This paper attempts to explain why Levinas defends subjectivity, as opposed to philosophers like Heidegger and Foucault and also against structuralists like Strauss, and to show that the ethical subjectivity is a central and constant theme in Levinas’s thought. Levinas believes that ‘ethics’ ...
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This paper attempts to explain why Levinas defends subjectivity, as opposed to philosophers like Heidegger and Foucault and also against structuralists like Strauss, and to show that the ethical subjectivity is a central and constant theme in Levinas’s thought. Levinas believes that ‘ethics’ is first philosophy and defines it as ‘the putting into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other’. So the structure of ethical subjectivity is ‘the other within the same’ or disposed towards the other. The ethical relation to the other is described by Levinas in terms of infinity. He thinks, according to the philosophy of Descartes, that the human subject has an idea of infinity, and this idea is a thought that contains more than can be thought. In his view, relation to the infinity (other) is ethical and cannot be reduced to comprehension
