The Body and the Transcendence of the Self Brief Notes on the Issue of Subjectivity and Responsibility in Levinas

Abstract

The article offers a possible reading of transcendence in Levinas from the perspective of the phenomenon of responsibility, a reading that is only possible from the logic of freedom as the transcendence of returning without having ever left. This entails accepting that sensibility is the ground zero of the situation, which makes evident that human beings are embodied before transcending and responding. Therefore, the body’s corporality is the fact that makes possible a responsible subject.

Keywords

• E. Levinas
• corporality
• responsibility
• sensibility
• transcendence.