The Ethics of Subjectivity

Abstract

This dissertation takes up a question first asked by Jean Luc Nancy: “who comes after the modern subject?” It attempts to answer this provocation by examining six different figures of subjectivity—drawn from Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Foucault—and concludes with a chapter in which I engage each of these thinkers to offer my own proposal as to who comes after the modern subject. The conversation is framed around the question of openness to the other, and specifically of whether and how these proposed alternatives to modern subjectivity succeed or fail to account for the subject’s essential relatedness to different forms of alterity. I investigate the “ethics of subjectivity” not in the sense of determining the subject’s legitimate obligations or of developing an acceptable code of conduct, but of considering just how the subject is constituted in relation to the other, and of drawing from this consideration an understanding of how one might undertake practices that contribute to this openness. My guiding rubric is the distinction between activity and passivity. I analyze each version of subjectivity through this lens by determining how each subject is coordinated between these two poles. Where a supremely active subject that derives the meaning of its objects and environment from itself reduces all otherness to its own horizons, an extremely passive subject determined entirely from without also results in an impoverished relation to the other insofar as it is divested of resources for an interactive encounter. I propose therefore, that although the subject is constituted by the other—whether history, Being, material embodiment, or most importantly, other living human beings—and not by itself, it is equally vital that the subject be capable of responding to that otherness, and specifically of taking itself up as a practice of opening itself to alterity. I make this claim by drawing from each of the thinkers I investigate throughout the dissertation: by critiquing what I find inadequate and appropriating what I find compelling, and finally by combining aspects of each to develop a form of subjectivity that is ethical in the sense that it engages in askesis for the purpose of welcoming the other. I begin by examining Husserl’s attempt to demonstrate that the objects that populate our experience can be traced back to the constitutive operations of the transcendental ego. Although Husserl’s later work developed the historical and social dimensions of constitution, his earlier attempt in his Cartesian Meditations to derive all meaning from the ego would come to serve as the foil against which so many later thinkers—and particularly those considered here—would develop their own alternate versions of the subject. Heidegger for example, whom I examine in Chapter Two, formulates what I call his “poetic subject” as a rejoinder to Husserl’s transcendental ego, insisting upon the historical character of a modern form of subjectivity that presents itself as invariant and atemporal. But where Heidegger replaces Husserl’s actively “sovereign subject” with a passive subject given as an apprehension of Being, the question I ask is whether this form of passivity harbors a surreptitious exclusionary activity, specifically whether Heidegger’s poetic subject draws upon but conceals a personal address. The efficacy of the address by the other is at the heart of Levinas’ critique of Heidegger and of his analysis of what I am calling the “ethical subject”. In Chapter Three I examine that threshold that Levinas calls “sensibility” whereby the subject, prior to any opportunity for action or appropriation, is exposed to and constituted by the Other. With Levinas’ ethical subject, passivity is taken to the extreme to mean not simply the contrary of activity, but a constitution from without akin to the event of creation. But while extreme passivity answers Nancy’s question decisively by reversing the direction of constitution, it presents us with a number of problems. Most significantly, since this subject is passive to the extreme, it is not clear that it can either discern or respond to the ethical injunction. I propose in Chapters Four and Five therefore, that what is required is a hermeneutic subject that is both constituted by the other and capable of responding to that constitution in turn. Both Gadamer (Chapter Four) and Ricoeur (Chapter Five) propose forms of subjectivity not so much broken open by the other as always already bound up with diverse forms of otherness. While Gadamer relies heavily on a dialogical model to make sense of the constitution of the self, Ricoeur focuses on the self as constituted by the request for help. This focus brings Ricoeur into close proximity to Levinas, but with the important difference that at the heart of the self/other relation, Ricoeur finds not an intractable asymmetry but a generative reciprocity. Chapter Six on Foucault departs some from the phenomenological and hermeneutic landscape to ask what forces are involved in prohibiting the subject from opening itself to the other. Here the question is not what is the structure of subjectivity but what interests and tactics are involved and what relations of power are deployed to coerce the subject into experiencing itself and others as interchangeable functions in a system geared toward optimizing health and longevity. Here I examine both Foucault’s analysis of modern bio-political strategies and his attempt to resist these deployments through engaging in spiritual practices designed to engender pockets of freedom and partnership. I draw from this response a figure of “spiritual subjectivity” that relates to itself not as a structure to be investigated, but as a task to be accomplished. My question, however, is whether this spiritual form of subjectivity as Foucault formulates it does not also turn in upon itself and result in an exclusion of otherness. My thesis is that although Foucault’s askesis is not akin to the modern subject in that it would derive all meaning from its own operations, it does attempt to achieve a “creative autonomy” that focuses on the self first and on other second. In Chapter Seven I attempt to reverse this order by developing an inverted askesis that would be oriented not toward self-creation but kenosis, toward a process of divesting the self of its pretentions to autonomy and forming a self capable of welcoming the other.