무한과 비평이론: 레비나스와 들뢰즈/거타리

Abstract

Levinas’s ethical thinking is profoundly different from the traditional Western mode of speculation in that he illuminates how a finite human subject approaches the infinity of the Other. Levinasian ethics distinguishes itself in essence even from other postmodern philosophies also for its explanation of what can be termed trans-phenomenal (that is beyond the level of phenomenality but still sensible) sensibility. For Levinas, the　proximity between the self and the Other is the ethical dimension in which the Other approaches the self as a transphenomenal face, commanding the self to take its ethical responsibility. This process of the subject's movement is, after all, an approach to infinity; the alterity (absolute otherness) of the Other is completely exterior to the self. Infinity takes a position of paramount importance in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s writings. Right from the beginning of Anti-Oedipus through A Thousand Plateaus to What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari manifest that the becomings are possible owing to the most fundamental “emotion” which should be considered as correspondent to trans-phenomenal sensibility. This fundamental emotion is the passage toward the exteriority of the self, and it already is outside. This paper finally proposes that we use our faculties of feelings and sensibility more than reason in writing literary criticism to illuminate the text's passage to the exteriority of the reading subject. The text's phenomenological ways toward the transphenomenal realm can be thought and logically explained to the extent that it is shown by the language written on the pages, but the transphenomenal sensibility cannot be explained; the locus of the transphenomenal sensibility can only be pointed at. All movements in the dimension of transphenomenal sensibility are caused by, and returning to, infinity.