Ontology of the subject’s identity in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

This study presents an ontological analysis of the conception of the subject’s identity proposed by Emmanuel Levinas. The topic appears to be relevant due to the interest of the humanities to the category of the subject’s identity increasing over past decades. The paper deals with Levinas’s criticism of the classical model of the subject’s identity, in which the subject is comprehended as selfsame. The study has found it to be related to Hegel’s interpretation of totality, which is understood as sublation of the other by the same, and also to Husserl’s phenomenology. The author notes a significant drawback of the classical conception of the identity of the subject - its incapacity to provide a final selfsameness of the subject, which results in the suppressing of otherness in the subject. The study analyzes Levinas’s attempt to present the face of the Other as an expression of the transcendental, which subverts totality and opens up a possibility of constructing an alternative model of the subject’s identity. Levinas’s conception of identity as responsibility is reconstructed, its ethical consequences are outlined. The article states that Levinas’s model of the subject’s identity is formed around the responsibility of the subject, which is understood simultaneously as responsibility of the subject to the Other for itself and responsibility of the subject to itself for the Other. The author concludes that Levinas’s conception is capable to ensure a balance in the subject between selfsameness and otherness through the idea of responsibility as the central category in constructing the model of the subject’s identity. The paper demonstrates that Levinas’s model of the subject’s identity not only contributes to resolving the problems created by the classical model but also appears to be its reliable alternative.