Abstract

Once these similarities are delineated—that both philosophers are for the subject and against knowledge—Chalier’s central preoccupation is to analyze and assess differences. Central among them is Kant’s rejection of heteronomy and Levinas’s wholehearted acceptance of it. In this, Levinas proceeds similarly to Heidegger and many ancient Greek philosophers, but with a difference that Chalier highlights: Levinas, like Kant, does not seek to ground morality in a knowable order external to the subject such as the cosmos, being, nature, or society. Kant seeks an internal disposition, the good will, and an internal categorical principle. This makes the principle of his ethics outside of knowledge but internal to the subject. Levinas, by contrast, seeks an “anarchic” ethics—anarchic, according to Chalier, because its arche or principle is outside the subject and outside of knowledge. Chalier describes, then, two very different philosophies of the subject beyond knowledge, one in which the subject is utterly autonomous and morality stems not from will in accord with a knowable order but from good will; another in which the origin of the subject and of moral obligation is unknowable but outside the subject.