivity dependent on interpersonal relations.
45. See his, "Selbstgewissheit und Fremdgewissheit," Fichte-Studien 6 (1994) 195-213.
46. The interesting question of what Kant can mean by "orientation in thought" - how 'in' should be understood in the context of logical orientation - is investigated by John Moore in his essay, "Kant on Reflection and Orientation," Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress vol. 2. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995, 721-732.
47. For a critique of Kant's essay on orientation that is based on a misunderstanding of this important point, regarding Kant's theory instead to be a "purely cognitive enterprise" (178), see Roberta De Monticelli, "On Orientation," Topoi 5.2 (September 1986) 177-185.
48. Makkreel makes this point about the externally directed character of the feeling of left and right in IIK 155.
49. IIK 159.
50. While this quotation refers to the mathematical sublime, Kant makes it clear that the same movement to the supersensible substrate occurs in the dynamical sublime, where the might of nature leads the subject to discover a supersensible substrate that secures it beyond the power of nature. In the dynamical sublime, "nature is here called sublime merely because it elevates our imagination, making it exhibit those cases where the mind can come to feel its own sublimity, which lies in its vocation and elevates it even above nature" (K3, 262/121). In general, Kant writes, no affects can qualify as sublime, "unless they leave us with a mental attunement that influences, at least indirectly, our consciousness of our fortitude and resolution concerning what carries with it pure intellectual purposiveness (namely, the supersensible)" (K3, 273/134).
51. In the First Introduction, Kant suggests that this amounts to making an artistic assumption about nature, interpreting nature as if it were a work of art created by an artist (FI, 204/393, 214/402).
52. Jean-François Lyotard argues that Kant is here alluding to the fact that in the feeling of sensus communis, and the experience of the beautiful that it makes possible, we discover the subject in the process of being born, in statu nascendi. Unlike the transcendental unity of apperception, which is a force that always-already unifies every subject, sensus communis is the "experience" in which "[a] subjectivity hears itself from far off and intimately at the same time; in this frail and singular unison, the subjectivity is being born . . ." (21-22). See his "Sensus Communis," Judging Lyotard, ed. Andrew Benjamin. London: Warwick, 1992, 1-25.