For the past 15 years, scholars in education have focused on Levinas’s work largely in terms of his understanding of alterity, of the self-Other relation, of ethics as ‘first philosophy’ and the significance these concepts have on rethinking educational theory and practice. What I do in this paper, by way of method, is to start from a slightly different place, from the assertion that there is indeed something ‘new’ to be explored in Levinas’s philosophy – both in terms of ideas (...) to be found within his work, and also in terms of the demands educational ideas and practices place on his work from without. That is, how does the actual, lived specificity of educational encounters occasion a different set of questions than one would otherwise pose if thinking only from within the discipline of philosophy, or from a purely theoretical point of view? In light of this, this paper explores Levinas’s ideas of sensibility, materiality, and embodiment. I see these not simply as supports for his ethical thought, but as the very core of incarnation without which his ethics makes no sense. I propose that these ideas are quintessentially pedagogical aspects of his thought – that is, they are always already rooted in a relational context of change and alteration of the subject. (shrink)

This essay responds to the machine question in the affirmative, arguing that artifacts, like robots, AI, and other autonomous systems, can no longer be legitimately excluded from moral consideration. The demonstration of this thesis proceeds in four parts or movements. The first and second parts approach the subject by investigating the two constitutive components of the ethical relationship—moral agency and patiency. In the process, they each demonstrate failure. This occurs not because the machine is somehow unable to achieve what is (...) considered necessary and sufficient to be a moral agent or patient but because the characterization of agency and patiency already fail to accommodate others. The third and fourth parts respond to this problem by considering two recent alternatives—the all-encompassing ontocentric approach of Luciano Floridi’s information ethics and Emmanuel Levinas’s eccentric ethics of otherness. Both alternatives, despite considerable promise to reconfigure the scope of moral thinking by addressing previously excluded others, like the machine, also fail but for other reasons. Consequently, the essay concludes not by accommodating the alterity of the machine to the requirements of moral philosophy but by questioning the systemic limitations of moral reasoning, requiring not just an extension of rights to machines, but a thorough examination of the way moral standing has been configured in the first place. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5–38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to (...) Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman’s notion of ‘moral impulse’ to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the ‘moral’ requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM. (shrink)

From a Levinasian perspective, the interaction between two people is an ethical encounter, a face-to-face interaction that calls the subject into question and renders them vulnerable to the ritual of rupture. But what if your embodiment renders you, in the moment of encounter, less than human? How can we bring the imperative of pre-ontological responsibility to bear on the present moment, fractured as we are in our understandings of embodiment and the hauntings of history? In this paper, I hope to (...) respond to the previous question by articulating the problems and possibilities of Levinas’s thought in conversation with urgent considerations of racially-bodied Others. To begin, I briefly explore critiques of Levinas’s Eurocentrism. Then, drawing on the concept of incarnate historiography, I examine the difficulties of skin as “seen.” Next, I elaborate the prospect of how diachronous time affords a second register that takes seriously the historical experience of pain and oppression as responsibility. Finally, I argue that the recognition of responsibility is essential to education, proposing pedagogy that preserves alterity and makes space for the new. (shrink)

It has long been accepted that one of Levinas’ major concerns is to establish an ethics of responsibility for the ‘other.’ Yet it has been deemed for decades, even by Levinasians, that his approach to that concern is ‘unsystematic’ and ‘not consistent.’ That situation arose because Levinas’ four terms for ‘other’ are difficult to translate, so his terms were first addressed by adopting English conventions. Such conventions have furthered Levinas scholarship, but our aim is to consider Levinas’ consistency: Hence we (...) undertake the first English-language assessment of the rigour of Levinas’ approach in 1961 to the ‘other’ by means of all four terms. To do so, we follow a ‘formal structure’ that Levinas develops from the tradition of phenomenological logic—mostly Husserl’s. We hope the result will palliate worries about Levinas’ rigor, and allow new ways to engage with his work. (shrink)

This article draws on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to consider, from an ethical perspective, the current transparency and accountability agenda in Australian schooling. It focuses on the case of the My School website and the argument that transparent publication of comparative performance data via the website provides a basis for making things better in schooling. The article argues that while technologies of accountability may have potential benefits, they cannot provide a basis for this ethical project. Instead, the ethical experience (...) described by Levinas arises from an encounter with opacity in the face-to-face relation with the Other, who is harshly illuminated by the transparency promised through calculation and comparison. Such encounters with opacity hold the potential to disrupt the politics of visibility promoted by transparency agendas and provide an alternative to the growing practice of 'accountability at a distance' based on performance data. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the relation between reciprocity and ethics as it concerns participation in the world of work and organizations. Tracing discussions of business and organizational ethics that concern themselves, respectively, with the ethics of self-interest, the ethics of reciprocity, and the ethics of generosity, we explore the possibility of ethical relations with those who are seen as radically different, and who are divested of anything worth exchanging. To address this we provide a reading of Franz Kafka’s famous novella The (...) Metamorphosis and relate to it as a means to extend our understanding of business and organizational ethics. This story, we demonstrate, yields insight into the unbearable demands of ethics as they relate to reciprocity and generosity. On this basis, we draw conclusions concerning the mutually constitutive ethical limitations of reciprocity and generosity as ethical touchstones for organizational life while simultaneously accepting the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of exceeding those limits. In such a condition, we argue, ethics is not best served by adopting idealistic or moralizing positions regarding generosity but rather by working in the indissoluble tensions between self and other. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical interrogation of the politics of hope in relation to suffering in the world. It begins with a critique of the assumptions and aspirations of ‘philosophies of hope’ that assume a Levinasian responsibility for the suffering-Other. Such approaches to thinking hope reveal an underlying coloniality of ontology, of totality/exteriority, which defines Being and Non-Being, presence and absence, in totality. Consistent with past colonial rationalities, the logics of salvation and rescue define, still, these contemporary envisionings of the (...) ‘white man’s burden’ in relation to the suffering Other. A decolonial ontology of Exteriority, of an incommensurable radical Other-Being against Totality, is instead presented. The focus here shifts from the passive suffering-Other that is the object of rescue, to the Radical Other that is the author of encounter. By returning Exteriority to theory and by opening up theory’s locations of enunciation, the implications of responsibility, in thinking hope, become open also to interrogation and vulnerable to unsatisfactory conclusions. (shrink)