An aesthetic of ethics

Abstract

This thesis examines the influence of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy, as presented in Totality and Infinity, on Sylvie Germain’s novel L’Enfant Méduse. The underlying philosophical question of this study examines the viability and effects of dialectical logic as found in oppositions between aesthetics and ethics as well as between history and the individual. The result is a meditation on the ways in which physical and intellectual violence have been represented and transmitted, culminating in an identification of how Levinas and Germain suggest a more purely ethical and aesthetic future for the human sciences.