1 Introduction

In this paper, we address the following question: What is or should be the place of the ethical dimension in a general enactive theory of sociality? How should such a dimension be understood and articulated within the more general picture of the enactive approach to social life? Building on Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy, we answer the question by saying that ethics should be understood as a distinct dimension of the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of sociality; a dimension of radical otherness that intertwines with but does not reduce to the intersubjective dynamics of social life.

Our central argument is that intersubjective otherness and ethical otherness, although regularly entangled in our social experience, are two different and independent sources of signification. They belong, as it will be graphically illustrated, to orthogonal dimensions of sociality.

In showing the particular place that the ethical dimension occupies in the general picture of sociality, we hope to show, following Levinas, why sociality is more than intersubjectivity and how enactivism, if interested in a comprehensive account of ethics, would benefit from this insight.

To be sure, Levinas is not a new face for enactivism. His name or some of his signature ideas have appeared here and there in different enactive works (Di Paolo et al. 2018; Koubová 2014; Colombetti and Torrance 2009). Even more, some have argued that there are deep and promising affinities between enactivism and Levinas’ philosophy, stemming from their common phenomenological roots related to topics such as embodiment and affectivity, that deserve to be explored (Métais and Villalobos 2021). However, we think that the potentiality of Levinas’ philosophy for a general enactive theory of sociality, at least for one in which ethics finds a comprehensive account, has not been properly appreciated. More than that, we argue that enactivism has, for the most part, misinterpreted Levinas’ approach to sociality, creating an ill-founded resistance to his ideas about ethics and otherness.

In our view, current enactivism might be stuck in what we call the trap of intersubjectivity; a sort of philosophical attractor that seems to promise but finally precludes a comprehensive understanding of ethics. In effect, the intersubjective perspective, to the extent that it goes beyond the consideration of a solitary ego, placing intersubjectivity as a sort of pre-existing medium for the very possibility of individual subjects, seems to open the way to the primacy of the other, and thereby to ethics. However, as we will draw from Levinas, the original signification of ethics is not to be found in the realm of intersubjectivity, no matter how far we explore into that dimension.

With Levinas we learn that intersubjectivity unfolds, ultimately, as an ontological dynamic, a dynamic of being, and that as such, the only otherness that it can offer to our experience is ontological in nature, never ethical.

Levinas’ philosophy, we have to note, was elaborated in the context of WWII and post-WWII, when the philosophy of being developed by Heidegger (2008) was considered one of the most prominent works in the continental tradition. That such a sophisticated work had not been able to contribute in any way to the prevention of the horrors of death camps was the symptom, in Levinas’ eyes, that something was not completely right with this approach to sense and sociality.Footnote 1 The blind spot of such a philosophy, according to him, was the impossibility of questioning, from itself, from within a philosophy of being, the very logic of being; that is, the logic of conatus.

Ethics, for Levinas, implies for a being to be concerned by the other. And this being concerned by the other can only happen as a suspension and a questioning of the centripetality of the dynamics of being. The dynamics of being, under the logic of conatus, corresponds to a fundamental egoism. And ethics is the very exposure of this fundamental egoism to a call. In Levinas’ perspective, the suspension of the dynamics of being cannot be produced by being itself; therefore, it can only be conceived of as a contact with an alterity coming from outside ontology, from otherwise than being.

The ethical otherness, in Levinas, will be radical or absolute in this precise sense; in its extra-ontological alterity and exteriority.

Enactivism, to the extent that it approaches sociality from the point of view of intersubjectivity, and thinks of otherness as an intersubjective otherness, remains trapped in the ontological dimension of sociality and the dynamics of being. Levinas’ call for an extra-ontological turn to otherness, we think, might help enactivism to reorient the search for the original signification of ethics towards an otherwise than intersubjectivity. But hearing and understanding such a call is not very easy when you are in a trap. Enactivism, situated in the ontological dimension of otherness, tends naturally to focus on questions and problems that arise and make sense within said dimension, such as, typically, the epistemological problems related to the knowability/unknowability of the other (e.g., visibility/invisibility, transparency/opacity). From that framework, Levinas’ call, which is deliberately put forward to mark a break with the ontological realm, and by implication with its associated epistemological dynamics, can be easily misinterpreted. Thus, in enactivism, Levinas’ idea of radical and absolute otherness will be either resisted (Di Paolo et al. 2018) or straightforwardly rejected (Koubová 2014), as it seems to imply an absolute distance, separation and opacity between the self and the other. Levinas’ philosophy, in the end, will be viewed as a dualist and rigid metaphysical framework that contravenes the more dialectical inspiration of enactivism (Di Paolo et al. 2018).

In this context, it should not come as a surprise that enactivists show resistance to Levinas’ ideas. The important point we want to make in this paper is that such resistance, though somehow justified for the reason just mentioned, is not necessary. Actually, it can and should be overcome, we think, for the very benefit of enactivism. By assuming a non-Levinasian reading of radical otherness, enactivists get stuck in the more familiar but narrow intersubjective dimension of social life, missing the chance to develop a multidimensional and richer picture of sociality wherein the primordial sense of ethics gets illuminated.

Our invitation, therefore, is to listen to Levinas’ philosophical message and rethink its meaning, with the hope that some of his insights regarding ethics can be fruitfully assimilated in the perspective of a deeper understanding of sociality. To that end, first, we analyze the enactive approach to sociality as focused on intersubjective otherness and explain why it seems to conflict with Levinas’ philosophy. Then, we present and analyze Levinas’ approach to sociality as focused on ethical otherness, illustrating its significance through a (three) dimensional diagram and the idea of givability. In doing so, we show that Levinas’ philosophy, if properly understood, is not really in conflict with the enactive approach to sociality but rather enriches it.

Before starting our analysis, however, and as a preliminary exercise, we think it is useful to have a quick view of some more basic, not specifically social senses in which the notion of otherness can be understood. As we will see, they are either presupposed in or put in contrast with the specific intersubjective and ethical senses of otherness at play in sociality. Their conceptual clarification will be important to understand the rest of the discussion.

2 Basic Senses of Otherness

2.1 Distinctional Otherness

What we call distinctional otherness is the otherness of an entity as numerically distinguished from another. Let us say I have two entities. If I take one of them, then the second one is simply “the other.” Here, the “otherness” of the second thing with respect to the first one does not imply any consideration regarding what the entities are. They might or might not be identical in their properties. All that is needed is that they are numerically distinguishable.

This sense of “otherness” seems to be the most basic and primitive one in the realm of beings. All the rest of ontological othernesses depends on or presupposes this primitive and basic sense. In the study of sociality, to go to the point that interests us, distinctional otherness is always implied. As soon as there are two distinct entities at play, two agents or subjects in this case, it is natural language, and thereby almost unavoidable, to denote them as one and the other.

The distinctional sense of “otherness” is not a problem per se. However, it is interesting to note that, despite its apparent innocence, its use implies or imposes a certain order or hierarchy on how the entities are considered: the “other” is always secondary with respect to the entity primarily considered. We start by considering one thing or entity, and (only) then we pass to consider the other. This seemingly trivial observation becomes relevant in Levinas’ philosophy. Situated from the perspective of ethics, Levinas’ philosophy will try to escape, question or revert the secondary place to which “otherness,’’ insofar as is constructed upon this distinctional sense, is usually confined.

2.2 Difference Otherness

We can call difference otherness the otherness of an entity as carrying different properties with respect to another. In this case, the otherness is qualitative; the two entities differ in terms of what they are.

In the context of the study of sociality, this sense of “otherness” is the one at work when the focus is on the differences between agents or subjects. For instance, this is the case when Husserl intends to describe intersubjective relations with an alien, a child, an animal, or a mad person (Husserl 1973). Difference otherness, as concerned primarily with what the entities are, or who they are, is also at work when considering sociological or ethical issues in the context of postcolonial studies, women’s studies, or animal studies, among others.

2.3 Phenomenal Otherness

In phenomenology and the enactive approach (inasmuch as the latter is inspired by the former), the process of constitution accomplishes a phenomenal distinction between the world as experienced, or enacted, on the one hand, and the subject or agent as the experiencer, on the other hand. Through phenomenality, a distinction between a self, a point of view, and a world’s exteriority emerges. In this perspective, for the subject, the world is the other; that is, apprehended through its otherness in regard to the identity and autonomy of the self. For instance:

[…] we see the co-emergence of inside and outside, of selfhood and a correlative world or environment of otherness, through the generic mechanism of network closure (autonomy) and its physical embodiment (Thompson 2007, pp. 48–49. Emphasis added).Footnote 2

Of course, this specific sense of otherness, the otherness of the world with respect to the self, is hardly mistaken with the otherness of the other person, which is the kind of otherness we will be focusing on in the following sections. We are nonetheless mentioning it here in order to tidy up the diversity of meanings that has been attached to the notion of otherness. Because this diversity has not been clearly made explicit, we think it has been an obstacle to the apprehension of the kinds of othernesses that are specifically at stake in sociality.

2.4 Object Otherness

The fourth context in which we can find the notion of otherness comes with the phenomenality of real objects. As Husserl observed, there is always a sort of mismatch between an object as a closed totality and the way we perceive it through a potentially infinite sequence of sketches. There is a transcendence of the object regarding the dynamics of perception.Footnote 3 The object always keeps, so to speak, a provision of the unknown. In that sense, the object never falls under full control of the dynamics of constitution and thereby always keeps a dimension of otherness. Since the otherness of the object is to be conceived of as an excess over knowability, we can say it is an epistemic otherness.

Let us notice that the four types of “otherness” that we have considered so far all make sense within the realm of being and beings, and thus could be said to belong to the general category of ontological otherness. It is always between two beings that distinctional otherness or difference otherness can be considered. Phenomenal otherness, in its turn, is the distinction between the subject as a constituent being and the world as a network of constituted ontological significations. And within the latter, object otherness concerns specifically the unknowability of those beings that are objects.

This is important because, as we will explain at length in Sect. 4, to Levinas, ethical otherness is neither an ontological category nor an epistemic limitation in the realm of beings. The specificity of ethical otherness, according to Levinas, consists precisely in its alterity with regard to the realm of beings (étants) and their dynamics of being (être). That is, in its extra-ontological status.

3 The Enactive Approach to Sociality and its Resistance to Levinas

In this section, we will expose why the enactivists have shown resistance to embracing the philosophy of Levinas regarding the question of otherness and ethics. To do so, we will give a quick review of how enactivists approach sociality, namely as an intersubjectivity. It will be apparent that, as long as the enactivists stay confined in this perspective, the Levinasian idea of radical otherness will sound problematic for them. It would take a change of perspective on the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of sociality, so we argue, for the enactivists to hear the ethical message of Levinas and to articulate it to their approach.

3.1 From Participatory Sense-Making to Intersubjective Otherness

The most prominent concept in the enactive approach to sociality is participatory sense-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007). With this concept, the enactivists highlight the fact that the interaction of two (or more) enactive agents gives rise to an autonomous dynamic at the level of the interaction itself, which, in an emergent fashion, shapes and orientates in turn the very dynamics of the interacting agents. This approach has certainly proven to be fruitful for the analysis of certain aspects of sociality. Nevertheless, when it comes to an account of its ethical signification, the approach, we argue, proves to be not only insufficient but potentially misleading.

From the perspective of participatory sense-making, the enactivists see sociality, essentially, as a network of enactive agents (De Jaegher and Froese 2009; Froese and Di Paolo 2011). And from the experiential phenomenological viewpoint, they see sociality as a network of subjects; that is, as an intersubjectivity (Froese and Di Paolo 2009; Fuchs and De Jaegher 2009). Consistently with the perspective of participatory sense-making, enactivists see intersubjectivity as more than the mere sum of interacting subjects. For enactivists, intersubjectivity is rather a dynamic medium that affects and shapes the individual subjectivities that compose it (Di Paolo et al. 2018), and it is, ultimately, the very medium within which individual subjects come to be and encounter each other. At the same time, and this is equally important, individual subjects do not dissolve as such within intersubjectivity. They remain as autonomous agents and keep their identities as individual sense-making systems. The crucial point for our discussion is that once there, situated within the intersubjectivity perspective, the idea of otherness appears for the enactivists, inevitably, as the otherness of the other as another subject. That is, as an intersubjective otherness.

Now this is all coherent and well-conducted; intersubjective otherness is indeed what you get if you start from participatory sense-making, or from intersubjectivity, and then consider the idea of otherness. The problem we want to put forward only appears when what matters is an understanding of ethics. Let us review, briefly, how the enactivists thematize and characterize the idea of intersubjective otherness.

The work of Froese and Di Paolo (2009) is especially revealing in this respect. In the context of developing the life-mind continuity thesis, Froese and Di Paolo argue that it is only by taking into consideration the collective dimension of sense-making that the enactive approach will be able to give a proper account of high-level human cognition, including the constitution of an objective world. For the authors, the points of view of other subjects are always already induced in the constitution of the world as objective. As they write, “it is impossible to conceive of objectivity without positing intersubjectivity at the same time” (2009, p. 455). But in intersubjectivity, the authors observe, “a crucial element that defines another subject as such is the peculiar ‘otherness’ of their presence” (ibid.). Indeed, if this were not so, they go on, “then the phenomenon of intersubjectivity would be logically inexplicable” (ibid). Intersubjectivity as we experience it includes not only some kind of access to the experience of the other subject, but also an irreducible otherness of the other without which she and I would basically be the same (Hua I, 139), and it would not make sense to talk about the objectivity of a common world.

To characterize the specificity of the otherness of the other subject, they attempt to distinguish it from the otherness of any real object (the full quotation is important to appreciate the point we want to highlight).

All real objects of our experience are characterized by a certain type of transcendence in relation to the constituting subject. […] Thus, what is special about the transcending presence of another subject is not that the other, as a real phenomenon, necessarily eludes our grasp, but that it does so in a manner that is unique to encounters with others. […] Objects elude our grasp, i.e. they are necessarily only given in profiles that never exhaust the constituted object as such. […] Another subject, in contrast, is always prone to change its identity over time in such a way that it escapes any attempt at grasping it in the form of a simple object perception. As long as the other remains an autonomous subject in its own right, there is always the possibility that the affordances of interaction change in surprising and unexpected ways. In relation to the transcendence of things we can say that “the real lends itself to unending exploration; it is inexhaustible (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 378)” . To be sure, this is also the case for our encounters with other subjects, but there it turns into what we could call a meta- or second-order transcendence: others do not only lend themselves to unending exploration like objects, they also spontaneously lend themselves to unending explorations of different styles of unending exploration.

This insistence on the radical otherness of the other might at first seem like a minor technical point, but it actually is at the heart of why a consideration of intersubjectivity is so important for any adequate account of human cognition (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 455).

The authors draw our attention to the distinction between the otherness of any real object (object otherness) and the specific otherness of the other subject (intersubjective otherness). For them, intersubjective otherness could be said to be radical in comparison with object otherness because of the specific way the other subject eludes the grasp of the dynamics of constitution.

As many know, the idea of radical otherness is a key one in Levinas’ terminology. To understand what is at stake with this notion when used by the enactivists, let us first highlight the context in which they refer to it. This context is primarily and essentially epistemic or cognitive. Indeed, Froese and Di Paolo’s initial and central question is: How to give an account of high-level human cognition? The authors, as far as the work we are analyzing here is concerned, give no sign of any consideration regarding ethical issues.Footnote 4 For instance, they don’t consider any ethical signification in the experience of encountering the other or in the constitution of objectivity itself. Second, and more importantly, the way they use the concept of radical otherness, as the otherness of the other subject, does not imply any modification of the process through which sense is produced (sense-making) and thus does not indicate any breach beyond the sphere of constitution and ontology. On the contrary, this specific ungraspability of the other subject, or intersubjective otherness, is included in the way another subject, and the concurrent common world, are constituted, just like the object otherness is included in the way the real object is constituted. Like object otherness, intersubjective otherness is included as a constitutive part of the enacted world. In fact, the use of a mathematical notion in the expression second-order transcendence indicates that, although scaled up to a higher (meta) level, the otherness of the subject remains in the same domain as the otherness of the object; that is, the domain of constitution and ontology as we just saw in the previous section. For the subject as a constituent being, both objects and other subjects appear as other beings in the network of beings, although offering different levels of epistemic profiles.

It is true that the other subject is not reducible to an object, for she is also a perspective. Her presence may indeed change in a decisive way the ontological signification of the lived world, making it a common world, detaching the objectivity of the object from the sole perspective of the primordial subject. However, in the end, what is at stake in the intersubjective encounter does not exceed the realm of ontology and its epistemic dynamics. Intersubjective otherness, radical as enactivists want to see it, proves to be, ultimately, a variant of ontological otherness. This is a point that will be crucial to understanding the distinction between ethics and intersubjectivity in the Levinasian analysis.

Enactivists, thus, use the notion of radical otherness to point to a specific kind of ungraspability of the other subject, and in particular, to highlight the difference with object otherness (Froese and Di Paolo 2009). However, it must be noted that with this appeal to the notion of radical otherness, the enactivists do not want to state a definitive and radical unknowability of the other.

We don’t experience the other-in-interaction as totally obscure and inaccessible, nor as fully transparent […], but as something else: a protean pattern with knowable and unknowable surfaces and angles of familiarity that shapeshift as the interaction unfolds. (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007, p. 504).

For the enactivists, the knowability and the unknowability of the other compose in a dialectical way. The otherness of the other is said to be radical only to distinguish it from the object otherness but not to draw an absolute and definitive gap of inaccessibility between the subject and the other. This approach is consistent with the phenomenological description of the intersubjective constitution of an objective world.

3.2 Mishearing Levinas’ Message

Let us consider now how the Levinasian idea of radical otherness could be heard, or only misheard, from the enactive position just described. As long as the enactivists remain in the intersubjective and ontological approach they have adopted, it will be all the way coherent that the Levinasian philosophy sounds problematic for them. The enactivists think that the Levinasian way to embrace the question of otherness and ethics comes in conflict with some of their core theoretical commitments. This is the case when they understand Levinas’ view of otherness as not compatible with an intersubjective approach to sociality. Such a worry is expressed in Koubová (2014) when, quoting Zahavi (2005), she states:

[One strategy] for dealing with the opacity or alterity of the other in social interaction (…) emphasizes the radical alterity and non-transparency of the other (e.g., Lévinas, 1979, 89, Theory Theory, Simulation Theory). However, as Zahavi (2005, 175) mentions, “the difficulty with this view is that it often tends to emphasize the transcendence and elusiveness of the other to such extent that it not only denies the existence of a functioning intersubjectivity, but also the a priori status of intersubjectivity.” This is indeed the reason why the enactive theory rejects such an approach. (Koubová 2014, p. 61. Emphasis added).Footnote 5

Enactivists seem to understand the Levinasian idea of radical otherness, essentially, as an epistemic impossibility. In the context of social cognition and the problem of the other minds -the context in which Koubová (2014) considers the idea of alterity—it makes sense for them to associate the philosophy of Levinas with Theory and Simulation Theory, and reject it on that motive. As reviewed previously, for the enactivists, the other is never “totally obscure and unknowable”, but rather she is met as a compound of knowable and unknowable. For this reason, they reject any theory emphasizing an absolute unknowability of the other, and thus they reject Levinas’ idea of absolute otherness. However, we think this is precisely missing the point Levinas suggests, for the unknowability of the other he describes is not (or not only) an epistemic opacity but the call for a change of perspective over the signification induced in sociality. When Levinas insists on the transcendence and elusiveness of the other, his purpose is not to assert an absolute unknowability or inaccessibility of the other as another subject, but to point to another dimension of signification that is revealed in the social encounter. A signification that escapes the duality of the knowable and unknowable, or, if you will, the dialectical totality that unites what can be known and what cannot.Footnote 6

Another moment of resistance in front of Levinas’ philosophy can be found in Di Paolo et al. (2018).

If bodies bring forth a world through their enactments, then in facing another body I am confronted with a radical difference, I am confronted with someone else’s world, irreducible to mine. Such is, in enactive parlance, the metaphysical departure point of radical alterity for an ethics of the Other as articulated by Emmanuel Levinas (1979). But is alterity so radical in our account? Is it not the case that linguistic bodies are co-constituted in participation, and that inevitably and constantly they assimilate and accommodate alterity? (Di Paolo et al. 2018, p. 322).

Overthematizing the other (…) risks absolutizing alterity, whereas both at the intercorporeal level and in the constitution of linguistic bodies, self and others interpenetrate. (Di Paolo et al. 2018, p. 323).

Here, the enactivists see the Levinasian way of addressing radical alterity as in conflict with their approach to intersubjectivity, which they phrase in terms of co-constitution, participation, assimilation, accommodation, and interpenetration. They are suspicious of Levinas’ radicality as they think of it as emphasizing a rigid duality between the subject (or self) and the other, when in their view “[s]elf and other (or rather “selfing” and “othering”) are material processes and not metaphysical boundaries that precede these activities” (Di Paolo et al. 2018, p. 323).

With Levinas as a target, the enactivists claim that they want “to avoid walking those alleys that lead to dualism” (ibid.). In effect, as a part of their research program, the enactivists intend to address and overcome all sorts of traditional dualities (mind/body, subject/object, and self/other) through a declared dialectical approach (Di Paolo et al. 2018; Cuffari et al. 2015). As they write, “We must avoid situations of balance and equilibrium involving already constituted entities as premises. It is preferable to posit situations of metastability, conflict, tensions, and constituting relations” (Di Paolo et al. 2018, p. 142).

Now, if Levinas was really promoting an ontological or metaphysical duality, or denying the dialectical nature of intersubjective dynamics, that would be indeed a good reason for the enactivists to resist his philosophy. However, Levinas’ point is not about drawing yet another ontological distinction between two beings or two kinds of beings, between the subject and the other, but about pointing precisely to the limitations of ontology itself, be this conceived of in dualistic or dialectic terms. What Levinas promotes is a reorientation towards a different dimension of signification, a dimension that is not ontological but ethical.

As we will develop in Sect. 5, Levinas does not come frontally in conflict with the enactivists’ commitment to reject ontological dualisms. When the enactivists reject Levinas on the motive that he is “absolutizing otherness,” one should question what this absolutization is about. This absolutization is not about pushing to the limit a distinctional otherness or a difference otherness, nor any kind of ontological otherness, for any ontological otherness when pushed to its limit would still remain in the realm of ontology. The meaning of this absolutizing of otherness has more to do with a move of abstraction from the realm of being, not toward the abstraction of this or that theoretical idea about otherness, but towards an otherwise than being.Footnote 7 In the next section, we will see how Levinas motivates the necessity of this original dimension of sense in sociality.

4 Otherwise Than Being: Interrupting the Spontaneous Egoism of Conatus

Being, in a very general sense, is understood in its plain verbality, as a process; the process of being. Traditionally, Levinas observes, for a being (un étant), the fundamental dynamics of being (être) describes as an inherent inclination in persevering in being itself, an endeavor to persist in being itself; that is, as a process of identification, also known as conatus.

The essence [which Levinas, in Otherwise than Being…, understands as the process of being, or being as a process] thus works as an invincible persistence in essence, filling up every interval of nothingness which would interrupt its exercise. Esse is interesse; essence is interestedness [“L’essence est intéressement” in the original text]. (Levinas 1998, p. 4. Original emphasis, translation modified).

Levinas is here playing with the etymology of the French word intéressement, which we translate as interestedness; the fact of being interested or concerned. In the French word intéressement, Levinas finds the radical esse, the infinitive for being in Latin. For a being, being consists of maintaining its being. That is, in filling up any interval within and from itself, in being bound to itself. That is what the prefix inter stands for. Thus, when Levinas writes that “esse is interesse,” he means that being is a process of maintaining the continuity of an identity; that is, a process of identification. In his view, the bottom-line flaw of any approach to sense that develops as an ontology, as a discourse on being and beings, is that all the significations it can consider are necessarily indexed on the fundamental dynamics of being, which is to say, on processes of identification, and therefore necessarily develops as a philosophy of the same. According to him, philosophies of the same cannot do justice to the kind of significations that would imply the very interruption of those dynamics of identification, such as the ethical signification.

Of course, this identity a being persists in maintaining does not have to be static. The process of identification could include dynamics of change, and those changes could be shaped and induced by the participatory dynamics of intersubjectivity, as enactivists recognize. That is, the process of being, or being as a process, could include the integration of difference otherness, or any kind of ontological otherness. However, ontological otherness does not interrupt the process of being; rather, it is a part of it. In facing and integrating ontological alterity, the being confirms itself through its endeavor in maintaining itself, that is, through its conatus. From a phenomenological perspective, for the subject as a being:

The I is identification […] This identification is not a simple “restating” of the self: The “A is A” that characterizes the I is an “A anxious for A,” or an “A enjoying A,” always an “A bent over A.” The outside of me solicits it in need: the outside of me is for me. The tautology of ipseity is an egoism. (Levinas 1986, p. 345).

For the subject, the process of being as a process of identification cannot be reduced to a flat repetition of herself. It takes the detour of existence, whether described in terms of angst and concern or in terms of needs and enjoyment.Footnote 8 But in the end, however long and complicated this detour, the fundamental point for Levinas is that through existence the subject is always about herself; bent over herself, turned towards herself. For the subject, observes Levinas, the conatus is fundamentally an egoism.Footnote 9

Through the dynamics of concern and need, in the perspective of which the subject engages towards exteriority, the significations of the lived world are always indexed on this primitive egoism of the conatus. According to Levinas, as they are coherently articulated by the dynamics of being, the subject and her world unite in an egoic system, an egoic ontological totality.

Facing this classical approach to subjectivity and sense as produced in the perspective of being, Levinas wonders: How justice can be made to the ethical dimension of sociality, for instance, the ethical dimension involved in the generosity of a gift, or even in basic politeness, if all the significations experienced by the subject are indexed on the dynamics of its conatus, that is on a self-centered and egoic concern? Indeed, in his view, the fundamental signification of ethics is the very interruption of the inherent egoism of existence and its conversion into a for-the-other (Levinas 1979, 1998). For the subject, when encountering the other ethically, the primacy and the spontaneity of her egoic concern get questioned and suspended. When the other calls for help, for care, for the subject it is not only about herself anymore. In an ethical inversion, with respect to all variants of ontological otherness, the other now comes first. The other as other operates the ethical switch (Métais and Villalobos 2021) by questioning, not in an intellectual way but in an embodied and concrete one, the spontaneous primacy and self-centeredness of conatus. For Levinas, the ethical experience is not linked primarily to the acknowledgement (be it non-intellectual, implicit, or a priori) of another conatus, but to the interruption, for the subject, of her own conatus. The other as other reveals (herself, himself, itself) as this very questioning; that is, immediately, as ethics.

Below or beyond essence, signification is […] disinterestedness and gratuity or gratitude; the breakup of essence is ethics. (Levinas 1998, p. 14. Translation modified).

The gratuity of a truly ethical gift implies the breakup of the intrinsic interestedness of being. There is no original source of ethical signification to be found in the realm of being, for precisely, ethics reveals as the interruption of the train of being. And for Levinas, this interruption could not be a consequence of any ontological circumstance, for everything happening into the realm of being returns to the consistent totality of the ontological domain. Being, as ruled by a fundamental process of identification, cannot produce a radical breach within itself.Footnote 10 The origin of ethics is not contained in being but calls for another dimension of sense: otherwise than being. This radical alterity impacts the ontological domain neither through an abstract theoretical level as a consequence of reasoning nor as an inner revelation from within the self, but in the very concreteness of care relations.

For Levinas, the encounter with the face of the other is the very event of ethics as the primordial exposure of the intrinsic egoism of being to a command, a call for help, for care, for gift. In ethics, the sense of the engagement of subjectivity towards exteriority switches from a purely ontological venture to an ethical responsibility. The very way subjectivity itself produces and endures signification is what Levinas takes us to revise to integrate the reversibility of the egoic conatus into the gratuity and the disinterestedness of goodness.

At the experiential level, the ethical dimension does not reveal its sense through the other as another conatus but as the interruption of the subject’s conatus. In the experience of social life, or in the experience of life as social, intersubjectivity and ethics are intertwined in a very intimate way. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the source of the ethical signification is to be found in intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity and ethics belong to distinct and independent dimensions of signification of sociality.

5 Enactivism and the Ethical Dimension of Sociality

5.1 Ethics as a New Dimension of Signification in the Complex and Multidimensional Phenomenon of Sociality

In the previous section, we reviewed the Levinasian critique towards an existentialist approach to life and sociality. According to Levinas, existentialism, as focused on the process of being (i.e., as an ontology), cannot break with the dynamics of conatus and its intrinsic egoism, leaving no room for ethics.

How does this critique relate to enactivism? Enactivists, in following Jonas, and through him Heidegger, have endorsed in the fundamental the existentialist approach to life criticized by Levinas (Villalobos and Ward 2015, 2016; Weber and Varela 2002; Thompson 2007). For the enactivists, life is essentially a process of self-affirmation, a continuous effort to persist in being.

Life is thus a self-affirming process that brings forth or enacts its own identity and makes sense of the world from the perspec­tive of that identity. The organism’s “concern,” its “natural purpose,” is to keep on going, to continue living, to affirm and reaffirm itself in the face of imminent not-being. (Thompson 2007, p. 153).

The constant regenerative activity of me­tabolism endows life with a minimal “concern” to carry on being. Spinoza called this concern conatus, the effort and power of life to pre­serve itself, to stay in existence. (Thompson 2007, p. 155).

The enactive subject is primarily concerned about her own being. She makes sense and thus enacts a world in the perspective of a fundamental existential concern that, as Thompson (2007) correctly recognizes, is at the same time a conatus. This does not mean or presuppose, of course, that the subject is alone in front of a world. We have seen that the subject is always already situated in an intersubjective medium within which she encounters other subjects. It rather means that, for the subject, every signification produced in sense-making, including participatory sense-making, is indexed on her conatus and hence on a certain kind of egoism. United by the coupling dynamics of sense-making, the enactive subject and her world form a coherent and consistent ontological totality, which, because it is conatus driven, is also an egoic system.

In the graph (Fig. 1), we represent this ontological totality with a white rectangular plane in which the subject appears as a grey disk and the other subject as a reddish one. We graphically evoke the intrinsic consistency of the egoic system by drawing the domain as a finite rectangle.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The ethical dimension of signification (red beam) is not contained into the ontological domain (white plane). It takes a change of perspective over the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of sociality to appreciate the entanglement of ethics with intersubjectivity (Graphic design by Anastasia Cabrera)

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Now, it should be noticed that this rectangular plane, focused from a frontal view, corresponds to the bidimensional frame that the enactivists traditionally use to represent the dynamics of sense-making in general, be it individual or social. Social sense-making, which enactivists describe in terms of participatory sense-making and intersubjectivity (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007), belongs to the general scheme of sense-making and obeys, in the fundamental, to the same existentialist logic targeted by Levinas.

It is here, against this plane of ontological totality that remains coherent despite the presence of otherness,Footnote 11 against this egoic system that remains egoic no matter whether we engage in individual or social sense-making, that ethical otherness appears as another dimension of signification. Ethical signification, Levinas teaches us, can’t be contained in the ontological domain precisely because it signifies the very interruption of the dynamics of being and its inherent egoism. Ethics arises as the very interruption of the spontaneity of the processes through which ontological significations, including the ontological dimension of sociality, are produced.

Levinas’ message, in the end, is that the ethical dimension of sense cannot be seen from an existential perspective (where the “cannot” does not express a “should not” but rather a sort of “visual/conceptual impossibility”). That is why, in our graphical metaphor (see Fig. 1), we operate a rotation to make visible this ethical dimension, represented as a third dimension orthogonal to the ontological plane. Along that dimension, we represent the flow of alterity as an infinite beam of red light, in contrast with the ontological domain described as an enclosed totality.Footnote 12

5.2 The Enactive Viewpoint and the Trap of Intersubjectivity

We conjecture that, so far, the specific (frontal, bidimensional) point of view that the enactivists have adopted on the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of sociality would not let them see the ethical dimension of sense described by Levinas. The angle through which they have been portraying sociality, i.e., the angle of ontology and intersubjectivity, makes it indeed difficult to hear Levinas’ message.

Enactivism focuses on intersubjectivity (Cummins and De Jesus 2016; Froese and Di Paolo 2009) and takes a dialectical approach to it, emphasizing a processual ontology that recognizes tensions and ever-changing dynamics of transparency/opacity between self and other (Di Paolo et al. 2018). By doing so, the enactivists highlight a collective dimension of sense and take some distance with individualism in favour of a fundamentally inclusive and otherness fueled level of signification. This is all good. However, when the enactivists might think that this move is the right path to follow in order to grab the ethical dimension of sociality, Levinas’ critical lens warns us of a trap.

By taking this intersubjective approach the enactivists enrich the understanding of the ontological and epistemological dimension of sociality, but they don’t put themselves in a position of taking distance from the very ontologicality of said approach. In particular, they don’t put themselves in the position of questioning the existentialist premise on which the central concept of sense-making is built. The enactivists, correctly, insist on the fact that within intersubjectivity the subjects maintain the autonomy of their existential structures. As subjects encounter each other through the dialectical tensions of intersubjectivity, they co-constitute each other. Nevertheless, in this process of co-constitution the very structure of subjectivity as conatus driven is not interrupted or even questioned. In fact, as Levinas observes, there is no fundamental reason why this ontological otherness of the other subject should stop or interrupt by itself the spontaneous egoism of existence.

The trap of which Levinas warns us is that the more we deepen the exploration within intersubjectivity, perhaps in hopes of grabbing in the end the source of ethical signification, the more the existentialist premise on which this exploration is built gets forgotten, and the more difficult it gets to step back from it.

Like form and matter, if the reader allows us this Aristotelian metaphor, intersubjective otherness and ethical otherness might be always entangled in the way we experience sociality, but nevertheless they are fundamentally distinct. Without this insight, thinking from inside the intersubjective trap, we think the enactivists are incorrect when they suggest that a practice of otherness involves inherently ethical concerns (Di Paolo et al. 2018, p. 330). For, as we have shown, they inadequately address the type of otherness at stake in ethics.Footnote 13 To truly hear Levinas’ message, it takes a step back from intersubjectivity, a rotation in the view of sociality, to question subjectivity itself and examine what kind of transformation is at play for her to experience a signification she is not the source of.

Through his philosophy, Levinas’ delivers this important message: not every signification induced in sociality is to be drawn out of the fact that the other is another subject, or that there is, from the beginning, a medium of intersubjectivity within which subjects encounter each other. That is, intersubjectivity might not be the only descriptive/explanatory path to embrace the complex phenomenon of sociality. Levinas’ philosophy teaches us that, in sociality, there are significations for which what matters first is not the commonality of a shared structure of subjectivity (be it conceived of as primary or derivative), nor the participation in a transcendent dynamic of us. In his view, ethics signifies as a radical switch in the structure of subjectivity itself; a switch of what it is like to be a subject, from conatus driven existence to other inspired responsibility (Métais and Villalobos 2021).

5.3 The Entanglement Between Ethics and the Ontological Dimension of Sociality

If so far we have insisted on the radical distinction between the ontological dimension of sense and the ethical, extra-ontological one, it is important to make clear that despite this irreducible distance, they are nonetheless intimately entangled and articulated in the concrete ethical experience. In Levinas’ perspective, there cannot be a purely ethical experience, for the experience of ethics implies the very exposure of being to otherness. Our concrete ethical experience is always an entanglement between extra-ontological significations and significations that belong to the ontological plane such as, for instance, the epistemological ones (e.g., perception, transparency/opacity). For Levinas, otherwise than being is always revealed through, or in the hollow of, ontological dynamics; caught in, interwoven with the network of ontological significations.

Encountered through the very concreteness of relations with others, the ethical otherness, represented in our graph by the red color, intersects, penetrates, and spreads into the ontological domain, propagating its peculiar signification within it. It is through the face of the other that the ethical command irrupts into the ontological domain, as a call for care, “soliciting a response” (Levinas 1979, p. 225). That is why, in our representation, the ethical dimension of sense intersects the ontological plane through the red disk representing the other, which gives the (infinite) cylinder shape to the flow of alterity.

As an inescapable command to care, the face subjects subjectivity and requires the inversion of her conatus-driven intrinsic egoism towards a for-the-other (Levinas 1979, p. 178; Métais and Villalobos 2021). Called to respond, subjectivity is now to be described as a responsibility. When considering ethics, the description of what it is like to be a subject includes the very exposure of the conatus to a command.

To give, to-be-for-another, despite oneself, but in interrupting the for-oneself, is to take the bread out of one’s own mouth, to nourish the hunger of another with one’s own fasting. (Levinas 1998, p. 56).

In responsibility, the subject’s engagement in the ontological domain is invested by a command of which she has not been the source. This engagement of the subject towards the world’s exteriority is inspired by a signification of goodness (Levinas 1998).

In our graph, the call is represented with a red arrow going from the other to the subject; the response, which is to take the form of a gift, is represented with a red arrow going from the subject towards the other. The ethical tension of responsibility and goodness, the inversion of the conatus in a for-the-other, is represented as a dotted line that articulates, within the very structure of subjectivity, the call and the engagement towards a response.

The entanglement of ethics with the ontological domain of signification is complex and multilayered, and it is beyond the scope of the present contribution to try an exhaustive overview of it. Nevertheless, we can briefly illustrate the idea through the paradigmatic example Levinas often refers to; the gift of a piece of bread (Levinas 1998). In this example, an intersubjective signification intertwines with an ethical command. First, for the subject, the piece of bread is constituted as an object of the world. It is perceived, for instance, as three-dimensional, as manifesting colors and smell, etc. It is constituted as eatable, as having an enjoyable taste. But not only it is constituted from the sole perspective of the subject. It is also intersubjectively and intercorporealy constituted. It appears as perceivable by the other, and of course, as eatable by the other. As a thing of the intersubjective world, the piece of bread is thus ontologically and epistemologically shared, so to speak.

However, as far as only the intersubjective and ontological dimension of sense is considered, there is no ethical injunction for the piece of bread to be ethically shared -that is, snatched out of the primitive egoism of conatus to be given to the other. It is only because the flow of radical otherness, coming from an extra-ontological dimension, penetrates the world (through the face of the other) and propagates among its objects that the piece of bread appears now for the subject as something ethically givable. An ethical signification, as the very exposure of egoic enjoyment to a demand, is now involved in the shared experience of a piece of bread.

With this basic example, we see how the ethical otherness that irrupts into the world through the face of the other propagates into the realm of things. This spreading of the ethical signification in the ontological domain, making beings givable, is represented in our graph with the red stain that soaks the very fabric of being. In ethics, the signification of the lived world is not only indexed on the subject’s conatus, but also invested by the signification of goodness inspired by the other.

6 Discussion

In this paper, we have argued that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas might complement and enrich the enactive approach to sociality, especially when it comes to a comprehensive understanding of ethics. As we see it, whereas the enactive approach enlightens ontological significations of the social experience, Levinas’ approach describes significations that are positively extra-ontological (otherwise than being) and complement the former ones.

However, as we saw in Sect. 3, the enactivists do not seem to be so sure about this complementarity. There are (understandable) worries regarding the radicality of the Levinasian conception of alterity and its alleged incompatibility with the dialectical (i.e., processual, anti-dualist) approach of enactivism. In this final section, we try to dissipate such worries.

First, we have made clear throughout the paper that ethical otherness is not to be confused with epistemic opacity. The radicality alluded to by Levinas refers to the necessity of going extra-ontological in the space of social signification, and not to an extreme of unknowability in the intersubjective domain. Also, when Levinas emphasizes the radical alterity of the other, he is not denying “the existence of a functioning intersubjectivity”, as Koubová (2014, p. 61) fears. Levinas’ motivation is not to exclude theories that take an ontological approach to sociality. He rather expresses a warning as, in his view, such theories cannot by themselves illuminate a decisive dimension of sense, namely the ethical dimension.Footnote 14 This being said, Levinas, of course, does not (need to) deny that the phenomenal dimension of sociality could include, as enactivists describe, some kind of access to the other’s perspective (e.g., some kind of intercorporeal sensitivity to the other’s sensations).Footnote 15

Second, as evoked in Sect. 4, when considering the ontological dimension of sense, Levinas acknowledges the dynamical essence of being. Being is described as a process. A process of identification through which the ontological otherness of the world is embraced and absorbed; a process that includes dynamics of change. So, we see no direct confrontation between Levinas’ philosophy and the enactive idea that, in contact with others, the subject’s identity can change through the assimilation of the (ontological) otherness of the other (Di Paolo et al. 2018).

Finally, our presentation of the ethical articulation between being and otherwise than being has made obvious that, with Levinas, the relation between the subject and the other can’t be assimilated to an ontological duality. Thereby, we see no strong incompatibility between the Levinasian ethics and the anti-dualist commitments of the enactivists since their fight against dualisms take place in the ontological plane. Levinas’ purpose is not to draw some rigid metaphysical boundaries into the ontological domain, nor to assess the existence of a transcendent being for whom radical otherness would be an ontological quality. What is ultimately irreducible in Levinas’ view is not an ontological distinction between the subject and the other but the subject’s responsibility towards the other. This idea of an irreducible responsibility does not conflict with the idea of a dialectical production of intersubjective significations.Footnote 16

Thus, as we see it, Levinas’ ethics and the enactive dialectical approach of intersubjectivity could, at least in principle, be articulated in a comprehensive approach to sociality. Of course, much more work needs to be done to even start to walk in that direction. Despite their common phenomenological and anti-intellectualist approach to human experience, and their shared emphasis on embodiment (Métais and Villalobos 2021), there are deep conceptual distances between the enactive approach and Levinas’ philosophy that need careful analysis.

One that might prove to be particularly delicate in the context of the present discussion, is the seemingly insurmountable distance between the naturalistic spirit of enactivism as a scientific research program, which aims to give an ontological account of meaning and value, and the extra-ontological approach of Levinas. If the dynamics of enactive sense-making, in all their variants and aspects, fully belong to the realm of being-in-a-world, then incorporating the Levinasian idea of an extra-ontological dimension of signification would profoundly impact the core of enactivism as a research program.

If Levinas’ insights about ethics prove to be valuable enough, would enactivism be available to expand its horizon as a research program beyond the ontological framework of conventional science? We don’t know, but we see no strong reason to exclude this possibility a priori. Science in general, but perhaps especially the enactive science of the mind and experience, is evolving. As Varela once put it, “science (…) is a living body, it moves and transforms itself with an ever-receding horizon” (2004, p. 191). For a research program that was born searching precisely for an expansion of the horizons of mainstream cognitive science, bringing insights from phenomenology and Eastern traditions such as Buddhism, an invitation to move the frontiers of research beyond ontological dimensions should not represent a threat.