Reducing the One to the Other: Kant, Levinas, and the problem of religious experience

ENThis article concerns die nature of experience, and more specifically, religious experiencing.1 A set of questions arise from this concern: What is the meaning of religious experience? To what extent is a philosophical account of religious experience possible? Is the religious dimension reducible to ethical acdons? My primär)7 purpose is to address these questions in relation to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, but not without putting his constellation of thoughts on this matter in relation to philosophical problems raised by Kant. While there are obvious differences between Kant and Levinas on moral experience, and while Levinas (like Max Scheler) has helped us to be more attuned to the uniqueness of the other person where moral experience is concerned, I still find important experiential limitations to Levinas’s philosophical articulation, despite this contribution. The limitations concern the status of religious experience.