The Cosmopolitan Turn and Levinas's Open Subjectivity

• In Event: Alterity, Others, and Teaching

Abstract

In this paper I will take on the issue of human subjectivity for cosmopolitan education. I believe that Lévinas has helped us understand when and how humanity is capable of violence to the other. His radical ideas provide a new approach to our subjectivity that “breaks out of essence,” that is open and connected with the world beyond and is in the never-ending process of transformation in the face of the other. I argue that such an open humanity is the key for the cosmopolitan project.

Author

• Guoping Zhao, Oklahoma State University