Subjectivity in Kant and Levinas: Autonomy and passivity in front of alterity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32735/S0718-2201202000050789Keywords:
Subjectivity, Levinas, Kant, alterity, activity-passivity, life of enjoyment, knowledge, substitutionAbstract
The article analyses Levinas’s notion of subjectivity and examines its possible links with the notion developed by Kant, understood the latter as an exemplary vision of the modern explanation of subjectivity. Hofmeyr’s position is discussed, who argues that there was a paradigmatic shift between an “early Levinas” centred on a freedom of Kantian type, and a “later Levinas” focused on passivity and that transcends Kant. The article shows that subjectivity in Levinas can never be understood as an activity in the Kantian sense.
Downloads
References
Allison, Henry (2004). Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University. Press.
—— (1990). Kant’s theory of freedom. Cambridge University Press.
Atterton, Peter (1999). “The proximity between Levinas and Kant: the primacy of pure practical reason”. The Eighteenth Century Vol. 40, No. 3, Emmanuel Levinas and the Eighteenth Century. 244-260.
Basterra, Gabriela (2015). The Subject of Freedom: Kant, Levinas. New York: Fordham University Press.
Beiser, Frederick (2008). German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism 1781-1801. Harvard: University Press.
Bernasconi, Robert (2002). “What is the question to which “Substitution” is the answer?”. En: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Ed. Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge University Press.
—— (2001). “Foreword”. En: Levinas, E. Existence and Existents. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne University Press.
Bernet, Rudolf (2002). “Levinas’s critique of Husserl”. En: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Ed. Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge University Press.
Butler, Judith (2005). Given an Account of Oneself. Fordham University Press.
Chalier, Catherine (2002). What I Ought I to Do? Morality in Kant and Levinas. Trans. Marie Todd. Cornell University Press.
Cohen, Richard (2006). “Choosing and the choosen: Sartre and Levinas”. Les Cahiers d'Études Lévinassiennes 5.
Crawford, Darin (2002). “The Fact of Reason and the Face of the Other: Autonomy, Constraint, and Rational Agency in Kant and Levinas”. The Southern Journal of Philosophy. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2002.tb01914.x.
Critchley, Simon (2002). “Introduction”. En: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Ed. Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge University Press.
Davies, Paul (2002). “Sincerity and the End of Theodicy”. En: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Ed. Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge University Press.
Freyenhagen, Fabian (2011). “Empty, Useless, and Dangerous? Recent Kantian Replies to the Empty Formalism Objection”. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, 63.
Heidegger, Martín (1996). Being and Time. New York: State University of New York Press.
Hofyener, Benda (2009). “Radical Passivity: Ethical Problem or Solution?”. En: Radical Passivity: Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas. Ed. Brenda Hofyener. Springer.
Kant, Immanuel (2005). Fundamentación para una metafísica de las costumbres, trad. R. Aramayo, Madrid: Alianza, 2005.
—— (1996). Critique of Practical Reason, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel (2002). Totalidad e Infinito. Ensayo sobre la exterioridad. Ediciones Sigueme, Salamanca.
—— (2001). Existence and Existents. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne University Press.
—— (1996). Basic Philosophical Writings. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
—— (1989). Revelation in the Jewish Tradition. En: The Levinas Reader. Ed. Richard Cohen. Trans. Sarah Richmond. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell
—— (1987). Time and the Other. Trans. Richard Cohen. Duquesne University Press.
—— (1978). Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht and Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Pinkard, Terry (2002). German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, David (2016). ““After you sir!”: Substitution in Kant and Levinas”. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2016.1256602
Surber, Jean (1994). “Kant, Levinas, and the Thought of the “Other””. Philosophy Today. 38 (3):294-316.
