As we have seen in this earlier post Levinas argues that artistic representation allows us to step back and see things outside of their functional locations in the economic world. We are forced to thematize the represented objects in ways that are new. This is not necessarily a disinterested and theoretical view, as it could equally be a disturbing and uncomfortable view. The work of art forces us to recollect the forgotten, untypified and in some ways perhaps even fearful (insofar as incomprehensible), materiality of experience.

This suggests that art is contra an instrumental reason; namely the instrumental rationality of scientific abstract classification that converts all things into tools. In this mode of cognition we relate to things only to the extent that we put them to use. From this perspective, the notion of something being genuinely concrete, particular, unique, non-fungible, or incommensurable is lost. This abstract classification destroys the auratic individuality of things while conditioning us to understand objects as useful specimens. This egocentric mode of understanding leads us to believe that concepts capture objects, and the world is thus made to fit the abstract idea.

Adorno argued that instrumental reason misidentifies things when reducing their complex existences to a generalized concept. The concept’s inability to accommodate the non-identical demonstrates this deficiency and the thing’s particularity will remain overlooked and in reason’s blind spot.

Similarly for Levinas. All attempts to contain the Other within the Same will end with the Other overflowing the same and continually breaching the categories placed over it.

Nick Smith argues