Subjects of conscience: Essays on ethics and animality in contemporary continental philosophy (Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida)

The present dissertation begins with a discussion of the motif of conscience as it appears in the work of three prominent contemporary continental philosophers: Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. These three thinkers offer strikingly original analyses of the concept of conscience that promise to help us rethink the place of the ethical in contemporary thought. Typically, both in the history of philosophy and in much of contemporary moral discourse, conscience is understood as a moral faculty arising from one's own self that offers moral directives in difficult ethical situations. All three of these philosophers complicate this picture by arguing that the “voice” of conscience originates elsewhere than within oneself. The significance of this analysis is that it leads to another and different thought of obligation—one in which the other's demand, rather than one's own ethical knowledge, becomes the foundation of ethics.; The concluding chapters of the dissertation inquire into who this “other” is that obligates us. In the Western metaphysical tradition, moral philosophers have typically argued that we have obligations only to other human beings; but what if our obligations extend beyond human beings, perhaps to animals and other natural entities? I argue (following a line of thought opened up by Derrida) that although both Heidegger and Levinas attempt to limit obligation and conscience to human beings, the logic of their respective theories of conscience should forbid any such restriction. The dissertation concludes with an examination of Derrida's writings on the question of the animal in order to explore the manner in which a deconstructive approach to animal ethics offers an alternative understanding of the status of animals with respect to the ethico-political.