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The Turn from Ontology to Ethics: Three Kantian Responses to Three Levinasian Critiques

Both Kant and Levinas advocate the primacy of ethics over ontology. Kant repeatedly suggests

that his motivation for overthrowing the dogmatic ontology of his rationalist predecessors is to

uncover a more fundamental domain of meaning in the realm of pure practical reason (section 1).

Valuing this focus on a separate, ethical, domain, Levinas in turn argues that an ethical way of

living centered on ‘the Other’ precedes and grounds an ontological one (section 2). Nevertheless,

Levinas’ criticizes Kant’s reason for turning towards ethics, the kind of critique that he applies

to this domain, and the outcome thereof. One can understand these three points in light of his

general critique that Kant did not succeed in overcoming what he takes to be his ontological

discourse (section 3). In this paper, I argue that Kant can meet each of these challenges. In this

way, I aim to reveal a number of commonalities between these two thinkers that contemporary

commentators still often overlook1, not to dismiss Levinas’ concerns, but to show that Kant

1 Authors like Peter Atterton, Catherine Chalier, Paul Davies, Olivier Dekens, Etienne Feron, and Darin Crawford

Gates have made admirable efforts to make Kant and Levinas’ conceptions of ethics meet. For the most part, I agree

with their findings, but I also believe that a more general parallel, consisting of three moments, marks their overall

philosophies. First, there is the aforementioned, shared, move from theory or ontology to ethics. Second, this shift

culminates in two radical ethical theories that, despite superficial differences, are indeed essentially very similar.

Finally, and in spite of their initial radical positions, we find in both the later Kant and Levinas what I call a ‘return

to nature’: a move towards an ethical theory that acknowledges the fallible human condition. Kant’s interest shifts

from (the metaphysical grounding of) ethics to anthroplogy: after having introduced radical evil in the Religion

Within the Bounds of Mere Reason (6:29) he presents a more realistic account of the ethical human being in

Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue (383) and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (7:331-2).

Likewise, in Otherwise than Being, the appearance of ‘the third’ – the recognition that there are a multitude of Others

who call for my help – motivates Levinas to shift from ethics to justice. With this shift, the self, although ‘awakened’

by the Other(s), regains a certain amount of control: it has to deliberate about the ways in which it can be ‘of the

most help for the largest number of Others’ (Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Lingis, Alphonso (ed.),

Dusquesne UP, 2006, 157-61; God, Death, and Time. Bergo, Bettina (tr.), Stanford UP, 1993, 183). This means that

the just person is no longer allowed to give its life for one Other, which was Levinas’ original and radical ethical

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anticipated them to a great extent (section 4). This will allow me, finally, to claim that the

fundamental difference between Kant and Levinas’ theses of ethics as prima philosophia stems

from the method rather than content of their philosophies (section 5).2

1. Kant’s Metaphysically Motivated Shift from Theoretical to Practical Reason

Kant holds that only a ‘Copernican revolution’ can save scientific and metaphysical knowledge

from the threat of scepticism: rather than deriving its concepts from the external world, our

reason imposes a conceptual grid onto the empirically given. If mathematical rules and physical

laws express nothing but the structures of our reason – the spatiotemporal forms of intuition and

the categories of understanding respectively – then the validity of these sciences can be

guaranteed by a critique of reason. However, the world ‘as it is in itself’ now appears

inaccessible to us, as we cannot circumvent the way we perceive and conceive it. Consequently,

the idea of ontology as a scientific doctrine that is concerned with things ‘as such’ or ‘as they are

in themselves’ (metaphysica generalis) must, at best, make room for an ‘ontology of

appearances’.3

claim. Together, these three moments depict the human being as marked by a fracture between its natural and ethical

sides, of which the latter is the most important, but does not exhaust its entire being. My focus on Kant and Levinas’

shared claim of ethic’s primacy over ontology places their ethical theories in this broader scheme and does justice to

their complex view of the human condition. 2 I find support for this claim in Jean-Michel Salanskis and Jean-François Lyotard’s commentaries on Levinas’ view

on Kantian ethics. 3 Heimsoeth, Heinz, Studien zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants. Metaphysische Ursprünge und Ontologische

Grundlangen. Kantstudien, Ergänzungshefte 71, Kölner Universitätsverlag, 1956, 69. Among the contemporary

defenders of the currently favored epistemological reading are Henry Allison, Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennet,

and Paul Guyer, while Karl Ameriks upholds an ontological reading.

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Kant’s insistence on the necessity of empirical support for our truth claims, on the other

hand, mitigates the sceptical attack of the metaphysica specialis, or the allegedly scientific

doctrines of rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. Kant defines the objects of these

doctrines - soul, world, and God - as ideas of reason that allow us to comprehend everything that

can be given in experience as part of an encompassing whole. As such, they are mere concepts

and not themselves objects of knowledge; their real value is undetermined or ‘problematic’,

which means that we can neither affirm nor deny their existence. In this way, Kant dismantles

the anti-metaphysical claims of the sceptics, but also admits to the impossibility of special

metaphysics as science.

However, in the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes a distinction

between this, illegitimate, kind of metaphysics and ‘natural metaphysics’4, claiming that every

human being has a natural and indispensable disposition to assume the immortality of the soul,

the existence of freedom in this world, and the existence of God (CPR A vii). This motivates him

to reconsider the ideas of reason in a practical context and attempt to establish a metaphysica

moralis in the Groundwork to a Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason.

Kant’s turn to ethics, as seated in pure practical reason, thus appears as a direct consequence of

his discovery that theoretical reason cannot satisfy our metaphysical interests.

Kant finds the Archimedic point for affirming the existential validity of these interests in

the moral law. He calls this imperative categorical because it depends on neither another concept

of reason, nor empirical data, nor a religious tradition. As such, it is the unconditioned condition

4 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason. Guyer, Paul (ed.), The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel

Kant, Cambridge UP, 1998, B 21 and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Ellington, James W. (tr.), Hackett,

1977, 4:365.

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of all purely rational contents or “the sole fact of pure reason”.5 This grounds Kant’s commitment

to the autonomy or self-legislation of reason in ethical affairs (5:33).6 The further argument

consists of two steps. First, the categorical imperative discloses our freedom: “It is therefore the

moral law, of which we become immediately conscious […] that first offers itself to us and […]

leads directly to the concept of freedom” (5:29-30).7 The awareness of the moral law draws the

human being out of the phenomenal sphere of natural, physical, determination into a noumenal,

moral, one in which it can act freely.

Second, Kant claims that, in order for the demand of the moral law to make sense for us

and thus to really affect us, we must conceive of what it demands – the highest earthly good – as

something that we can actually achieve (5:125). This implies that we must believe that morality

and happiness can go hand in hand in this world. The condition of possibility of the latter – “the

state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence everything goes according

to his wish and will” – is in its turn a harmony between the course of nature on the one hand and

5 Kant, Immanuel, Practical Philosophy. Gregor, Mary and Wood, Alan (ed.), The Cambridge edition of the works of

Immanuel Kant. Cambridge UP, 1999, 5:31. The term ‘Faktum’, as opposed to ‘Datum’, indicates that the moral law

is a product of reason itself, which explains its purely reasonable and universal character. Further, as a fact it is non-

negotiable. 6 The important distinction that Kant makes is actually the one between scientific, speculative and technical-practical

reason on the one hand, and pure practical or ethical-practical reason on the other (5:172). However, in order to keep

the parallel between the dualisms of theoretical and practical (Kant) and ontological and ethical (Levinas) clear, I use

the term ‘practical’ to indicate what Kant considers ethical behavior. 7 In What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? (1786), Kant claims that a state of indifference ultimately leads

to submission to a foreign law. Therefore, true freedom lies in the consent to the laws of reason alone: “freedom […]

signifies the subjection of reason to no laws except those which it gives itself; and its opposite is the maxim of a

lawless use of reason” (Kant, Immanuel, Religion and Practical Theology. Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen (ed.), The

Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge UP, 1996, 8:145). Strictly speaking, Kant is talking

about freedom of thought here, but he defines it in the same way he defines practical freedom in the Groundwork

(5:446-448) and Critique of Practical Reason (5:29). Moreover, What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?

most clearly expresses the idea of an ‘oriented freedom’ that Kant shares with Levinas (see footnote 19).

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the morally good intentions of the reasonable will on the other (5:124). Two difficulties arise

here. First, how can the human will be in complete accordance with what the moral law

demands? Kant states that only the assumption of an immortal soul can explain how we could

eventually become resistant to all non-reasonable motivations (5:122). Second, how can such a

perfectly good will be in harmony with the course of nature? We find nothing, either in nature or

in our reasonable intentions, that ensures this correlation. Hence, Kant concludes, we must

postulate this harmony as well as a supernatural being that causes it (5:125).

This reasoning does not prove the existence of the objects of our metaphysical interests. It

does, however, present the affirmations of the immortality of the soul and God’s existence as

moral obligations.8 In this way, Kant demonstrates the possibility of special metaphysics on a

moral basis, and makes a case for ethics as first philosophy.

2. Levinas and the Primacy of Ethics over Ontology

On several occasions, Levinas praises Kant for discovering the insufficiency of theoretical

philosophy and shifting to ethics as a more fundamentally meaningful domain.9 Apart from a

8 It is not the case that the moral imperative would be silenced without our practical belief in an immortal soul and

the existence of God. This would undermine the autonomy of the moral law, which, in principle, does not need any

extra support in order to make a demand (5:125-6; 6:3). However, the human, not-purely reasonable, being needs

these beliefs in order to understand the meaning, in the sense of purpose, of this demand (6:4). This means that the

idea of God does not contribute to the objective side of the moral imperative, but to the subjective one: our feeling of

respect for it. For Kant, God does not install the moral imperative, but our belief in His existence adds a powerful

motivation for moral behavior (6:5). See, for example, H.J. Paton’s The Categorical Imperative. A Study in Kant’s

Moral Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971, 256. 9 Levinas, Emmanuel, ‘L’ontologie est-elle fondamentale?’. In: Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 56, 1951, 98:

“What I have in mind seems, however, already suggested by Kant’s practical philosophy, to which I feel particularly

close”.

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thematic but largely forgotten appraisal of Kantian ethics on its own terms10, several of Levinas’

seminal works emphasize how Kant discovered a sphere that, like his own conception of the

ethical life, lies ‘beyond being’.11 Levinas’ conception of ontology is, however, significantly

broader than Kant’s.

First, Levinas broadens the concept of ontology to include all systematic theories of

being.12 Such theories reduce all beings to our rational understanding of them, as if they were

nothing more than intelligent – universal and logical – essences. Furthermore, these theories

subsume the meaning of these essences under that of a coherent system. As such, they leave no

room for real otherness; the knowing ‘I’ incorporates all otherness into itself. In Totality and

Infinity, Levinas states that this ontological imperialism is characteristic of the entire history of

western philosophy:

Western philosophy has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of being. […] For the things the work of ontology consists in apprehending the individual (which alone exists) not in its individuality but in its generality (of which alone there is science). The relation with the other is here

10 Levinas, Emmanuel, ‘The primacy of pure practical reason’. In: Man and World, 27, 1994, 446-453. 11 See Otherwise than Being, 129: “If one had the right to retain one trait from a philosophical system and neglect all

the details of its architecture […] we would think here of Kantism, which finds a meaning to the human without

measuring it by ontology […] The fact that immortality and theology could not determine the categorical imperative

signifies the novelty of the Copernican revolution: a sense that is not measured by being or not being; but being on

the contrary is determined on the basis of sense”; God, Death, and Time, 61: “Kant thus shows the existence, in

thought, of meanings that have a sense of their own, without being reduced to the epic of being”, and 65: “We shall

retain from Kantianism a meaning that is not dictated by a relationship with being. It is not accidental that this

reference comes from a morality, which, to be sure, is said to be rational on account of the universality of the maxim.

It is not accidental that this way of thinking about a meaning beyond being is the corollary of an ethics”; and Of God

Who Comes to Mind. Bergo, Bettina (tr.), Stanford UP, 1998, 123: “[Kant] discovered in the practical use of pure

reason an intrigue irreducible to a reference of being”. 12 Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. Lingis, Alphonso (ed.), Dusquesne UP, 2007,

42.

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accomplished only through a third term which I find in myself. The ideal of Socratic truth thus rests on the essential self-sufficiency of the same, its identification in ipseity, its egoism. Philosophy is an egology. (TI 43-44)

In Of God Who Comes to Mind, Levinas lists a number of exceptions to this likewise general

definition of western philosophy, including “the exaltation of theoretical reason into practical

reason in Kant”13, but Kant’s ‘ontology of appearances’ is evidently not one of them. For Kant,

all we can know are the things as they appear to us, and the only legitimate way to do so is by

means of categories of the understanding. Hence, Levinas criticizes ontology for precisely what

Kant claims any scientific theory must do. It is thus not surprising that in Otherwise than Being,

Levinas states that “Kantism is the basis of philosophy, if philosophy is ontology” (OB 179).14

Second and more importantly, Levinas further broadens the concept of ontology to

include all behavior, be it intellectual or practical, that displays the aforementioned

characteristics. From a critique of ‘all western philosophers’, his critique of ontology now turns

into one of the human condition as such.15 For Levinas, the natural attitude of the human being

is, just like that of every other life form, egocentric and imperialistic. In this ‘ontological way of

living’ we act as if we were the center of the world: food, tools, and other species only have

meaning with regard to our self-preservation or happiness. However, because we do this

13 Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, 119. 14 Regarding this claim and Levinas’ changing use of the term ‘kantism’, see Davies’ ‘Sincerity and the end of

theodicy: three remarks on Levinas and Kant’, in: Critchley, Simon and Bernasconi, Robert (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to Levinas. Cambridge UP, 2002, 161-70. 15 In this way, Levinas simultaneously pays heed to and rejects the thesis of Heidegger’s On the Essence of Truth.

Heidegger there broadens the meaning of truth from a logical or representational level to the practical, more

fundamental one of the disclosure of beings and being. Levinas, on the one hand, adheres to this insight when

expanding the meaning of ontology from conceptually grasping the world to a way of being-in-it. On the other hand,

however, he rejects this as a conclusion of what truth most fundamentally means. For Levinas, the shift from an

egocentric to a truly intersubjective stance is more important than the one that Heidegger makes from a theoretical to

a practical level (L’ontologie est-elle fondamentale?, 91-93).

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involuntarily, we feel no guilt and cannot be held responsible. This changes when, in the

encounter with another human being, we become aware of our ethical side. Unlike any other

being, another person can reveal herself as transcending any meaning I can give her. The ‘face of

the Other’ (TI 50) has this power because it is non-phenomenal and non-conceptual. While

phenomena and concepts are, following Kant, always mine16, the Other’s face is an ‘expression’

of something that is absolutely independent of me and has, therefore, a singular and non-

categorizable character – for Levinas, the Other is not even a special entity but is ‘beyond’ or

‘otherwise than being’ (OB 3-4), which means irreducible to Heidegger’s ‘being-in-the-world’.

In this capacity, She can call my imperialistic way of living into question (TI 75-6).

Hence, once the Other has come into play, I am forced to choose between continuing my

self-centered way of living or placing Her well-being ahead of my own. Levinas makes clear that

we are dealing with an ethical choice here by presenting the Other’s call as the plea for help of a

vulnerable person, like a widow or orphan, instead of a command from a superior.17 As such, this

call makes me feel guilty: the “welcoming of the Other is ipso facto the consciousness of my

own injustice” (TI 86). The Other makes me realize that, merely by being alive, I take up

resources that other people need just as much (Ethique comme philosophie première 93, 105).18

16 The French ‘com-prendre’, the Latin ‘con-cipere’, and the German ‘be-greifen’ betray the oppressive nature of

ontological discourse (Levinas, Emmanuel, Ethique comme philosophie première. Rolland, Jacques (ed.), Rivage,

1998, 112). 17 Levinas, Emmanuel, Time and the Other. Cohen, Richard (tr.), Duquesne UP, 1994, 83. 18 Taken to its fullest extent, the call of the Other asks me to sacrifice my own life. I cannot give in to this extreme

request, however, since it would entail that I neglect the call of a multitude of other Others who have an equal right

to my help. Therefore, the ethical life is as guilty as the ontological one, but only the former is conscious of its

shortcomings and thus shame-filled (TI 84). See Robert Bernasconi’s ‘The Truth that Accuses: Conscience, Shame

and Guilt in Levinas and Augustine’ (Madison, Gary and Fairbarin, Marty (ed.), The Ethics of Postmodernity.

Current Trends in Continental Thought, Northwestern UP, 1999, 33) for more on this kind of shame, which “is not

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I argue that we can read ‘the face of the Other’ as a phenomenological reinterpretation of

Kant’s moral law. Both commands interrupt my amoral concern for self-preservation and

happiness and open up the possibility of moral and immoral behavior, thereby revealing my true,

ethical, freedom.19 For Kant, this freedom installs the difference between a life organized by

hypothetical imperatives – whose demands concern contingent, self-made, goals – and one

guided by the categorical imperative – which transcends individual interests. For Levinas, it

marks the difference between activity – being the source of meaning – and passivity – being

appealed to by a heteronomous meaning. Accordingly, the shame evoked by the call of the Other

resembles the feeling of respect that attends the moral law (5:73). Both feelings attest to the dual

nature of the human being, as they reveal our higher vocation while simultaneously reminding us

of our failure to (fully) achieve it. Kant says that the respect for the moral law devalues all other

incentives to act and makes the human being humble (5:74-5), but later adds that the awareness

of our possibility to make this law our own also elevates us and results in ‘the highest self-

esteem’ (6:436). Likewise, the presence of the Other not only puts me to shame, but

simultaneously “exalts and elevates me, and, in the literal sense of the term, inspires me” (OB

124).20

tied to an accusation that is focused on a specific deed”. More fundamental than deciding which Other to help, and to

what degree, is, however, the choice in favor of an ethical life at all. 19 Etienne Ferron supports this comparison, upon which I will elaborate in section 4, in ‘Intérêt et désintéressement

de la raison Levinas et Kant’, in: Lévinas en contraste. Dupuis, Michel et Ricoeur, Paul (ed.), De Boeck, 1998, 98,

and Rudi Visker in The Inhuman Condition. Looking for Difference after Levinas and Heidegger, Duquesne UP,

2008, 149. In the same passage, Visker also confirms my earlier claim that Kant and Levinas share the idea of an

‘oriented freedom’: the human being is truly free when it realizes that it does not decide what is good or evil, but

instead must live up to a Good towards which it is drawn and that gives its existence meaning, but with which it will

nevertheless never coincide. 20 See Ferron, 92-3; and Gates, Darin Crawford ‘The Fact of Reason and the Face of the Other: Autonomy,

Constraint, and Rational Agency in Kant and Levinas’, in: The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40/4, 2002, 493-522.

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Further, the possibility of our moral awareness and responsibility also leads Levinas to

reflect on God’s existence. While Kant argues in favor of the moral choice by referring to the

categorical character of the moral imperative, Levinas does so by invoking a bond between the

self and the Other that precedes the one it has with itself. He explains the power of the Other to

break through our self-centered way of living by claiming that we are all created, whether we are

aware of this or not. As such, we are the brother and shepherd of all other human beings before

we even begin the process of our own self-development (OB 10; Ethique comme philosophie

première 97-98).21 It is only a small step from the notions of brotherhood and creation to that of

God: “the Other, in his signification prior to my initiative, resembles God” (TI 293).

However, Totality and Infinity refers to Descartes’ third meditation rather than Kant for a

theoretical and yet non-ontological concept of God in (48-51). Descartes presents God as a being

that infinitely transcends the idea we have of it, and that we can, therefore, never appropriate.

Levinas agrees that such an idea cannot originate in reason, but must be given to us by the

infinite itself.22 Like the Other, God is an object of desire rather than reason who “overflows

absolutely every idea I can have of him” (84, 87). In Otherwise than being, Levinas likewise

Concerning Kant’s account of the feeling of humility, its relation to the feelings of respect for the law, oneself, and

other people, consult also chapters 5-7 of Grenberg, Jeanine, Kant and the ethics of humility: a story of dependence,

corruption, and virtue, Cambridge UP, 2005.  21 For more on this biblical idea of ‘man being a shepherd for other men’ in Levinas, consult Claire Katz’s

‘Education East of Eden: Levinas, the Psychopath, and the Paradox of Responsibility’, in: Atterton, Peter and

Mathew Calarco (ed.), Radicalizing Levinas, SUNY Press, 2010, 171-183. 22 Hence the title of Levinas’ Of God who comes to mind. In ‘L’idée de l’infini en nous’ Stéphane Mosès discusses

Levinas’ account of the Infinite and compares it to Descartes and Kant’s notions thereof, albeit with a focus on the

concept of the sublime in the latter (Emmanuel Levinas, L’éthique comme philosophie première. Actes du colloque

de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. Sous la direction de Jean Greisch et Jacques Rolland. Cerf, 1993, 79-

101). Also worth reading in this regard is Peter Atterton’s ‘Levinas’ Sceptical Critique of Metaphysics and Anti-

Humanism’, in Philosophy Today, 41/4, 1997, 491-506.

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interprets scepticism as non-exhaustive discourse.23 Scepticism is necessarily ambiguous because

it proclaims our incapacity of making sound truth claims. For Levinas, however, this is a reason

to commend rather than reject it: the value and richness of scepticism lies in its conscious effort

to ‘thematize the unthematizable’. Whereas sceptical discourse can highlight the difference

between what one literally says (‘the said’) and the conditions thereof that one cannot

unequivocally express (‘the saying’), ontological discourse, in Levinas’ terminology, is limited

to the level of ‘the said’ (OB 167-168). Despite making use of logical concepts, scepticism and

the Cartesian idea of God nevertheless leave room for an otherness that these concepts cannot

capture.24

3. Three Levinasian Critiques of Kant’s Turn to Ethics

Both Kant and Levinas thus criticize the ontological discourse of their predecessors – primarily

scholastic metaphysics and Heidegger – for being stuck in the sphere of the self-centered,

imperialistic, ego. Consequently, they turn to ethics for a more modest stance with regard to

otherness. Nevertheless, Levinas criticizes the motivation (1), the method (2), and the outcome

(3) of Kant’s turn. These three points are moments of Levinas’ more general argument against

Kant, namely that he does not succeed in overcoming ontological discourse.

23 According to Levinas, this explains why, despite ontology being the default philosophical discourse, throughout

history scepticism has recurred over and over again (OB 168). However, Levinas neither wants to adopt a sceptical

position nor give a historical account of its philosophical variations; as Bernasconi points out, he interprets and uses

scepticism as “a metaphor or ‘model’” for his own discourse (Scepticism in the Face of Philosophy, in: Bernasconi,

Robert and Critchley, Simon, Re-Reading Levinas. Studies in continental thought, Indiana UP, 1991, 150). 24 This conception of scepticism is remarkably different from Kant’s, for whom a sceptical attitude bars rather than

opens the path to the infinite. Nevertheless, as I will argue in section 4, one finds an equivalent of Levinas’ notion of

skeptical discourse in Kant’s critical attitude.

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(1) As I have presented it, Kant turns to ethics because theoretical reason cannot satisfy

our metaphysical interests. Although Levinas also closely connects ethics and metaphysics (TI

39), he claims that it is wrong to believe that this new realm could ease our metaphysical

restlessness. The face of the Other creates a desire in us that can never be satisfied, since we can

never grasp its object (33-34). The more we do for the Other, the more we realize that we are not

doing enough, and the more guilt we experience. Moreover, for Levinas, the term ‘inter-esse’

refers to the natural, ontological, realm (OB 4) – the realm of our ‘being-in-the-world’ as ‘being-

alongside-worldly-entities’ (Ethique comme philosophie première, 93). In the ethical realm, our

own interests are subordinated to a desire for the Other that originates in the Other. We cannot

find the real transcendence autonomously that is revealed here; we can only be found by it.

Hence, Levinas cannot but regard the satisfaction of reasonable interests as an egocentric

motivation that does not allow us to enter the ethical domain.

(2) Since the turn towards ethics is not accompanied by a rejection of the central and

active position of the ontological I, the kind of critique to which Kant subjects practical reason is

no different than that of theoretical reason: a critique of reason as well as by reason.25 Moreover,

the autonomy of pure reason, which Kant presumed in the first Critique, now becomes the

central theme.26 While the element of receptivity is essential to his theory of the constitution of

knowledge, it is banned from his theory of ethical behavior, according to which pure reason is

the only rightful lawgiver. For Kant, the primacy of ethics over ontology thus means the primacy 25 In ‘Hegel’s Conception of Immanent Critique: its Sources, Extent and Limit’, Karin de Boer calls this kind of

self-criticism ‘immanent critique’ (Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. De Boer,

Karin and Sonderegger, Ruth (ed.), Palgrave Macmillian, 2012, 83-100). 26 Although the privileged link between Kant’s practical philosophy and his conception of freedom is

uncontroversial, the opening paragraph of Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Freedom nevertheless rightly argues that “at

bottom, Kant’s [entire] critical philosophy is a philosophy of freedom”. Consult, in this regard, also Lewis White

Beck’s A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, The University of Chicago Press, 1960, 174-175.

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of pure over impure reason. For Levinas, however, it means that reason has a secondary status;

whereas Kant’s ethics require a rational critique, he holds that reason itself needs to be criticized.

After all, for Levinas, an ethical critique can only originate from the face of a singular Other.27

From this perspective, the universal form that the moral law must take in order to be pure,

implies a continuation of the systematizing footprint of ontology in Kant’s account of practical

reason.28

(3) If the previous critiques are legitimate, the outcome of Kant’s critique of practical

reason – the postulatory assertions of freedom, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of

God – must also be under the sway of ontology: “after an instant of separation, the relation with

ontology is reestablished in the ‘postulates of pure reason’”.29 First (3a), the content of these

postulates is merely taken over from theoretical reason. What is affirmed on a practical basis,

first passed – as the problematic ideas of soul, world, and God – the logical check of the critique

of pure theoretical reason. Second (3b), the postulation of these three metaphysical objects

depends on the autonomy of practical reason, that is, on the command of a self-sufficient subject:

the assertion of freedom establishes it and the immortality of the soul and the existence of God

are assumed in function of it.

4. Three Kantian Responses to Levinas

27 See Dekens, Olivier, ‘Le Kant de Lévinas. Notes pour un transcendantalisme éthique’. In: Revue Philososophique

de Louvain, 100(1), 2002, 120-1, 116. 28 Levinas, Emmanuel, Beyond the Verse. Talmudic Readings and Lectures. Mole, Gary D. (tr.), The Athlone Press,

1994, 146: “This obedience cannot be assimilated to the categorical imperative, where a universal suddenly finds

itself in a position to direct the will; it derives, rather, from the love of one’s neighbour […] lacking self-indulgence”. 29 Levinas, Of God who comes to mind, 123.

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I will now argue that none of the aforementioned critiques really touches Kant’s philosophy, and

that Kant is ‘more Levinasian’ than he has hitherto been perceived. This will allow me in the

next section to highlight what I take to be their true difference, which concerns the method rather

than the content of their ethical theories.

(1) In Kant’s defense, I hold that the turn from a theoretical to a practical resolution of the

human being’s metaphysical restlessness is purely argumentative: it removes the obstacle that so

far prevented western philosophy from finding the real essence of human reason.30 In fact,

metaphysics is for Kant a practical concern from the very beginning: “The concept of God, then,

is one belonging originally not to physics, that is, to speculative reason, but to morals, and the

same can be said of the other concepts of reason which we treated above as postulates of reason

in its practical use” (5:140). The ‘turn away from theory’ is thus a turn towards the origin of our

metaphysical interests, rather than the domain that will silence them (CPR B 845). The

postulates of practical reason only reveal the necessity of our assumption of an immortal soul,

freedom in this world, and the existence of God, but do not prove the reality of these matters.31

In ‘The antinomy of pure reason’, Kant for the first time explains the role and importance

of the interests of reason. Here, he discusses two pairs of antithetical claims – one pair

30 Kant already announced this at the beginning of the first Critique, when he stated that he “had to deny knowledge,

in order to make room for faith” (CPR B XXX; 4:363). Axel Hutter even wonders if we should not in the end call

Kant’s philosophy a “philosophy of faith” (‘Vernunftglaube. Kants Votum im Streit um Vernunft und Glauben’. In:

Jaeschke, Walter und Sandkaulen-Bock, Birgit, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: ein Wendepunkt der geistigen Bildung

der Zeit. Meiner Verlag, 2004, 246). 31 In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Kant regards the idea of the ‘highest earthly good’ as a powerful

motivation for practical belief. In Religion (1793), however, he first presents Christ as the personification of this idea

(6:60-2), and consequently, by stressing the radicality of evil, reveals – be it intentionally or not – the Christian life

as an unreachable ideal for the human being (6:64). In this way, practical reason turns out to be as incapable of

satisfying our metaphysical interests as theoretical reason. This contrasts with what Levinas suggests in Of God Who

Comes to Mind, 123.

15

concerning the possibility of freedom within the world, the other of an intelligible cause exterior

to it – of which the theses and antitheses are both irrefutable.32 This is the case, he explains,

because they each express an ineradicable interest of reason: whereas the theses reveal a

dogmatic interest – they affirm said possibilities and thus present reason as a constitutive faculty

of cognition – the antitheses express an empirical or sceptical one – they reject the ideas of

reason as products of superstition (B 493-4). Consequently, Kant classifies the dogmatic interest

as a (primarily) practical and the empirical interest as a theoretical one (B 494, 496). This

confirms his claim in the Critique of the Power of Judgment that understanding – which is bound

to experience – is the guiding faculty of theoretical reason, and that pure reason – which operates

independently in this regard – guides practical reason (5:174).

On this basis, Kant can explain the impossibility to solve the antinomies of theoretical

reason: these “natural and unavoidable illusions” (CPR B 354) are ultimately not logical

contradictions, but originate in a conflict between the theoretical and practical uses and interests

of reason. Torn between two poles – metaphysics and empirical science – pure theoretical reason

is disinterested, disoriented, or, in Kantian terms, ‘merely speculative’. Further, once we

understand the antinomies as clashes between two interests inherent to reason rather than

theoretical contradictions, Kant holds, we can easily overcome them: since only our practical

32 The thesis and antithesis of the two other antinomies that Kant discusses are both invalid because they concern the

spatiotemporal limits of the world, which is an idea of reason and not an empirical object. Consequently, their

opposition is nothing but a pseudo-problem (CPR B 556-60) that does not reveal the fundamentallly conflictuous

nature of theoretical reason.

16

interest is motivated by an unconditional demand, we must always give preference to it in case of

conflict with our theoretical interests (CPR B 493, B 827-8; 5:218-9).33

In the Groundwork, Kant subsequently defines the ethical interest as the “dependency of

a contingently determinable will on principles of reason”.34 Consequently, only a being that is

not purely reasonable can have such an interest: “This, accordingly, is present only in the case of

a dependent will, which is not of itself always in conformity with reason; in the case of the

divine will we cannot think of any interest.” For Kant, then, the concept of ‘inter-esse’ refers to a

subject that finds itself between the theoretical-empirical and the practical-noumenal world, or

between what is given and what is desired in the Levinasian sense.35 Kant thus agrees with

Levinas that the difference between the natural and the ethical way of being is irreconcilable and

fundamentally characterizes the human condition.36 His concept of ‘interest’ indicates both this

rupture and the orientation towards, or primacy of, the latter way of being. This confirms that we

must understand Kant’s ‘metaphysical interests’ as incentives for ethical rather than ontological

behavior.

(2) In the second section, I proposed a reading of Levinas’ ‘call of the Other’ as a

phenomenological version of Kant’s moral law. If this analogy stands, Levinas’ second critique –

that Kant submits practical reason to an ‘immanent critique’ of the same sort as theoretical

33 Levinas calls this “illusion due to the very rationality of reason” ‘Kant’s great novelty’, because it reveals that an

ethical interest is “the ultimate meaning of rationality” or “the basis of logos” (The primacy of pure practical

reason, 447, 451). 34 Kant, Immanuel, Practical Philosophy. Gregor, Mary and Wood, Alan (ed.), The Cambridge edition of the works

of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge UP, 1999, 5:413. 35 Levinas in fact acknowledges this by calling Kant’s idea of a practical interest a ‘disinterested interest’, an interest

that is not motivated by my own well-being (The primacy of pure practical reason, 449). 36 Axel Hutter’s Das Interesse der Vernunft. Kants ursprüngliche Einsicht und ihre Entfaltung in den

transzendentalphilosophischen presents excellent research on Kant’s account of the interests of reason (Kant-

Forschungen, Band 14, Meiner Verlag, 2003).

17

reason – is also mistaken. The moral law may be grounded in pure practical reason, but it is only

a law for a being that is subject to natural inclinations as well (5:379). The concept of law

indicates a distinction between a lawgiver – the noumenal self – and someone who receives the

law – the individual self. This distinction becomes a true rift in Kant’s later writings on religion

and anthropology, which stress the ineradicably evil component of the human essence and thus

the human impossibility of a completely ethical life (6:32-39, 7:331).37 For a being that cannot

eliminate its natural inclinations, the idea of complete autonomy must, however, seem like an

unattainable otherness rather than its own, ultimate, possibility.38 If we accept this heteronomous

side to the moral law, the critique of human practical reason by purely practical reason ceases to

be an immanent one. Like Kant’s concepts of interest and law, it refers to the irreconcilable

rupture between the human being’s natural and ethical sides.

It might seem, therefore, that the difference between the Kantian and Levinasian views on

ethics pertains to the initiator of the ethical critique rather than the nature of the moral demands.

This is the main difference that Catherine Chalier sees between their positions:

The Kantian subject never loses [its] first place[: it] asks itself if it can disregard the misery of the other, if it can want its egoism to become a universal law of nature. It then realizes, Kant says, that, if its will were to make that choice, it would be contradicting itself […] That argument –

37 This leads Allen Wood to conclude Kant’s Ethical Thought with a very pessimistic assessment of the human

condition (Cambridge UP, 1999, 334-6). In Robert Louden’s Kant’s Impure Ethics. From Rational Beings to Human

Beings, on the other hand, one finds a praiseworthy effort to counter, on the basis of Kant’s late writings, all those

who reject his practical philosophy as based on inhuman demands (Oxford UP, 2000). 38 Levinas plays on this confusing dialectic between autonomy and heteronomy in Kant’s account of the moral law in

Otherwise than Being, 148. Martin Heidegger also famously draws attention to the heteronomous side of this law in

his discussion of Kant’s notion of respect in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Taft, Richard (tr.) Indiana UP,

1997, 109-112). More recently, Gates (504-508) and William Desmond (Ethics and the Between, SUNY Press, 2001,

133-142) have also addressed this topic, and Dekens relates it to a similar dialectic in Levinas’ ethical theory (126-

7).

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which is self-interested in spite of everything– does not intervene in Levinas’s analysis: the shock produced by the epiphany of misery is in itself an imperative that does not suffer the shilly-shallying of a reflection on the possibility or impossibility of desiring the universality of one’s maxims.39

We can now, however, ascribe the beginning of the ethical relation to two different moments in

both Kant and Levinas’ accounts: the ethical demand, coming from the Other or the moral law,

and my consent therewith. Whereas the first moment opens the possibility for moral, as opposed

to amoral, behavior, the second moment concerns the concrete choice to behave either morally

or immorally.40 Kant defines moral goodness as the choice to follow the categorical imperative

rather than any of the hypothetical ones that also attract us (6:24), and evil as the opposite choice

(6:30, 33). Likewise, Levinas says that even though we cannot not hear the call of the Other, we

can still either ignore or respond to it.41 On both accounts, a moment of autonomy must follow

one of heteronomy. Hence, Kant and Levinas’ views on the initiator of the ethical relation are

not as radically incompatible as Chalier seems to suggest, namely as being either the

autonomous ego or the absolutely heteronomous Other. The autonomous ego does not preclude

the advent of absolutely heteronomous otherness; in fact, the former can only assert itself in

response to the latter.42

39 Chalier, Catherine, What ought I to do? Morality in Kant and Levinas. Todd, Jane Marie (tr.), Cornell UP, 2002,

38-39. The same claim returns on pages 24, 37, 68, 74, and 78, and in Atterton, 497. 40 Paul Guyer distinguishes these two moments clearly in ‘The Possibility of the Categorical Imperative’, in: Kant’s

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Critical Essays. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1998, 217-218.

Consequently, he defines them as the explanandum of the second and third part of the Groundwork respectively.

With regard to Levinas, see Visker, 154. 41 See Atterton, Peter, ‘The Proximity between Levinas and Kant: The Primacy of Pure Practical Reason’. In:

Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 40/3, 1999, 244-62. 42 In fact, Levinas’ Other is absolutely Other because the ontological Self is absolutely self-sufficient (cf. Jeffrey

Bloechl’s ‘Ethics as First Philosophy and Religion’. In: Bloechl, Jeffrey (ed.), The Face of the Other & the Trace of

God. Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Fordham UP, 2000, 132-133). This is the case because the Self

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Analogously, I hold that the concepts ‘universality’ and ‘singularity’ do not indicate an

irreconcilable opposition between Kant and Levinas either. Indeed, while the categorical

imperative differs from all other behavioral maxims because of its strictly universal character,

the reorienting force of the Other’s face stems from its singular character. One might argue,

however, that for Kant no less than for Levinas, morality ultimately concerns the way in which

universal worth is instantiated by a particular person. This view comes to the fore in Kant’s

practical writings starting with the Religion, but is perhaps already suggested by the third

formulation of the categorical imperative, according to which it is “humanity, whether in your

own person or in the person of any other” (5:429, my emphasis) that demands respect. On the

other hand, for Levinas, we defer to an Other who is stripped of all Her phenomenal

characteristics; its ‘naked face’ transcends all individual and cultural qualities.43 As a

consequence, it is hard to distinguish the Other’s singular worth from a universal one.44

(3a) It has become plausible now that also the outcome of Kant’s ‘turn to ethics’ can be

saved from Levinas’ critique of ontology. In my reply to the first Levinasian critique, I stated

that the three ideas of speculative reason actually find their origin in pure practical reason: the

antinomies of reason are logical problems with which the understanding is confronted as a result

of the interference of practical reason in the theoretical domain. I now suggest that, as theoretical

originates in a ‘hypostasis’, discussed in Levinas’ early works Existence and Existents and Time and the Other, in

which it closes itself entirely off from an otherness that is even more radical than that of the Other: the il y a.

Although I cannot elaborate on this here, Levinas’ theory of the ‘hypostasis’ is interesting for us because it

introduces moments of indifference (the ‘il y a’) and absolute autonomy (the ontological Self) that are conditions of

possibility of those of absolute heteronomy (the Other) and relative autonomy (the just self). While these new

elements may complicate the previously drawn analogy between Kant and Levinas, they also provide further reasons

for challenging the standard picture of the latter as a thinker who only has eye for otherness. 43 Levinas, Emmanuel, ‘Meaning and Sense’. In: Peperzak, Adriaan, Critchley, Simon and Bernasconi, Robert (ed.),

Levinas, Emmanuel: Basic Philosophical Writings. Indiana UP, 1996, 53. 44 See Ferron, 99-100.

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expressions of practical beliefs, the ideas of reason differ from the determining concepts of the

understanding in a similar way that Levinas distinguishes the idea of God from all other rational

concepts. Like Levinas’, Kant’s idea of God is exceeded by its content because its origin and

true meaning lie in an ethical realm beyond theory. Thus, when Kant admits the problematic

character of the ideas of theoretical reason, he ascribes to this faculty the same role as Levinas’

to skepticism: it attempts to thematize the unthematizable that speaks to us in the ethical

relation.45 In other words, both thinkers try to theoretically express a desire for something that

lies beyond the human reach – and we can ultimately regard Kant’s philosophy as a post-

ontological way of thinking in the Levinasian sense.46

(3b) Now that I have nuanced the autonomous character of the subject according to Kant, the

problem of the dependence of the postulates of the moral law, and thus of the autonomy of

reason, also disappears. First, only the awareness of our freedom depends on the moral law; Kant

states this law is the ratio cognoscendi of our freedom, while our freedom is its ratio essendi (5:4,

29-30).47 Like Levinas, he does not believe that we can explain the raison d’être of this freedom

45 In God, Death, and Time, Levinas refers to Kant’s ‘transcendental ideal’, or the idea of God, as a thought ‘that

speaks of being without rejoining it’ (153), and that “can fail to reach being” or “must not end up at being” (154). 46 “It is with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason that ‘the beginning of the end’ of the onto-theo-logical conception of

God is marked” (God, Death, and Time, 153). When Levinas praises Descartes’ account of the idea of God, he seems

to hold that this idea has a real source outside of reason. In this case, his ethics presupposes religion and puts forward

an irrational theory of God’s existence that Kant would find philosophically unacceptable. However, that the

conceptions of God and ethics are in a certain sense irrational is precisely Levinas’ point (Basic Philosophical

Writings, 129-48). In other passages, Levinas refers to the trace of God in the Other’s call in a way that resembles

Kant’s critical ‘as if’-mode of thinking about Him (TI 89-93). In the same spirit, if we follow Kant’s equation of the

moral law with God according to an ‘as if-mode’ of thinking (6:153), we can also speak of a ‘God who comes to the

mind’ in Kant. In this case, the boundaries of reason that determine Kant’s ethical discourse are not identical to the

limits of Levinas’ ontological Self. 47 Consult Henry Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge UP, 1990, 201-213) and Christine Korsgaard’s

Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge UP, 1996, 159-187) for clear and informative discussions of this relation.

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at all – ‘we can only comprehend its – theoretical – incomprehensibility’.48 Second, not only do

we find the same kind of idea of God in Kant and Levinas, but also the postulation of His

existence has an equivalent in Levinas. Like Kant, he introduces God in order to explain the

impossibility of not hearing the Other’s call and not realizing the primacy of Her demand over

one’s own, ontological, motivations. In conformity with the term’s etymological roots in the

Latin verb re-ligare, ‘to bring together again’ – for Kant, religion exists in a community of

people who live in accordance with the moral law (6:94) regarded ‘as if’ it is God’s law (6:99,

153). For Levinas, being religious is the same as (being aware of) being created: it means being

the brother of the Other, in whose face alone we catch a trace of God (TI 78). Consequently, Kant

and Levinas defend a connection between ethics and religion that is at least similar.49

5. A difference in philosophical method

I have argued that Kant and Levinas ultimately uncover the same truth about the human being.

Both maintain that we are marked by a fracture between our natural, self-centered side and our

ethical, open side, and that although we must give primacy to the latter, it can never exhaust our

entire being. How is it possible that the outlooks of Kant and Levinas’ ethical theories are

nevertheless strikingly different? While the difference between Kant and Levinas’ conceptions of

ethics as first philosophy is, as I have argued, not a substantial one, neither is it a matter of a

48 “And thus we do not indeed comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, but we

nevertheless comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly required of a philosophy that

strives in its principles to the very boundary of human reason" (5:463; see also H.J. Paton’s The Categorical

Imperative, 273). 49 See Steinbock, Anthony J., ‘Reducing the One to the Other: Kant, Levinas, and the Problem of Religious

Experience’. In: Levinas Studies: An Annual Review. Duquesne UP, 2009, 127-156.

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mere difference in emphasis – on autonomy or heteronomy, or universality or singularity.

Instead, it concerns a way of practicing philosophy. I previously held that Chalier mistakenly

argues that Kant and Levinas have a different take on the origin of the ethical relation. I now

hold that they instead part ways on the philosophical explanation of the very possibility of this

relation.

This concurs with Lyotard’s view on the difference between Kant and Levinas’ ethics.50

On the one hand, Lyotard holds that an ethical moment of ‘absolute exteriority is “so precious to

Levinas but also Kant” (143; my emphasis). I have also argued that this is the case. Yet, on the

other hand, he defends the Levinasian position that the universal normativity that Kant ascribes

to the moral law mediates and weakens the traumatic impact that the ethical call has on us (147).

Because the ethical demand is here presented in the form of a denotative statement (“Act in such

a way that …”) rather than a prescriptive one (“Obey!”), the asymmetrical relationship between

the addressee and addressed is obscured, and the primacy of acting over understanding is

threatened (152). Miriam Bankovsky concludes from this that “Lyotard and Salanskis’ analyses

help us to identify the reason why Levinas both distances himself from certain elements of

Kant’s moral philosophy while nonetheless insisting that the practical intent of Kant’s moral

philosophy is not dissimilar to his own account of ethical obligation".51 I likewise hold that is not

so much Kant and Levinas’ philosophical positions that clash, but the philosophical registers

they use for establishing them.

50 Lyotard, Jean-François, ‘Levinas’ Logic’. In: Cohen, Richard A., Face to Face with Levinas. SUNY, 1986, 131-

58. See also Salanskis, Jean-Michel, ‘Genèses ‘actuelles’ et genèses ‘serielles’ de l’inconsistant et de l’hétérogène’.

In: Critique 379, 1978, 1162-73. 51 Bankovsky, Miriam, Social Justice after Kant: Between Constructivism and Deconstruction (Rawls, Habermas,

Levinas, Derrida), PhD thesis at University of New South Wales, 2009, 158-61.

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Methodologically speaking, Kant remains a rational metaphysician: his philosophy draws

from the tradition and its internal contradictions52, and his belief in rational discourse guides his

interest to the moral law as the universal heart of reason. Levinas, on the other hand, is a (post-)

phenomenological thinker whose thought takes off from our lived experience; his method starts

from a fascination for the unique event of the Other’s call for help and almost inevitably leads to

a preoccupation with infinite otherness.53 Both methods have their advantages and

disadvantages. While Kant, by excluding all non-purely reasonable content, demonstrates more

stylistic rigour than Levinas, his strictness has also led many to regard his ethical theory as

formalist and inhumane. Levinas, in turn, might be a more honest, but therefore also a less

philosophical, thinker for embracing an absolute otherness even if this also implies embracing

theological concepts such as creation and God.

I have argued that Kant and Levinas’ respective emphases on autonomy or heteronomy

and universality or singularity do not reflect substantially different views on the human

condition. I now add that they instead ground in two different philosophical methods – based on

reason or lived experience – for discovering the ultimate truth of the meaning of human life. If

Levinas’ critique of Kantian ethics is to make sense, then, it does not concern the latter’s alleged

denial of something like an ‘otherwise than being’, but its poor presentation thereof. Understood

as such, it is, however, still a relevant critique: if ‘the saying’ and ‘the said’ are necessarily

interwoven, and if every philosophical method thus leaves its traces on the theory to which it

gives birth, Levinas has shown an important, though not fatal, deficit of Kantian ethics.

52 In the Prolegomena, Kant explains how Hume’s rejection of lawful causality (4:260) and the clash between

dogmatism and scepticism with regard to the idea of world (4:338-41) led him to develop his critical philosophy. 53 See Levinas’ reply to Jean Wahl in ‘Transcendence and Height’, in: Basic Philosophical Writings, 29. For

Levinas’ own stance on whether he is a phenomenological or post-phenomenological thinker, a difference that is not

relevant to my point here, see ‘Enigma and Phenomenon’, 65-77.