Subject of Freedom

Gabriela Basterra is Associate Professor of Comparative and Spanish Literature at New York University. She is the author of Seductions of Fate: Tragic Subjectivity, Ethics, Politics.

"In this important book, Gabriela Basterra reconceives Kant's conception of practical freedom. On her interpretation, consciousness of the moral law doesn't simply disclose the subject's freedom. On a more fundamental level, it constitutes it. Taking Kant at his word when he represents the categorical imperative as a 'fact of reason,' Basterra argues that the demand for rational autonomy is a special type of heteronomy. Responsibility turns out to be less a matter of normative bootstrapping than of 'substitution' in Levinas's sense of finding oneself obliged by another. This fascinating interpretation completely changes our conception of what it means, for Kant, to orient oneself in the world." -- -Andrew Cutrofello Loyola University Chicago "Basterra's The Subject of Freedom is a beautifully written and ambitious text that probes the implicit ways that what is unconditioned drives the ethical philosophies of both Kant and Levinas. She thinks these two philosophers with and against one another, finding that the point of contact is a point of excess. Her work moves deftly between a reconstruction of their arguments through precise textual analysis and an imaginative juxtaposition that shows that they are each responding to a demand that is radically exterior to their own subjective perspective. This is a brilliant and novel text that allows us to think the philosopher of reason together with the philosopher of relationality and to consider the ethical and political implications of their encounter. This belated and vital encounter is, indeed, a rich one." -- -Judith Butler University California, Berkeley

• Contents Introduction: The Subject of Freedom 1. Negation and Objectivity 2. Unconditioned Subjectivity 3. Causality of Freedom 4. Affect of the Law 5. Autonomy or Being Inspired Notes Bibliography Index