Premium
Why is Ethics First Philosophy? L evinas in Phenomenological Context
Author(s) -
Crowell Steven
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2012.00550.x
Subject(s) - epistemology , normative , phenomenology (philosophy) , possession (linguistics) , subject (documents) , ontology , context (archaeology) , philosophy , face (sociological concept) , sociology , computer science , paleontology , linguistics , library science , biology
This paper explores, from a phenomenological perspective, the conditions necessary for the possession of intentional content, i.e., for being intentionally directed toward the world. It argues that L evinas's concept of ethics as first philosophy makes an important contribution to this task. Intentional directedness, as understood here, is normatively structured. L evinas's ‘ethics’ can be understood as a phenomenological account of how our experience of the other subject as another subject takes place in the recognition of the normative force of a command. This supplies a condition that—as the paper shows by examining Husserl and Sartre on how our experience of the Other constitutes an ‘objective’ world—earlier phenomenologists have misunderstood, because they have treated ethical experience as ‘founded’ on a prior theory of representation (‘ontology’ in L evinas's language). Ethics is first philosophy because it is only by acknowledging the command in the ‘face’ of the Other that we can account for the sensitivity to the normative distinctions that structure intentional content. Throughout, the paper shows how L evinas's analyses, in Totality and Infinity , draw upon and develop the analyses of Husserl and Sartre.