| dcterms.abstract | Emmanuel Levinas describes the face-to-face relationship with another as an “ultimate situation.†In this relationship, Levinas argues, we bear witness to an affection, coming from another, which is of a distinctly ethical nature: a “calling into question of oneself, a critical attitude which is itself produced in the face of the other and under his [or her] authority.†Obviously, by calling this relationship “ultimate,†Levinas means to say that it in some sense signifies the highest sort of dignity to be found in our lives. And yet, this is not the only or, in fact, even the fundamental sense in which Levinas uses the term “ultimate†here; for seen in its proper connection with time-consciousness—through which subjectivity is fundamentally self-constituted, as Husserl as well as Heidegger, each in his own way, was able to discover—the face-to-face relationship also signifies for us the critical determination of subjectivity, or its “ultimate†condition, on Levinas’s account: “time itself refers to this situation of the face-to-face with the Other,†he writes. But if this is so—i.e., if subjectivity necessarily presupposes a consciousness of time, while for its own part, time-consciousness does just as necessarily presuppose a relationship of an ethical nature spurring it on its way—then subjectivity must in some sense be counterpart to ethical responsibility. To be subject, essentially involving time-consciousness, would be, at heart, an ethical affair. In the following study, I’ll attempt to clarify just what this claim can mean, and to demonstrate that it is in fact the case. In order to do so, I’ll need to show, firstly, that subjectivity necessarily involves time-consciousness: a demonstration that will primarily work through Husserlian and Heideggerian analyses of the phenomenon. But then, secondly, I’ll have to demonstrate that time-consciousness must ultimately be stirred or brought forth by an ethical encounter with another, an affection which calls into question the very being of the one made subject by delivering him or her over to the others in concern for their well-being or in fear of doing violence to them. By working through Levinas’s analyses on the relation between sensation, time-consciousness, and ethics, I will ultimately be able to both fully clarify the basic sense of my thesis, and to demonstrate it: at basis, we will discover, the primordial time-consciousness of subjectivity attests to a questionability of the subject’s own being, brought by another. The demonstration, which is thus in a sense “meta-ethical,†will for this very reason also uncover several basic dilemmas of our moral condition, from which subjectivity cannot be divorced by virtue of the questioning that subtends it. | |
