To paraphrase one of Levinas's own dicta, he shares with the medievalists a common hermeneutical temperament and disposition, i.e., "Literature as first ethics." Like philosophy, literature carries its ultimate telos as an ethical exigency, a
heteronomy and quotidian praxis.
But the principle of the Middle Ages is a
heteronomy in the form of clericalism; a return to that can be a counsel of despair, and it would be at the cost of intellectual honesty.
A common misinterpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics sees the habitual training into virtue by copying the activity of someone who is virtuous as a species of
heteronomy. Thus, the question that presents itself is, how and when does one move, in terms of moral psychology, from copying virtue without being virtuous to the state of character we call virtue?
What we might be subject to can be explored in various ways, for example,
heteronomy and ethics (Levinas), an unconscious (Freud), writing and difference (Derrida), language (Lacan).
The alternative is
heteronomy, that is, the authority of ethics is imposed externally upon the human being.
Among the key conceptual topics addressed are the idea of society as a form of self-creation, the distinction between autonomy and
heteronomy if both are forms of social-historical self-creation, the concepts of the "imaginary" and of "social imaginary significations," the nature of the self and its relations with the world, the ontological implications of the notion of the self-creation of the human psyche, and how to reconcile the postulate of fundamental ontological indeterminancy with the reality of autonomous determination of the human psyche and the social-historical.
First, insist on
heteronomy, on an authority outside oneself.
However, as Piaget pointed out, this type of classroom atmosphere fosters intellectual and moral
heteronomy, thus limiting students' ability to make their own decisions (Piaget, 1973).
The present paper attempts to combine the traditional moral education with online interactivity education, the self-discipline with
heteronomy, the ethical theoretical education with cultural edification, and the social education with the family and the school education so as to strengthen moral education through network at school.
Relevant here are two claims Kant makes: autonomy or freedom is necessary for an individual to be a "person," and this claim admits of no exceptions; that is, any admixture of
heteronomy in one's moral maxims or any treatment by others as anything other than an end in oneself compromises one's moral personhood.