In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

21 The objective of Levinas’s philosophy is to describe and establish the priority of an ethical subjectivity that is constituted in responsibility for the Other. Crucial to his position is the claim that such a subjectivity is not selfconstituting but is constituted in subjection to the Other who is “exterior” to the subject and who makes a claim on the subject’s freedom. So, against a tradition that promotes the autonomy of subjects, Levinas emphasizes a subjectivity founded on heteronomy. To establish this point, Levinas explores and develops possibilities embedded in the work of important figures in the philosophical tradition. This method is exemplified in the well-documented reading of Descartes in which Levinas appropriates Descartes’ idea of the infinite.1 This idea is a moment of heteronomy which not only disrupts the tradition’s reading of Descartes as an unambiguous thinker of autonomy but also runs counter to Descartes’ own efforts to establish the autonomy of the subject, a concern which is clearly manifest in his discussion of truth. Levinas tries to move beyond Descartes’ position by unfolding the possibility of a heteronomous subjectivity that is suggested by Descartes’ idea of the infinite but which Descartes himself does not develop. This paper explores how Levinas, in his effort to “heteronomize” subjectivity, introduces elements of heteronomy into Descartes’ conception of truth. In my discussion, I focus largely, although not exclusively, on Levinas’s earlier thought—that is, the thought which culminates in Totality and Infinity (TI)2 —because this is where the engagement with Descartes is most pronounced. In “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity” (“PII”), Levinas claims that philosophy tends to characterize the pursuit of truth in two manners.3 The first characterization focuses on the subject’s relation to a reality which lies beyond it or transcends it. If that of which knowledge is to be obtained is external to me, then my knowledge of it must involve experience, so Truth and Evidence in Descartes and Levinas Leslie MacAvoy truth becomes a matter of experience. As Levinas puts it: “Truth would thus designate the outcome of a movement that leaves a world that is intimate and familiar . . . and goes toward the stranger, toward a beyond” (“PII” 47). Truth is a consequence of the subject’s relation to a reality that outstrips its own. This reality might refer not only to the external, physical world of particular things but also a metaphysical, ideal world, for example , a world of physical laws or of Platonic forms (“PII” 47). In such cases, truth could also be considered an experience of the ideal. Philosophy that is concerned with the ideal is metaphysics, and the tendency which guides such philosophy is called heteronomy because it construes truth as experience in relation to the Other or the transcendent. The second characterization emphasizes that truth lies not in a relation to the other but in an act in which one freely judges that something is true. Levinas notes that “truth also means the free adherence to a proposition, the outcome of a free research. The freedom of the investigator , the thinker on whom no constraint weighs, is expressed in truth” (“PII” 47–48). Judgments that are made freely are considered to be unbiased or true because they are not made under conditions of interference . Such conditions include interference not only from or by other people but also with the proper functioning of the rational faculty by factors within the subject, such as passion or self-interest. In other words, thought that is not led astray leads to a clarity of apprehension which ensures true judgments. Objects are brought into view, grasped, and understood according to the laws of thought. Levinas calls this philosophical tendency autonomy because it stresses the subject’s liberation from the influence of the other and the subject’s mastery of the other in that objects are known when they are made to conform to the laws of thought located in subjectivity. As described in “PII,” heteronomy and autonomy can be considered modes of epistemological subjectivity because each offers a picture of how a subject can be said to “have” knowledge and how that knowledge can be considered true. On the one hand, truth is said to lie in laws of reason and thought that only relations with the Other can interfere with and corrupt. In this case, pursuit of truth demands independence and self-sufficiency. Levinas maintains that this tendency toward autonomy, which he considers to entail a “reduction of...

Share