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Subjectivity and Orientation in Levinas and Kant

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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.

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Dalton, S. Subjectivity and Orientation in Levinas and Kant. Continental Philosophy Review 32, 433–449 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010083004255

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010083004255

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