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This paper first explores the relation of aesthetics to ethics from Jean-Luc Nancy’s perspective of “the sublime totality.” In illuminating “the sublime totality,” I argue in the early part that Kant must be considered as the pivotal figure for the debate on postmodern theory of aesthetics and ethics. Taking Kant’s discussion of the sublime in The Critique of Judgment as the basis of the argument, I first explore the binary opposition, or the principle of contrast between two mutually exclusive sides -- imagination and reason, pleasure and pain, and the finite ontological comprehension and the infinite. In so doing, I probe deeply into the sublime sentiment that arises in the middle dimension. Then I argue from a Levinasian ethical viewpoint that the sublime totality that takes place beyond the maximum of ontological emotions of the reader of a literary text is the ethical way in which the reader opens her self to the other, the wholly outside of her understanding of the text and of her comprehension as a whole. I not only discuss Levinasian ethics but examine the ideas of such ethical postmodernists as Lyotard and Deleuze. This is primarily a philosophical paper, and toward the end, I discuss Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” as an example of a short literary text to validate my philosophical argument
