A critical study on "The ethical" in Spinoza and Levinas

In this dissertation, we have attempted a thorough examination of the significance that makes ethics possible, and of the ground and origin that gives an action its ethical value in Spinoza and Levinas. Therefore, the term "the ethical" in the title is not directly associated with ethics. "The ethical" involves the ontological truth of immanence in Spinoza, and the metaphysical truth of transcendence in Levinas. The ethical, in this sense, will be scrutinized through a discussion of immanence and transcendence; a deliberation concerning Spinoza's love of a de-anthropomorphized God attained on the horizon of ontological truth on the one hand, while, on the other, Levinas' emphasis on the correspondence between the love of a de-ontologized God and man's field of action, a God which can only be conceived on the horizon of metaphysical truth that is grasped when approaching the Other through intersubjective relation. Whereas God is identified with substance which is conceived to be on the plane of immanence together with Nature in Spinoza, Levinas claims that being and God cannot be conceived on the same plane, and that we therefore need a plane of transcendence. The ethical, in both philosophers, is shaped around the basic principle determined when I encounters the other. Therefore, both theories are constructed as ethics of encounter. However, the principle or origin on which the ethical theory is grounded gives rise to a contrast between how the two doctrines are situated. In Levinas, ethics is grounded not on cognition, but on conscience (or, on moral consciousness). In Spinoza, on the other hand, the relation of ethics to knowledge/intellection is an internal one, which also involves responsibility. Henceforth, we arrive at two different subjectivities: a subjectivization through conception of immanent truth of ontology stands against a subjectivization through situating oneself external to being, and prior to consciousness. Here arises a series of dichotomies: immanence versus transcendence, ontology versus metaphysics, internality versus externality, intellection (cognition) versus revelation (inspiration), naturalist ethics versus anti-naturalist ethics, autonomy versus heteronomy. What we attempt in this scrutiny of these opposed conceptions is an emphasis on the perseverance of Spinozist themes despite Levinasian critiques.