Outer Experience

The distinction between 'outer' and 'inner', which is significant for Kant since it grounds his distinction between Space and Time, is one that he seems to take as self-evident. Even so, it is one that he effaces once he reduces spatial experience to temporal. Levinas suggests a different criterion for differentiating Outer from Inner--a perception of a thing is 'inner', while an encounter with the Face of an Other is 'outer'. However, this distinction is not as immediately self-evident as Levinas seems to take it to be. The aspect of the Other that is truly 'outer' to one is not its physiognomic features, but the projection of a subject beyond any immediate perception, of whom those features are an expression. That projection entails an exteriorization of the experiencer, which shows that, as is the case with Kant, outer experience for Levinas is not a function of Perception, but of Motility.