Subjectivity and Orientation in Levinas and Kant

433SUBJECTIVITY AND ORIENTATION IN LEVINAS AND KANT

Continental Philosophy Review 32: 433–449, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Subjectivity and orientation in Levinas and Kant

STUART DALTONUniversity of Hartford, Humanities Department, West Hartford, CT 06117, USA

Abstract. This essay presents an argument for reconceptualizing subjectivity as orientationalrather than foundational in nature. My focus is on the work of Emmanuel Levinas andImmanuel Kant. I begin by summarizing Levinas’s theory of ethical subjectivity as a theoryof the self where the internal and the external are in constant play. Then I turn to two worksof Kant for resources to understand better the meaning of Levinas’s theory of the self. In“What is Orientation in Thinking?” Kant presents a model for orientation in thought that Imake use of as a basic framework for a model of orientational subjectivity. Then I analyzetwo feelings described by Kant in the third Critique which I argue can be understood asorientational feelings within such a model of orientational subjectivity: the feeling of sensuscommunis and the feeling of vocation.

Subjectivity and orientation in Levinas and Kant

In the history of philosophy subjectivity has generally been understood asthe ground of human experience, the source of its unity and coherence. Butthe ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas denies that the subject can playsuch a role. According to Levinas, the “event” of obligation comes beforesubjectivity. One becomes a subject by accepting obligations that one did notcreate: a subject must respond to an obligation that is imposed by another,rather than dictating to itself the terms of the ethical law. Thus, the Levinasianperspective on ethics draws the subject out from the interiority that philoso-phy has traditionally posited as the essence of the self, and into the exteriorityof responsibility. In this way, it calls into question the idea that subjectivity isfoundational.

In his book Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, Rudolf Makkreel ar-gues that reflective judgments should be understood as orientational ratherthan foundational in nature (IIK, 154–171).1 Unlike the determinant judg-ments of the first Critique, reflective judgment in the third Critique can bereinterpreted and reevaluated. It is “adaptive to the particular contents ofexperience and articulates order through the mutual adjustment of parts andwholes” (IIK, 154). Consequently, Makkreel writes, it would be a mistake tocriticize Kant’s transcendental philosophy as completely foundational in na-ture, and hence irrelevant to the hermeneutic enterprise (IIK, 154).

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In this essay my purpose will be to demonstrate that a similar case can bemade for the relevance of Kant’s aesthetic theory to the task of understand-ing the nature of the ethical subject. Building on Makkreel’s insights into theorientational quality of reflective judgments, I will argue that this qualitymakes possible a reformulation of subjectivity as an orientational activityrather than a foundational presence.2

To make this case I will: (i) analyze Levinas’s theory of subjectivity as it ispresented in his writings on ethics; (ii) consider the general idea of orienta-tion as it is outlined by Kant in the essay “What is Orientation in Thinking?”;(iii) consider two orienting feelings that are presented in the third Critique:the feeling of sensus communis and the feeling of vocation; (iv) discuss howthese two feelings can be applied in the context of Levinas’s ethical theory toreformulate subjectivity as orientational rather than foundational.

Levinas’s theory of subjectivity

This facet of Levinas’s thought is one of the most interesting, but also one ofthe most overlooked. Levinas offers a fundamental reinterpretation of sub-jectivity in ethical terms, in light of the event of obligation that confronts thesubject. Subjectivity is reinterpreted as essentially for-another rather thanfor-itself (EI, 101–103/95–96).

But it is not difficult to construe Levinas’s reinterpretation of subjectivityas a rejection of the very idea of subjectivity, instead of a defense of that ideaon ethical grounds. Levinas does critique most of the history of philosophyfor its approach to subjectivity, which he characterizes as an effort to securethe subject’s own being before, and independently of, the being of everyother. In general there are two ways of attempting this. First, one can posit asubject that is absorbed in a larger whole, a totality that anchors the self inbeing and secures it against the other’s arbitrariness by establishing a higherrational order where nothing is arbitrary. This is the path taken by, for exam-ple, Spinoza and Hegel (TI, 86–87/87). A second way is to secure the subjectfrom within itself by means of an auto-affection that founds and defines itsbeing. This tradition would include all theories that reduce the being of theself ultimately to self-consciousness, such as those of Descartes, Husserl,Sartre, and Kant in the first Critique (OB, 125–126/99–100, 131–132/103).The flaw in both approaches, Levinas argues, is that they fail to take accountof the singular temporality of obligation – the fact that it always alreadyprecedes any attempt by the subject to secure itself in its own being. But thiscriticism does not mean that Levinas believes the very idea of subjectivity to


be inherently flawed or pernicious. Instead, he argues that subjectivity needsto be rethought from an ethical perspective, in order to arrive at a concept ofthe subject that is “founded in the idea of infinity” (TI, 11/26).

This is demonstrated especially well in the essay “No Identity,” whereLevinas critiques the contemporary critique of the subject. Within the con-temporary critique of subjectivity Levinas finds two main theoretical tenden-cies.

The first of these is the mistrust of subjectivity that is cultivated by themodern physical sciences. These sciences, because of their “nostalgia forlogical formalism and mathematical structures,” are suspicious of anythingas mysterious as a self or an ego (NI, 96/142). So they reverse the traditionalorder of explanation and construe the human subject as the object of forcesand events exterior to itself. This scientific paradigm is further strengthenedby the perspective of recent history, which reveals anything but the emer-gence of a rational order. “Everything comes to pass as though the ego, theidentity par excellence from which every identifiable identity would derive,were wanting with regard to itself, did not succeed in coinciding with itself(NI 97/142).

The second theoretical tendency is rooted in the thought of Heidegger,who faults traditional notions of subjectivity for privileging the human sub-ject over being. “For Heidegger the very process of being, being’s essence, isthe unfolding of a certain meaning, a certain light, a certain peace that bor-row nothing from a subject, express nothing that would be inside a soul” (NI,100/143–144). Fundamental ontology attempts to atone for this transgres-sion by restoring being to its rightful primordiality, and the human subject toits appropriate position as the messenger or poet of being. But this reversalhas the same effect as the suspicion evoked by modern science: it invalidatesthe interior world of the self and leaves the subject entirely subjected to anexterior reality that is beyond its control.

Thus, Levinas writes, “[t]he sciences of man and Heidegger end either inthe triumph of mathematical intelligibility, repressing [refoulant] the subject,the person, his uniqueness and his election, into ideology, or else in theenrootedness [l’enracinement] of man in being, of which he would be themessenger and the poet” (NI, 100–101/144). In either case the very notion ofsubjectivity is thought to have been refuted.3

But Levinas argues that this conclusion is too simplistic. Exteriority, whichboth Heidegger and the physical sciences rely upon as the basis of their cri-tique, need not completely cancel out the interiority of subjectivity. It is pos-sible for the self to maintain a certain openness to the world without therebysurrendering every aspect of its interiority. The openness that Levinas in-

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tends is the openness of one self to another self, which is a vulnerability thatis not exhausted by the causality of science or the revealing and concealingof being (NI, 105/146). This vulnerability is what leaves a subject responsi-ble for another without ever having chosen that responsibility. It is a form ofsubjectivity that has not been fully accounted for either in the Western tradi-tion generally or in the contemporary critiques of that tradition. Levinas de-scribes this subject as “‘young,” as a kind of “‘youth” that is a part of everyperson, regardless of her age (NI, 112–113/150–151).4

To understand the nature of this youthful subject, it is necessary to returnto its past. Levinas narrates a certain development which he believes everysubject undergoes, a process of evolution whereby one becomes a subject inthe present by recovering a prior subjectivity that is always already in one’spast. There are two stages in this process.

(i) Stage one: the egoEgoism for Levinas is all about enjoyment [jouissance]. Enjoyment is a mat-ter of being at home with oneself in a world where things are perceived not as“tools” that await the use of the hand, but rather as “elements” that presentthemselves to one’s taste.5 The world of enjoyment is composed of objectsthat are “already adorned, embellished,” and which are there to be appreci-ated and savored (TI, 112–113/110). The I, (or “ego [le moi]” as Levinas callsit at this stage), “lives from [vivre de]” such a world. It derives sustenanceand support from the environment, from an elemental economy that surroundsthe self and satisfies its needs. The world becomes the ego’s home: a secureand sustaining place that protects the self from anything that might disrupt itscontentment (TI, 162–163/152–154).

Thus, everything about egoistic enjoyment is directed inward, and all en-joyment can be understood as a form of eating (TI, 113/111). The essence ofthis alimentary form of life is the integration of the other into the same, theabsorption of the exterior by the interior (TI, 113/111). The ego makes itselfat home in the world by making the world its own. There is no acknowledg-ment of any other reality that transcends the finite elements which nourishthe ego. Consequently, the idea of the infinite is rejected.6

Levinas argues that in enjoyment the I first begins to crystalize, and is“apperceived not as the subject of the verb to be, but as implicated in happi-ness” (TI, 123/119). It is not self-consciousness or reflection or care that firstconstitutes the I, for Levinas, but rather the fact of elemental enjoyment thatprecedes them. “Behind theory and practice there is enjoyment [jouissance]of theory and of practice: the egoism of life. The final relation is enjoyment,happiness” (TI, 116/113). To be a self is first of all to enjoy oneself “I enjoy;


therefore I am . . .”). Subjectivity is rooted in solitude and separation. InLevinas’s account the self first begins to form in an interiority that does noteven acknowledge exteriority.7

(ii) Stage two: the subjectEnjoyment initiates subjectivity in Levinas’s ethical theory, but the enjoyingego is not yet properly a subject. The transformation of the ego [le moi] to thesubject [le sujet] takes place in a second stage. This stage occurs when theego confronts an exteriority that it cannot assimilate, which is the exteriorityof another person. The alterity of the Other’s face shatters the economy ofenjoyment that the ego has constructed around itself. The face of the Otherpresents the ego with an exteriority that cannot be made interior, an alteritythat resists any reduction to the same, and thus cannot be brought within thegrasp of the ego’s identity. The excessive character of the face of the Other –the fact that it exceeds any idea or concept that the I can have of the Other –makes it an obstruction to the ego’s enjoyment. Thus, in the confrontationwith the Other, I (as ego) discover that “ ‘something’ has overflowed myfreely taken decisions, has slipped into me [s’est glissé] unbeknownst to me,thus alienating my identity” (NI, 102/145). The expression of the Other frac-tures the ego’s identity by surpassing its freedom.8

This surpassing of the ego’s freedom is accomplished by calling that free-dom into question. Prior to the encounter with the face of the Other the egohad freely used everything it found as an element of enjoyment, living fromthis economy according to a law of happiness that it gave to itself. But theresistance that is offered by the Other to such enjoyment leads the ego toquestion its autonomy for the first time, and to discover injustice within thesphere of its enjoyment – an injustice that precedes its freedom. Other peo-ple, unlike objects, resist the reduction to the elemental (PI, 168/50). Thisresistance occasions an idea of infinity in the ego, before which the ego’sspontaneous freedom must for the first time justify itself (TI, 44/51).

The exteriority of the Other makes possible the transformation of theego into a subject. To be a subject, for Levinas, is to be in subjection (EI,106–107/100; TI 333–334/299–300; OB 147–148/116). An ego becomes asubject when it allows itself to be displaced from its position of centralityby an Other who comes from outside the limits of its finite economy; onebecomes a subject only by losing one’s ego (DK, 27). Subjectivity comeslate in a world that the subject did not create with its freedom. It is achievedby recognizing an obligation that precedes the ego’s freedom, and hencecalls into question the arbitrary exercise of that freedom (OB, 156–157/122).9

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In Otherwise than Being, Levinas calls the process of becoming a subject“recurrence” (cf. OB, 130–139/102–109). This term describes the way thatthe self becomes a subject by being thrown back onto itself, folded over bythe force of responsibility to rediscover an obligation which preceded itsconsciousness and its freedom. Subjectivity is effected in this movement, asubjectivity that cannot quite comprehend itself, that cannot precisely iden-tify its identity. Levinas writes: “I am a self in the identifying recurrence inwhich I find myself cast back to the hither side of my point of departure! Thisself is out of phase with itself [Soi déphasé par soi], forgetful of itself” (OB,147/115). The movement of recurrence has, Levinas says, the “anarchic pas-sivity of an obsession” (OB, 140/110). It is anarchic because it responds to acall that precedes the order of the self’s beginning, in egoism, and that defiesthe law of the ego’s arbitrary freedom. It is passive because it is always ef-fected (and also affected) by another, an Other who asserts a dominance overthe self. And it is obsessive, rather than completely spontaneous, because itmakes this movement back to the hither side – the other side – of identityrepeatedly, motivated by the idea of infinity that it creates within itself; spurredon to the fulfillment of a responsibility that cannot be fulfilled. The subjec-tivity constituted by recurrence offers itself before securing its own being. Toillustrate this Levinas uses the model of respiration. Restlessly, obsessively,the subject breathes: constantly exchanging interior for exterior – drawing itsselfhood from outside itself (OB, 226–227/180, 146/115).10 This is a modelof subjectivity where the interior and the exterior are in constant conversa-tion, where the self first discovers itself in the confrontation with an Otherthat is far more than itself.

It is the meaning of this model of subjectivity that I want to explore furtherby turning now to the works of Kant.

The framework for orientational subjectivity in Kant’s essay “What isOrientation in Thinking?”

Kant’s goal in the essay “What is Orientation in Thinking?” is to extend theconcept of orientation for the purpose of understanding better how reasondeals with supra-sensory objects (WOT, 134/238). But the basic features oforientation can also be extended into the region of Levinasian ethics, wherethey can facilitate a better understanding of the nature of ethical subjectivity.

Kant begins with geographical orientation. To orient ourselves in geographicspace we divide the horizon – the extent of our experience of the earth – intothe four quadrants of the compass. Once we have done so, we can use any


one direction to find the other three (WOT, 134–135/238). But Kant arguesthat this discrimination and coordination of the four points of the earth’scompass is only made possible by a previous differentiation between twomore basic dimensions of the subject’s experience. Before I can grasp thedifference between north, south, east, and west, “I must necessarily be able tofeel a difference within my own subject, namely that between my right andleft hands” (WOT, 134/238). This internal feeling provides the means formaking sense of one’s experience of the external world. If one were to ignorethis feeling, and instead pay attention only to the information gained throughperception, one would have no basis for orientation within the quadrants ofthe geographical compass, and hence would be unable to get one’s bearingson the earth (WOT, 135/239). “Thus,” Kant writes, “in spite of all the objec-tive data in the sky, I orientate myself geographically purely by means of asubjective distinction” (WOT, 135/238–239).

From here Kant extends the notion of orientation to cover all orientationin space (mathematical orientation), and also – especially – orientation inthought beyond the bounds of experience (logical orientation) (WOT, 135–147/239–249).11 To these two applications of the concept of orientation thatKant develops I wish to add a third: reconceptualizing ethical subjectivity asan orientational activity. The possibility of this form of orientation can beclarified by returning to some of the basic features of geographical orienta-tion.

First of all, it is significant that Kant traces the source of all orientation toa subjective feeling. “I call this a feeling [Gefühl],” he writes, “because thesetwo sides [the left and the right] display no perceptible difference as far asexternal intuition is concerned” (WOT, 134–135/238). The feeling of the dif-ference between left and right is entirely non-cognitive – it has neither anintuition nor a concept that corresponds to it. Thus, the source of orientationin the world of objective perception is itself removed from the world of ob-jective perception, and situated instead in the non-cognitive sphere of feel-ings that lack both intuitions and concepts.12

Secondly, it is important to note that this non-cognitive feeling has both aninternal and an external aspect. It has an interior character, because it is onlywithin the subject that such a distinction between the two sides of the sub-ject’s body can be recognized. Outside of the subject, “these two sides dis-play no perceptible difference” (WOT, 134–135/238). But in another sensethe feeling has an exterior quality, since it is already directed toward theexterior world, the world within which the subject seeks to locate itself.13 Theone thing that sets the feeling of the difference between left and right apartfrom other feelings is the fact that it has both a public and a private dimen-

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sion: like other feelings, it can only be experienced within the subject, butunlike other feelings, the experience that it entails is immediately directedbeyond the subject’s interior limits.

This twofold character of the feeling of the difference between left andright is what allows it to serve as an orienting feeling. It makes it possible forthis affect both to connect and also to situate the subject within the geo-graphic horizons that stretch out before it. Because it is both rooted in thesubject while also rooting the subject in the world, it gives the subject ana-priori connection with the world and facilitates the subject’s movementbetween the various objective points of the world’s compass. The dualisticquality of this feeling makes it possible for the subject not only to be orientedby its horizons, but also to orient itself to its horizons.14

I turn now to the third Critique to explore two feelings which, like thefeeling of the difference between left and right, have both internal and exter-nal aspects, and which therefore are capable of serving as orienting feelings.

Two orienting feelings in the third Critique

(iii) The feeling of sensus communisIn Kant’s account the “sense” of common sense refers not to empirical opin-ions, but rather to an a-priori capacity to judge. And just as important as thefact that this capacity is common to everyone, is the fact that it is a capacityto discern what is common to everyone: it is not just a sense that is common,it is also a sense of the common. In Kant’s version of sensus communis the‘communis’ can be understood as both an adjective (communis) in the nomi-native case, and also as a noun (commune) in the genitive case.

Kant writes that his version of common sense, “is essentially distinct fromthe common understanding that is sometimes also called common sense (sen-sus communis); for the latter judges not by feeling but always by concepts”(K3, 238/87). Sensus communis for Kant is the common ability to discerncommonality by means of feeling rather than by determinate concepts. It is,

a sense shared [gemeinschaftlichen], i.e., a power to judge that in reflect-ing takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone else’s way ofrepresenting, in order as it were to compare our own judgment with hu-man reason in general and thus escape the illusion that arises from the easeof mistaking subjective and private conditions for objective ones (K3, 293/160m).

By comparing our own judgments with the possible (not actual) judgmentsof others, Kant argues, “abstracting from the limitations that . . . attach to our


own judging,” it is possible to attain a thought that is active, broad, andconsistent-a thought precisely that overcomes the limits of popular opinion(K3, 294–295/160–161m).

Kant argues that we must have such an ability, because otherwise we wouldnot be able to make judgments concerning the beautiful. Such judgmentsalways have an “exemplary necessity” – “a necessity of the assent of every-one to a judgment that is regarded as an example of a universal rule that weare unable to state” (K3, 237/85). Because the beautiful has no concept, onlyan ability to compare our judgment with the possible judgments of others onthe basis of feeling can explain how judgments of taste have the subjectiveuniversality that they do have. The fact that whenever we call an object beau-tiful, “we believe we have a universal voice, and lay claim to the agreementof everyone” (K3, 216/59–60), is proof for Kant that there is a shared criticalfaculty that allows us to overcome the limitations of subjective judgments.

What this critical faculty really amounts to is the ability to experience asubjective feeling in a way that is simultaneously both private and public.Because of the sensus communis that facilitates judgments of taste, “we re-gard this underlying feeling [the feeling of pleasure on which the judgment isbased] as a common [gemeinschaftliches] rather than as a private feeling”(K3, 239/89). Sensus communis is the ability to feel pleasure as commonpleasure, as a feeling that is simultaneously public and private.

Such a feeling is an orientational feeling – like the feeling of the differ-ence between left and right that Kant described in “What is Orientation inThinking?” – because there is no concept behind it and because it has both apublic and a private dimension. It is an example of a subjective faculty thatgoes beyond the subject. It transcends the traditional boundary between theinternal and the external. Sensus communis is a sense of the common that iscommon to everyone; an individual capacity which is also the capacity toovercome some of the limits of one’s individuality. Kant’s account of sensuscommunis allows us to reconceptualize subjectivity as an interchange be-tween the self and others, to understand being a subject as an activity whereinthe self orients itself in the midst of others by means of a feeling that is bothof the common and held in common by everyone; a feeling that is simultane-ously both public and private.

(iv) The feeling of vocationThe second orienting feeling comes to the subject in the second moment ofthe sublime. The first moment of the sublime is the conflict between thefaculties that engenders a feeling of agitation. But that feeling of agitationdoes not persist. It is eventually overcome by a different feeling, which bal-

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ances the convulsive first moment and the feeling of being overwhelmed thatcomes with it. This is the feeling of “vocation” (Bestimmung), which is anexperience of being called out of oneself, and also of having a calling withinthe world. In the second moment of the sublime, the conflict of the first mo-ment is replaced by a harmony between the subject and its world.

Kant claims that we hear the voice that calls us to this vocation in theexorbitant ideas that provoke the experience of the sublime. Such ideas leadthe mind to feel “elevated [gehoben] in its own judgment of itself” (K3, 256/113). In spite of the fact that the sublime initially does “violence” to thesubject, “this same violence . . . is still judged purposive for the whole voca-tion of the mind” (K3, 259/116), and hence we like it. Such a judgment isbased on the discovery in the conflict between reason and imagination of ahigher “attunement [Stimmung]” (K3, 250/106) that makes the conflictingfaculties “harmonious by virtue of their contrast” (K3, 258/115).

The lack of agreement between the faculties in the first moment of thesublime occasions this second moment of harmony within the subject bydemonstrating to it that it has a rational vocation that connects it with ideasthat are beyond the limits of the imagination. The second moment of thesublime creates in us “a feeling that we have a pure and independent reason. . . whose superiority cannot be made intuitable by anything other than theinadequacy of that power which in exhibiting magnitudes (of sensible ob-jects) is itself unbounded” (K3, 258/116). The vocation of the human subjectis to follow the transcendent power of reason beyond the narrow confines ofsensibility and understanding.

Following the voice of reason in this way leads the subject to discover asubstrate [übersinnliches Substrat]” that acts as a bridge between the subjectand its environment. Kant describes this supersensible substrate as the basisof human thought, and also of nature:

Hence that magnitude of a natural object to which the imagination fruit-lessly applies its entire ability to comprehend must lead the concept ofnature to a supersensible substrate (which underlies both nature and ourability to think), a substrate that is large beyond any standard of sense andhence makes us judge as sublime not so much the object as the mentalattunement in which we find ourselves when we estimate the object (K3,255–256/112).15

The supersensible substrate of human thought is the principle which Kantcalls the transcendental principle of reflective judgment, namely: the princi-ple that nature is purposive for our thinking (K3, 186/25). As Kant points outin both of the introductions to the third Critique, reflective judgment must


give this principle to itself, for it cannot be discovered within the subject’sexperience.16

The place of the “supersensible substrate” between the subject and its en-vironment is reflected by the strange, seemingly oxymoronic title that Kantchooses to refer to this idea. As supersensible, the transcendental principle ofjudgment is beyond sensible nature and accessible only to the transcendentpower of reason; but as substrate, it is also beneath nature, founding natureand making our sensible experience of the world possible. Thus, the princi-ple that nature is purposive occupies a place that is between the subject andits environment. The supersensible is “something that is both in the subjecthimself and outside him, something that is neither nature nor freedom andyet is linked with the basis of freedom” (K3, 353/229).

From this in-between position it can function as a bridge between the sub-ject and its world that orients each of them to each other. The harmony of thesecond moment of the sublime reflects a harmony between the subject and itsworld that the transcendental principle of judgment makes possible. The feel-ing of vocation is a feeling of having a function in the world, of being ap-pointed to a position where one has a role to play, a part in the overallarrangement of one’s environment. This feeling is based on the supersensiblesubstrate that forms a bridge between the subject and its world. Thus, like thefeeling of the difference between left and right, the feeling of vocation can beunderstood as an orienting feeling which helps to make sense of Levinas’spicture of ethical subjectivity. Like the feeling of sensus communis, it is aninternal feeling that also has an external dimension. It connects and situatesthe subject within its world; it overcomes the traditional boundaries betweenself and other and allows us to reconceptualize subjectivity as an orienta-tional activity in the midst of others rather than as a foundational presencethat has no relationship with others.17

In conclusion: reconceptualizing ethical subjectivity as orientationalsubjectivity

What makes Levinas’s theory of ethical subjectivity so interesting and im-portant is the play that Levinas describes between interior and exterior. Levinasreevaluates the tradition of interiority that has defined the subject as secureand self-sufficient prior to the being of everything that is other than the sub-ject. He calls this kind of interiority into question in light of what he takes tobe the fundamental fact of ethics: the fact that there is an Other which presentsitself to the I in a way that defies assimilation. Before the Other every I finds

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itself responsible, always already obligated by an obligation that it did notcreate and cannot fully comprehend. In other words, the exteriority of theOther exceeds the interiority of the subject. But Levinas argues that it is pre-cisely this encounter with the Other, where the Other’s radical andunassimilable alterity is revealed, that serves to make the I into a subject.Instead of completely destroying the interiority of the self, the confrontationwith the Other brings that interiority into a conversation with exteriority whichmakes subjectivity possible. For Levinas, a subject is born when the com-pletely internalized economy of egoistic enjoyment is left behind. In place ofenjoyment, Levinas posits a process of “recurrence” wherein the self is thrownback onto itself by an obligation that always already came before the self. Aself becomes a subject by being subjected to an Other, by accepting an obli-gation that it did not choose. In this model of selfhood the subject breathes: itdraws its selfhood from outside itself in a constant exchange between interiorand exterior.

This reconceptualization of subjectivity can be understood as an orienta-tional activity following the Kantian model of orientation in thinking. In theKantian model orientation is based on feelings that have both an internal andan external dimension. The feeling of the difference between left and rightthat Kant describes in “What is Orientation in Thinking?” is one such feel-ing; the feelings of sensus communis and vocation that Kant sets forth in thethird Critique are two others. As I have argued above in section (iii), sensuscommunis and vocation are particularly useful to the task of making sense ofethical subjectivity because they are feelings that are simultaneously publicand private. They correspond to the picture of subjectivity that emerges inLevinas’s ethics because they represent points of interchange and conversa-tion between the self and others. They typify a self that breathes, that drawsits selfhood from outside itself, that finds its subjectivity in the face of Otherswho call into question the self’s strictly internalized egoism.

Levinas’s theory of the self is one of the many fascinating aspects of hiswork that Levinas himself did not fully develop in his lifetime. As Levinassaid in an interview with Philippe Nemo, he was never interested in creatinga complete system of philosophy; his only interest was to discover the “mean-ing” of ethics (EI, 95–96/90). Levinas found the “meaning” of ethics in anevent of obligation that was strictly non-cognitive: the encounter with theface of the Other, and the response to the Other’s alterity for which there arefeelings but no concepts. For Kant, the “meaning” of aesthetics is alsonon-cognitive. The beautiful and the sublime have no concept, they are sub-jective experiences, and yet they are also universal. In this essay I have ar-gued that Kant’s explication of non-cognitive aesthetics contains some useful


resources that we can draw from to fill out the picture of Levinas’s non-cognitive ethics. Kant’s account of orientation in thinking, and of the feel-ings of sensus communis and vocation, can facilitate a better understandingof how ethical subjectivity can be reconceptualized as an orientational activ-ity instead of as a foundational presence.

Levinas’s theory of non-cognitive ethics needs such an understanding ofthe orientational powers of subjectivity. Like the house that Kant describes in“What is Orientation in Thinking?” where all the furniture has been rear-ranged (WOT, 135/239), non-cognitive ethics presents us with a strange, in-verted, unfamiliar landscape. The third Critique helps to explain how it ispossible for the subject to get its bearings within this strange environment,and navigate within it by means of feelings rather than concepts.

Notes

1. For all of the following texts, where reference is given to an English translation, theEnglish pagination will always be listed second, preceded by the pagination from theedition in the original language. The one exception to this rule is the Critique of PureReason, where I have followed the convention of simply providing the page numberfrom the A and/or B editions of the German text. Emphasis in quotations is always theauthor’s own, unless I have noted otherwise. Where I have modified an existing transla-tion I have signalled this with an ‘m’ after the page number from that translation. Whereno English translation is indicated, translations are my own.

Works by Levinas

DK – Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney. “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas.” Faceto Face with Levinas. Ed. Richard A. Cohen. Albany: SUNY, 1985, 13–34.

EI – Éthique et infini. Paris: Fayard, 1982. English: Ethics and Infinity. Trans. Richard A.Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985.

NI – “Sans identité.” Humanisme de l’autre homme. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1972, 93–113.English: “No Identity.” Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. TheHague: Nijhoff, 1987, 141–152.

OB – Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974. English: Other-wise than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.

PI – “La philosophie et l’idée de l’infini.” En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.Paris: Vrin, 1974, 165–178. English: “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity.” CollectedPhilosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1987, 47–59.

S – “Signature.” Difficile liberté. Paris: Albin Michel, 1963, 321–327. English: “Signature.”Trans. Mary Ellen Petrisko. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak. Research in Phenomenology 8 (1978):175–189.

TI – Totalité et infini. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961. English: Totality and Infinity: An Essay onExteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969.

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Works by Kant

All German texts are taken from Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. Hrsg. von der PreußischenAkademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 29 Vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902–1983.

FI – “Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft.” (Ak. XX). English: “First Introductionto the Critique of Judgment.” Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Critique of Judgment. Trans. WernerS. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987, 385–441.

K3 – Kritik der Urtheilskraft. (Ak. V). English: Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar.Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.

WOT – “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren?” (Ak. VIII). English: “What is Orientationin Thinking?” Trans. H.S. Nisbet. Kant’s Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1991, 237–249.

Works by other authors

IIK – Rudolf Makkreel. Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: the Hermeneutical Importof the Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

2. In addition to IIK, Makkreel’s analysis of the orientational quality of reflective judg-ments can also be found in “Transcendental Reflection, Orientation and Reflective Judg-ment,” Inmitten der Zeit: Beiträge zur europäischen Cegenwartsphilosophie, hrsg.Thomas Grethlein and Heinrich Leitner. Wurzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996,291–303; “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 thesetopics.

3. The significance of Levinas’s views on subjectivity to the continental philosophicaltradition in general is analyzed by Simon Critchley in his “Prolegomena to anyPost-Deconstructive Subjectivity,” Deconstructive Subjectivities, ed. Simon Critchleyand Peter Dews. Albany: SUNY, 1996, 13–46. Karl Ameriks analyzes the contemporaryattack 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 firstCritique has greater relevance to the defense of subjectivity than has been generallyrealized in his article “From Kant to Frank: The Ineliminable Subject,” The ModernSubject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks.Albany: SUNY, 1995. For a much more complete critique of Heidegger with regard tohis influence on the current widespread dismissal of subjectivity in the Continental tra-dition, see David Carr, “The Question of the Subject: Heidegger and the TranscendentalTradition,” Human Studies 17.4 (1994–1995) 403–418. Fabio Polidori directly com-pares Heidegger and Levinas with regard to subjectivity, and argues that Levinas may infact 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 AldoRovatti. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 1987, 177–190.

4. This description of ethical subjectivity as “youthful” resonates with much of Lyotard’srecent work, where he speaks of a certain “infancy” – a subjectivity that belongs to thepast 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: Gali1ée, 1991), this in-fans is that strangecreature 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. Dis-course does not cease to push it aside, it is its separation. But at the same time dis-course persists in constituting infancy, as something lost. In this way, unknown todiscourse, it shelters it. Infancy is the residue [reste] of discourse. If infancy resides inthis residue, this is due to nothing but the fact that it remains in the adult” (9).

5. The disagreement with Heidegger in this respect is obvious, and I think completelyintentional on the part of Levinas. Section II of Totality and Infinity, where Levinasdiscusses enjoyment in the greatest detail, can be read as a rewriting and a critique ofthe Existential Analytic in Being and Time, with Levinas substituting “‘enjoyment” for“fallenness” as the mode of Dasein’s average everydayness.

6. Peter Kemp compares this stage of the development of subjectivity to HeideggerianAngst in his “La crainte pour autrui,” Philosophica 52.2 (1993) 49–61.

7. Richard Cohen shows the connections between this first stage of subjectivity andHusserlian phenomenology, in his “Emmanuel Levinas: Happiness is a SensationalTime,” Philosophy Today 25:3 (Fall 1981) 196–203. Joseph Libertson analyzes theemergence of the self for the first time within the economy of egoistic enjoyment, andargues that the occurrence of subjectivity is due to the inability of this economy tototalize its discontinuity, in his, “La recurrence chez Levinas,” Revue philosophique deLouvain 79 (1981) 212–251.

8. Levinas refers to the asymmetry of intersubjective relations as the chief difference be-tween his work and that of Martin Buber. For Buber the I and the Thou are always on thesame 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 RobertBernasconi, “Failure of Communication as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of DialogueBetween Buber and Levinas,” The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, ed.Robert Bernasconi and David Wood. London: Routledge, 1988, 100–135. César A.Moreno Márquez argues that the social and political dimensions of Levinas’s thoughtare rooted in the basic fact of intersubjective asymmetry in his, “The Curvature ofIntersubjective Space: Sociality and Responsibility in the Thought of EmmanuelLevinas,” Analecta Husserliana 22 (1987), ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1987, 343–352. For another, non-Levinasian version of the idea of “ethicalspace,” see Roger Poole’s very interesting book, Towards Deep Subjectivity. London:Penguin Press, 1972, 3–43. Another analysis of space with regard to issues of subjectiv-ity can be found in Kathleen M. Kirby, Indifferent Boundaries: Spatial Concepts ofHuman Subjectivity. London: Guilford, 1996. This same theme is also explored in theessays collected in Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation,ed. Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift. London: Routledge, 1995. Françoise Mies argues thatintersubjective asymmetry does not preclude reciprocity in “Asymétrie et réciprocitéqui est le Messie?” Levinas en contrastes, ed. Michel Dupuis. Bruxelles: De Boeck,1994, 119–135. Adriaan Peperzak argues for the same conclusion in To the Other.West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1993, 26–32. Beyond the question ofintersubjective equality (or its absence) that I have briefly focused on here, BrianSchroeder provides a detailed study of other important dimensions of Levinasianintersubjectivity in his Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence. London:Routledge, 1996.

9. That the autonomy of egoism is understood by Levinas as “capricious” points out aninteresting contrast between Levinas’s concept of autonomy and that of Kant in the

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second Critique. For Kant the autonomous subject cannot be capricious because itsautonomy is a matter of dictating a rational law to itself, and rational laws must al-ways be consistent and universal. For Levinas the autonomous ego is capricious be-cause its autonomy is not a matter of following rational laws, but rather merely amatter of pursuing its own enjoyment without heed for anything exterior to its ownegoistic economy. The autonomy of egoism for Levinas is a function of jouissance,not Vernunft.

10. Other interesting studies of the stages of subjectivity in Levinas can be found in thefollowing texts: Federica Sossi analyzes the transition from egoism to subjectivity inLevinas’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.Silvano Petrosino and Jacques Rolland analyze the stages of subjectivity in Levinas intheir, La vérité nomade. Paris: La découverte, 1984, 17–52. Gérard Bailhache analyzesthe implicit theory of subjectivity in Levinas’s ethics in his Le sujet chez EmmanuelLevinas: fragilité et subjectivité. Paris: PUF, 1994. Hans Georg von Manz argues thatLevinas resembles Fichte in the way that he makes subjectivity dependent on interper-sonal relations. See his, “Selbstgewissheit und Fremdgewissheit,” Fichte-Studien 6 (1994)195–213.

11. 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 JohnMoore in his essay, “Kant on Reflection and Orientation,” Proceedings of the EighthInternational Kant Congress vol. 2. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995, 721–732.

12. For a critique of Kant’s essay on orientation that is based on a misunderstanding of thisimportant 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.

13. Makkreel makes this point about the externally directed character of the feeling of leftand right in IIK 155.

14. IIK 159.15. 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, wherethe might of nature leads the subject to discover a supersensible substrate that secures itbeyond the power of nature. In the dynamical sublime, “nature is here called sublimemerely because it elevates our imagination, making it exhibit those cases where themind can come to feel its own sublimity, which lies in its vocation and elevates it evenabove 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, ourconsciousness of our fortitude and resolution concerning what carries with it pure intel-lectual purposiveness (namely, the supersensible)” (K3, 273/134).

16. In the First Introduction, Kant suggests that this amounts to making an artistic assump-tion about nature, interpreting nature as if it were a work of art created by an artist (FI,204/393, 214/402).

17. Jean-François Lyotard argues that Kant is here alluding to the fact that in the feeling ofsensus communis, and the experience of the beautiful that it makes possible, we dis-cover the subject in the process of being born, in statu nascendi. Unlike the transcen-dental 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 offand intimately at the same time; in this frail and singular unison, the subjectivity isbeing born . . .” (21–22). See his “Sensus Communis,” Judging Lyotard, ed. AndrewBenjamin. London: Warwick, 1992, 1–25.

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Documents

Subjectivity and Orientation in Levinas and Kant