Ethics precedes ontology, making our subjectivity hostage to the other from the start

Evidence

Unlike the approach of phi los o phers such as Hume or Bentham, which works to prefi gure the destiny of the other by making ontology prior to ethics and politics, Levinas sought to place ethics at the foundation of all systematic thought. … On Levinas’s account, we do not enter into the world as selfpossessed liberal subjects, already equipped with capacities of reason and discourse that enable voluntarily determined justice relations, should we happen to encounter beings worthy of consideration rather than domination. Instead, we emerge into consciousness already hostage to the gaze of the other’s face, already placed under an infi nite ethical demand. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 506

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out Levinas’s ethics-as-first-philosophy contrast with Hume/Bentham’s ontology-first approach.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Ethical obligation arises from the other’s unknowability, not its measured capacities — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 503; An ethics cannot be derived directly from ontological descriptions; Subjectivity is asymmetrically dependent on objectivity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2543 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• An ethics cannot be derived directly from ontological descriptions #corroborates (0.82)
• Subjectivity is asymmetrically dependent on objectivity #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2543