The evolution of conceptions of the subject: from cogito to the ethical “Self”

The aim of this research is to identify the transition from the internal reflection of the “Self” to the recognition of the “Other” as a substance constituting the intersubjective horizon – the evolution of the subject from the Cartesian cogito to Levinas’s phenomenology. The article examines the paradigm of subjectivity not as a linear historical process, but as a shift from the classical model of the autonomous cogito to relational and ethical subjectivity, in which the “Other” plays a constitutive role. This perspective allows for a new way of interpreting the history of the evolution of the concept of “subject” – not as the development of “self-consciousness”, but in the context of changing the structure of relations between the “Self” and the “Other”. The scientific novelty of the research lies in its first attempt to unite traditionally disparate philosophical lineages: rationalism, idealism, transcendentalism, the philosophy of dialogue, and ethical phenomenology, in order to construct a unified problematic line reflecting the transformation of the concept of the subject from self-sufficient to correlated with alterity. As a result of the study, a conceptual clarification of the notion of the “ethical Self” is proposed: the subject not as a closed instance of consciousness, but as a structure emerging in the act of encountering the “Other” and responding to its challenge.