Abstract

ABSTRACTI extract a problematic from Levinas’ shifting attitude towards the idea of recognition. An underappreciated aspect of Levinas’ work is that at an early stage he appeals to a recognition-based model of intersubjectivity, which characteristically plots a relation of mutual affirmation between individuals. However, he later explicitly rejects this paradigm in favour of an intensified heterological orientation which invests in otherness as a value in itself. Levinas’ rejection of recognition raises the question of how we are to interpret the relation between the latter and heterology as rival models for reading into intersubjectivity an immanent and dynamic source of normativity.