Space and Ethics

Space is typically treated as a theoretical category--as a topic in Epistemology, Mathematics, Physics, etc. Levinas suggests how it can also be conceived as implicated in Ethics, in his positing of Exteriority as the proper medium of Ethics, though he does not go so far as to equate Exteriority with Space. His thesis is that Experience becomes an Ethical context upon the intrusion of Exteriority, i. e. the Face of an Other, into Interiority, i. e. the egological sphere of phenomena for subjective consciousness. However, his classification of this event is indifferent to the nature of the response of the subject to whom it befalls, e. g. welcoming, hostile, indifferent, reifying, etc. In contrast, the thesis here is that the fundamental locus of Ethics consists in how one comports oneself towards others, whether or not one has been prompted by an encounter with an Other. In other words, it consists in the degree to which one extends oneself towards others, or, in Levinas' terms, in a process of Exteriorization from the Interior. By further equating Exteriority with Space, Space becomes a topic in Ethics.