Back to Descartes?

Levinas’ philosophy of perception

Matt Bower
membower@gmail.com

0. Overview
1. Descartes’ cognitively deflated view of sensory perception
2. Phenomenology’s cognitively rich view of sensory perception
3. Levinas’ return to a Cartesian-inspired, cognitively deflated view
Yes: “[I]t is time we read Levinas as a philosopher of aesthetics [etymologically construed] as
customarily as we read him as a philosopher of ethics.” (Sparrow 2013, 4)
No: “[Levinas’ view of perception is] in line with […] Husserl’s claims concerning the
givenness of phenomena. Where Levinas’ departure from [Husserl] begins is in his account
of […] ‘the face.’” (Dalton 2014, 23-24)
1. Descartes on sensory perception
Overall, Descartes takes a cognitively deflated view of sensation.
Where “sensation” refers to conscious sensory experiences, and not physiological events or
judgments of the intellect (Descartes 1984, 294-295)
Sensations lack truth value (Descartes 1984, 296), do not resemble or represent their objects
(Descartes 1985, 304, 219), do not bear logical relations (Descartes 1984, 53), and it likely
follows pari ratione that they are non-intentional.
This venerable reading has its detractors (see Simmons 2015 for an overview).
Although Descartes takes a strong cognitively deflationist view of sensation, his view does admit some
positive practical characteristics.
Sensations have the function of guiding the subject to what it needs and steering it clear of
dangers (Descartes 1984, 57), so that the quality of a given sensation is that it is suited to
motivate suitable behavior (Descartes 1985, 60).
This turn involves “nothing short of re-conceiving the cognitive economy of the human mind:
whereas his Aristotelian predecessors had depicted the senses as under-laborers of to the
intellect, delivering up the raw materials for theoretical knowledge, Descartes re-conceives
them first and foremost as tools for survival.” (Simmons 2001, 54)
2. Phenomenology on sensory perception
Husserl admits that sensation is ipso facto cognitively deflated (Husserl 2014, 172-176/165-168).
Yet for him is contributory to perception, which is cognitively rich.
In perception “we find the perceived as such, something that we need to express as ‘material
thing,’ ‘plant,’ ‘tree,’ ‘blossoming,’ and so forth. […] [This is the] perceived-tree as such that
belongs, as the sense of perception, to the perception and does so inseparably.” (Husserl 2014,
165-168/176-177)
Further, it has epistemic import, providing the ultimate “substrate” for judgments (Husserl
1973, 27-40), and admits of quasi-logical relations (Husserl 1973, 87-101).
Existentialist phenomenologists tend toward a view similar to Husserl’s.
Except they reject the notion of sensation as something distinct from perception (Sartre 1956,
415-416; Merleau-Ponty 2002, 5).
They are wary of Husserl’s intellectualism, but still grant cognitive richness to perception.

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“If I am able […] to bother my head about the distinction between imaginary and real, and
cast doubt upon the ‘real’, it is because […] I have an experience of the real as of the imaginary,
and the problem then becomes one not of asking how critical thought can provide for itself
secondary equivalents of this distinction, but of making explicit our primordial knowledge of
the ‘real’, of describing our perception of the world as that upon which our idea of truth is
forever based.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002, xvii)
“Our perception in its entirety is animated by a logic which assigns to each object its
determinate features in virtue of those of the rest, and which ‘cancel out’ as unreal all stray
data; it is entirely sustained by the certainty of the world.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002, 365)
3. Levinas’ retrieval of Descartes
Levinas accepts Descartes strong, cognitively deflated view of sensory perception.
“The profundity of the Cartesian philosophy of the sensible consists […] in affirming the
irrational character of sensation […], belonging to the order of the useful and not of the true.”
(Levinas 1969, 135; see also 130, and Levinas 1978, 42)
“Sensibility does not aim at an object, however rudimentary.” (Levinas 1969, 137; Levinas
1978, 46-47)
Sensibility does not “make a claim” or identify a “this as this or as that” (Levinas 1981, 61-62)
What is sensed is a “quality without support” rather than “an object endowed with qualities”
(Levinas, 1969, 188; 132).
“The interpretation of sensible signification in terms of consciousness of…, however little
intellectualistic one means it, does not account for the sensible.” (Levinas 1981, 67)
Cognitively rich views tend to erroneously make sensing a unilateral activity.
Representation is “the non-reciprocal determination of the other by the same” (Levinas 1969,
126), inasmuch as “representation discovers […] nothing before itself.” (Levinas 1969, 125)
By contrast: “[S]ensibility […] does not belong to the order of thought, but to that of […]
affectivity” (Levinas 1969, 135)
“[T]he ancient conception of sensation [as] the affecting of a subject by an object […] would
evoke [sensation’s] function better than the naively realist language of the moderns.” (Levinas
1969, 189)
Descartes also views sensation as passive, an “emotion” of sorts (Descartes 1985, 339)
Seeing means to be “borne by the very image that I see,” an impulse that “somehow comes
from the point to which it goes” (Levinas 1969, 128, 129)
Sensation is cognitively deflated, but not devoid of cognitive value.
As a kind of enjoyment (Levinas 1981, 72), it has hedonic, conative and practical characteristics.
An alimentary model: “[E]xpressions such as ‘enjoying a spectacle,’ or ‘eating up with one’s
eyes’ [are not] purely metaphorical.” (Levinas 1981, 67; Levinas 1969, 130)
“The sense datum with which sensibility is nourished always comes to gratify a need, responds
to a tendency.” (Levinas 1969, 136)
The enjoyed quality is desirable, and thus an end of sorts, but without any gap between intention
and fulfillment (Levinas 1978, 28-29, 34)
By the same token, sensation presents “a set of autonomous finalities which ignore one
another.” (Levinas 1969, 133)
Because: “[S]ensibility touches the reverse without wondering about the obverse [which] is
produced precisely in contentment.” (Levinas 1969, 135)

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References
Dalton, D. (2014). “Phenomenology and the infinite.” Levinas Studies 9, 23-51.
Descartes, R. (1984). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. II. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D.
Murdoch (Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Descartes, R. (1985). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. I. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D.
Murdoch (Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith (Trans.). London: Routledge Classics.
Husserl, E. (1973). Experience and Judgment. L. Landgrebe (Ed.), J. Churchill and K. Ameriks (Trans.).
Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Husserl, E. (2014). Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. D. Dahlstrom (Trans.).
Indianapolis, IA: Hackett Publishing Co.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity. A. Lingis (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Levinas, E. (1978). Existence and Existents. A. Lingis (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise than Being. A. Lingis (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Sartre, J.-P. (1956). Being and Nothingness. H. Barnes (Trans.). New York: Washington Square Press.
Simmons, A. (2001). “Sensible ends: Latent teleology in Descartes’ account of sensation.” Journal of
the History of Philosophy 39(1), 49-75.
Simmons, A. (2015). “Representation.” The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon. L. Nolan (Ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge UP.
Sparrow, T. (2013). Levinas Unhinged. Washington: Zero Books.