Subjectivity and orientation in Levinas and Kant

Stuart Dalton

pp. 433-449

in: Continental Philosophy Review 32 (4), 1999.

Abstract

This essay presents an argument for reconceptualizing subjectivity as orientational rather than foundational in nature. My focus is on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Immanuel Kant. I begin by summarizing Levinas's theory of ethical subjectivity as a theory of the self where the internal and the external are in constant play. Then I turn to two works of 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 I make use of as a basic framework for a model of orientational subjectivity. Then I analyze two feelings described by Kant in the third Critique which I argue can be understood as orientational feelings within such a model of orientational subjectivity: the feeling of sensus communis and the feeling of vocation.

Cited authors

Levinas Emmanuel

Kant Immanuel