ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Emmanuel Levinas’ break with traditional philosophy and its movement of understanding as a return to the self. Against the paradigmatic Greek figure of Ulysses, finally returning to his home after years of war and adventure, Levinas mobilizes the Judaic tradition in the story of Abraham. The chapter gives a rough portrait of subjectivity, described in ethical terms in Levinas, focusing on the role that affectivity and particular emotions play in the genesis of the self/other relation. From his early work onward, Levinas develops what one could call a dialectical genesis of subjectivity. Levinas conceptualizes the origin of subjectivity not in intentional consciousness but in a sensual world-relation, which is, at the same time, a self-relation that coincides with the opening of the “inner space” and “interiority” of consciousness. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas speaks of the “face-to-face” as an asymmetrical encounter with infinity.
