An Infinite Subjectivity: Towards a Teleological Understanding of Consciousness from Levinasian Phenomenology

Abstract

The present paper proposes a teleological interpretation of conscious life based on the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas. However, since Husserlian phenomenology serves always as a background for Levinas’s position, I offer a reading in which both views complement each other. First I lay out a scheme in which the totality of consciousness is realized as teleological and then I explain the predominant role played by synthesis in the constitution processes in order to develop the elements of a levinasian ethics culminating in a teleological reading of conscious life. Thus, the infinity with which Levinas describes the ethical encounter ceases to be only an instance of an ethical-ontological dimension to describe a teleological moment as well.