Abstract
Subjectivity as infinity denotes the infinite depth and heterogeneity of our existence, the unlimited potential of transformation beyond fixed essence. It also denotes that there is in the structure of subjectivity what is ex-egological and ex-subjective, a zone that is inside me and yet is also always outside of me. The traditional ontological-transcendental divide is thus an artificial one. There is no infinity if subjectivity has no relation to the transcendent; there is also no infinity if the subject is able to domesticate and synthesize the transcendent.
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Notes
- 1.
Derrida, “‘Eating Well’ An Interview,” 105.
- 2.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 180.
- 3.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 180.
- 4.
Like what Sartre called, “The Transcendence of the Ego.”
- 5.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, The Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 1989), 347.
- 6.
Jacques Derrida, “Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 67.
- 7.
The two philosophers who may have hinted at a similar idea are Harold Oliver and Martin Buber. Oliver hints at this possibility of opening up to the genuine otherness of the other when he describes the experience of encountering the other where the “I” is open and transformed by the encounter. [Harold H. Oliver, Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1984)]. Oliver also has a notion of “pure experience,” unmediated by thinking and reflection, that touches on the otherness of the other. He maintains, similarly, that pure experience is more primordial and more fundamental than “the Cogito, the subject-self, the Absolute Ego, the Moral Ego, the object, the object-world” while the latter are “entities of reflected experience” (p. 51). Likewise, Martin Buber’s pre-reflective or participatory experience and the notion of the I-Thou relationship point to such an experience of opening up and participation in the bigger Whole [Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Scribner Classics, 2000)]. In both descriptions, the experience leads to transcendence, where we go beyond what constrains us and become connected with the outside, the other. Pure experience brings in the outside, from the ancient times, and profoundly affects our existence.
- 8.
Eric Reitan, Is God A Delusion? A Reply to Religion’s Cultural Despisers (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 20.
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Zhao, G. (2020). Transcendence and Subjectivity. In: Subjectivity and Infinity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45590-3_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45590-3_12
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