Abstract
How do we establish objectivity when each person’s perspective is uniquely subjective? Borges’s “The Writing of the God” shows how an epistemically isolated subject is incapable of ever arriving at a robust sense of objectivity without reference to an Other. Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretive triangulation posits that the Other’s external perspective establishes objectivity by making the subject aware of the limits of his or her perception. Emmanuel Levinas suggests that the face of the Other establishes ethics as first philosophy through a primordial, affective discourse. The ethical relation is what undergirds the questions of epistemology which Davidson addresses.
Degree
MA
College and Department
Humanities; Spanish and Portuguese
Rights
http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Lund, Brendan Kurt, "Connecting the Dots: The Ontology and Ethics of Intersubjectivity in Borges’s “The Writing of the God”" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 8280.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8280
Date Submitted
2019-04-01
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd11132
Keywords
subjectivity, objectivity, ethics, epistemology, Borges
Language
english