An approach to the ethics of passivity based on the development of non-intentional consciousness by Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas is known for being a heteronomous ethics. However, the term heteronomy, in the case of the Jewish thinker, does not have to do with an infantile ethics in which the will is only subjected to a series of archetypal mandates imposed by a sovereign. In this case, heteronomy has to do with the sedimentation of a radical past that only comes to light —so to speak— thanks to the presence of the Other. However, in order to arrive at this approach, Levinas uses the elements of the phenomenological method proposed by Edmund Husserl to try to expose a subjectivity that is constituted from passivity.