Beyond the Either/Or: The Relation Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Philosophy of Emmanual Levinas, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Luc Marion

This dissertation explores how Emmanuel Levinas, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Luc Marion understand the relation between the ethical and the aesthetic. Wary of the excesses that avowedly amoral dogmas like "art for art's sake" can to lead to, the aesthetic is sometimes regarded with deep suspicion, as in the case of Emmanuel Levinas, who saw in art and beauty temptations to idolatry. Breaking with approaches that sharply oppose the ethical and the aesthetic, I draw on Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Luc Marion to demonstrate that ethical and aesthetic modes of attention are fundamentally harmonious and that their cooperation is critical to the transition from a life of self-centered aestheticism to an ethical life shaped by aesthetic attentiveness.;Chapter One explores how the either/or manifests itself in the ambiguous status of the aesthetic in Levinas's ethical philosophy. Levinas tends to characterize the aesthetic as a distraction from ethical responsibilities but also frequently makes reference to literary works in his work revealing a deep engagement with the aesthetic. This ambiguity intimates the possibility of a move beyond the either-or but, as I demonstrate, an actual Levinasian movement in this direction is hampered by the violence of his criticism. Chapters Two and Three explore ways to transcend Levinas's ambiguity and to temper the harshness of his criticism while retaining his insights into the problematic nature of aestheticism and idolatry. Chapter Two examines the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical as elaborated in Either-Or, giving a much more complex portrait of the aesthetic and consequently of its relation to the ethical than was seen in Levinas. Chapter Three examines how Jean-Luc Marion's rethinking of phenomenology starting from givenness allows him to appropriate the counter-intentionality crucial to the Levinasian ethical project in such a way that it permits, rather than precludes, a relation to the aesthetic. Chapter Four explores the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical as an existential task of discerning and fostering the paradoxicality of the interplay between the aesthetic and the ethical. This task calls the one undertaking it to become like the paradox relation he is charged with accomplishing.