Levinas – moral selfconsciousness

“Contrary to the philosophy that makes of itself the entry into the kingdom of the absolute and announces, in the words of Plotinus, that the soul will not go towards any other thing, but towards itself, and that ‘it will therefore not be in any other thing, but in itself, Judaism teaches us a real transcendence, a relation with Him Whom the soul cannot concern and without Whom the soul cannot, in some sense, hold itself together. All alone, the I finds itself rent and awry. This means that it discovers itself to be one who had already encroached on the Other, in an arbitrary and violent manner. Self-consciousness is not an inoffensive action in which the self takes note of its being; it is inseparable from a consciousness of justice and injustice. The consciousness of any natural injustice, of the harm caused to the Other, by my ego structure, is contemporaneous with my consciousness as a man. The two coincide.” – Levinas, difficult Freedom