The Subject of Freedom

Is freedom our most essential belonging the intimate source of self-mastery an inalienable right? Or is it something foreign an other that constitutes subjectivity a challenge to our notion of autonomy? To Basterra the subjectivity we call free embodies a relationship with an irreducible otherness that at once exceeds it and animates its core.Tracing Kant’s concept of freedom from the Critique of Pure Reason to his practical works Basterra elaborates his most revolutionary insights by setting them in dialogue with Levinas’s Otherwise than Being. Levinas’s text she argues offers a deep critique of Kant that follows the impulse of his thinking to its most promising consequences. The complex concepts of freedom autonomy and subjectivity that emerge from this dialogue have the potential to energize today’s ethical and political thinking.