Among the most neglected of Albert Camus? literary works is his play The misunderstanding. Composed while Camus was in exile in occupied France, and first performed on stage in 1944, The misunderstanding depicts the events that unfold when a man returns, without declaring his identity, to a home he left 20 years ago. Unrecognized, he is killed by his mother and sister for financial gain. This article draws on ideas from Emmanuel Levinas in identifying and discussing some of the key (...) ethical and educational themes in the text. It is argued that the forms of misunderstanding evident in Camus? play mirror those exhibited in pedagogical institutions such as schools. The misunderstanding demonstrates that what is often missing in our communicative relations is careful attention to the Other. Camus does not offer us any easy way out when confronting the impossibility of fully knowing ourselves and others; instead, he shows that we must acknowledge the suffering this brings and take responsibility for it. (shrink)

This article is an inquiry into how the relationship between the principle of non-contradiction and the limits of thought has been understood by thinkers as diverse as Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas, and Graham Priest. While Heidegger and Levinas focus on the question of temporality and Priest takes a formal approach, all these philosophers effectively maintain that the principle of non-contradiction imposes a restriction on thought that disables it from adequately accounting for its own limits and thus what lies beyond those limits, (...) the implication being that the violation of the principle is necessary for such an accounting to take place. However, the ultimate argument here is that, contrary to Priest’s interpretation, Hegel’s philosophy can be convincingly read as supporting the idea that the mind’s ability to go beyond any particular limit of thought can actually be said to involve an adherence to a normative demand to locate and dispel the contradictions that emerge through the very setting of determinative limits. This is a non-formal consistency that evinces a “logic” that is unknowingly followed by the Heideggerian and Levinasian phenomenological philosophies of transcendence. (shrink)

There is no consensus regarding whether Gilles Deleuze offers a cogent theory of the Other. Deleuze develops the notion of the Other-structure, but given his scarce remarks on this concept, his treatment of this issue is debated. This article argues that to elucidate Deleuze's philosophy of the Other, his notion of the Other-structure must be analyzed in parallel to Edmund Husserl's intersubjective theory. This comparison, made possible by Natalie Depraz's reading of the Husserlian alterity, reveals nuanced phenomenological traces in Deleuze's (...) Other-structure and its implicated structural moments while substantiating his affirmation of the Otherless world, as an impetus to surpass phenomenology. (shrink)

Habermas’ theory of communicative action is explored as an orientation to the question of understanding which negotiates a pathway between two opposing (and complementary) theoretical frameworks—namely, hermeneutical-relational and empirical-analytical frameworks. His perspective grounds speech, action and understanding in the ethics of human relations. In his approach, understanding is fixed by particular events or situations about which intersubjective agreement must be achieved through the offer and acceptance of reasons that simultaneously orient actors to three worlds: the objective, the social and the (...) personal worlds. This approach raises the question as to whether the process of abstracting from the particular event to the general form, through such rational discourse, might create systems of understanding which silence individual expression and naming, particularly if such expression involves an identity that is not shared with others in the group. In other words, is the origin of an event or situation necessarily a null point for all actors? As this question is explored, metaphor comes to the fore as a complementary process of showing that which cannot be grounded in the dominant system of understanding. The pivot role of naming in the formal structure of Godel’s First Incompleteness Theorem for Number Theory demonstrates the challenge to Habermas’ theory. (shrink)

Other people figure in our experience of the world; they strike us as unique and gen- uinely other. This paper explores whether a Husserlian account of empathy as the way in which we constitute an intersubjective world can account for the uniqueness and otherness of other people in our experience. I contend that it can’t. I begin by explicating Husserl’s theory of empathy, paying particular attention to the reduction to a purely egoic sphere and the steps that ostensibly permit a (...) subject to re-inhabit a world of others from out of this sphere. In querying Husserl’s theory, I consider a series of problems, raised by Zhida Luo, concerning the apparent centrality of bod- ily similarity in empathy. I sketch Luo’s solution, which involves a shift to tactile similarity. While it makes for a better theory of empathy, this solution isn’t sufficient to make room for the givenness of another person not originally predicated on simi- larity. To clarify what’s at issue here, I turn to the Husserlian pictures of empathy presented by Heinz Kohut and Edith Stein. I conclude with a remark about what might be required, given the inability of Husserlian empathy to make room for the experience of others as singular and other, for a picture of our phenomenal life to have a shape that accounts for the coexistence of empathy to others who are like oneself and hospitality to others as genuine others. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical implications of the growing integration of consumption into the heart of the employment relationship. Human resource management (HRM) practices increasingly draw upon the values and practices of consumption, constructing employees as the 'consumers' of 'cafeteria-style' benefits and development opportunities. However, at the same time employees are expected to market themselves as items to be consumed on a corporate menu. In relation to this simultaneous position of consumer/consumed, the employee is expected to actively engage in the (...) commodification of themselves, performing an appropriate organizational identity as a necessary part of being a successful employee. This article argues that the relationship between HRM and the simultaneously consuming/consumed employee affects the conditions of possibility for ethical relations within organizational life. It is argued that the underlying 'ethos' for the integration of consumption values into HRM practices encourages a self-reflecting, self-absorbed subject, drawing upon a narrow view of individualised autonomy and choice. Referring to Levinas' perspective that the primary ethical relation is that of responsibility and openness to the Other, it is concluded that these HRM practices affect the possibility for ethical being. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's reversibility thesis argues that self, other and world are inherently relational, interdependent at the level of ontology. What is at stake in the reversibility thesis is whether it overcomes skeptical objections in both assuring real communication and avoiding solipsism in assuring real difference; the Other must be a genuine, irreducible Other. It is objected that across the domains of reversibility, symmetry and reciprocity are not guaranteed. I argue that this is a non-problem; rather the potentialities for asymmetry and non (...) reciprocity in fact guarantee the irreducibility of the Other; reversibility needs to be appreciated as dialectical or aesthetic, not as a literal or ‘mechanistic’ reversal. A further criticism targets the viability of ontology itself, whether alterity is ever compatible with ontology. This paper considers these objections from two of Merleau-Ponty's contemporaries—Claude Lefort and Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas developed a philosophy which while intersecting with Merleau-Ponty's at important junctures, nonetheless arrived at an entirely different destination. I argue alongside Martin Dillon against the objections of Lefort, and alongside Dan Zahavi against the objections of Levinas. Both of these interpreters, I propose remain faithful to the core directions and spirit of Merleau-Ponty's endeavours without becoming diverted by the less significant inconsistencies. (shrink)

In his 2012 article Philosophy of Education for the Public Good: Five Challenges and an Agenda, Gert Biesta identifies five substantial issues about the future of education and the work required to address these issues. This article employs a Heideggerian reading of education to evaluate ‘Biesta’s truth’. I argue that Biesta’s point of view underestimates knowledge’s predominance and relativism; frames intentionality in pre-Heideggerian terms, which—although not a problem in itself because an individual is free to choose a particular perspective on (...) the concept—raises the issue of consistency in Biesta’s theoretical framework; and a final criticism concerns Biesta’s choice of tools for engaging with the identified challenges: The primary tools Biesta uses are intrinsic to the perspective he challenges. The use of a ‘first person perspective’ to frame pedagogy that focuses on the subject and ‘subjectification’ reaffirms the fundamental Western gesture that makes human beings subjects who ‘stand-over-and-against’ the world. I argue that it is possible to penetrate Plato’s ‘theoretical gaze’ and find a ‘weak’ alternative to an all-encompassing point of view of education through a Heideggerian approach that regards intentionality and thinking as ‘hearing’. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to explore the relation between two sets of terms in Derrida's work: friendship and democracy, and ethics and politics. On the basis of a reading of Derrida's interpretation of Blanchot in The Politics of Friendship, I argue that Blanchot's notion of a non-traditional conception of friendship is a reconstruction of Levinas's notion of the ethical relation to the other, which in turn provides the basis for the formalistic ethical affirmation of Derrida's work, an affirmation found (...) most clearly in his remarks on justice. I then move from the The Politics of Friendship to Derrida's more recent text on Levinas, Adieu, and try to explore the relation between ethics and politics in Derrida's work, with particular reference to the question of democracy. My concluding thesis is that Derrida's recent work is attempting to articulate, through notions such as democracy to come and the new international, what I call 'a repoliticization of Marxism'. (shrink)

That Jews are concerned about human rights is distinct from why Jews should be concerned about rights in the first place. This project analyzes the reasons Jews in the twentieth century put forward to convince co-religionists to take rights seriously. Focusing on the content of these arguments facilitates dividing the proffered rationales into three broad categories--the temporal, the innate, and the philosophical. Analysis of each category reveals subdivisions, reflecting the many ways Jews try to persuade each other to care about (...) human rights. This taxonomy, unlike others, highlights the different ways in which Jews conceptualize the burning ethical questions of our day: of how and why to be Jewish and modern. These rationales therefore are understood to function as moral reasons and, as such, can be assessed by their relative claims. (shrink)

Levinas's work persistently challenges the claim that the sovereignty of the ego is the foundation for ethics, a claim he attributes to the Greek philosophical tradition. This claim emerges in dominant accounts of responsibility, in which the agent's intentions define his or her culpability. However, in Oedipus Tyrannos Sophocles also attempts to undermine this strict pairing of responsibility and deliberate choice. Oedipus undergoes a fundamentally Levinasian narrative arc by moving from self-assured sovereignty, based on his ability to comprehend the world, (...) to an awakening to responsibility. In this essay I examine the points of intersection and divergence between the tragic narrative of Oedipus and the traumatic subject in Levinas's work. (shrink)

Increased global attention to early childhood education and care in the past two decades has intensified attention on the education of infants and assessment of their learning in education policy. This interest is particularly evident in the focus upon infants in the early childhood curriculum frameworks developed in recent years in many countries. To date, there has been little examination of implications of this policy/curriculum emphasis in relation to its possible implications for how infants are understood. In this article, using (...) Levinas’ notion of ethical encounter, we present a critical reading of curriculum for infants. Drawing on his ideas of the ‘Other’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘unknowability’ we argue that the rapidly growing corpus of knowledge about infants and their inclusion in education policy and curricula texts, has the potential to narrowly define educators’ responsibilities and prescribe pedagogies in ways that may have unintended consequences. Using the Australian National Quality Framework (NQF) and its associated Early Years Learning Framework as examples, this article highlights the tensions inherent in a system that aims to provide equity, consistency and certainty, premised on a particular ‘knowing’ of the infant. We draw on Levinas’ ideas about ‘said’ and ‘saying’ to propose ways of working with policy and curricula texts that recognise that they can offer only partial understandings of the possibilities for infants’ learning. (shrink)

Dementia is more than a disease. What dementia is, how it is understood, and how it is experienced is influenced by multiple factors including our societal preoccupation with individual identity. This essay introduces empirical and theoretical evidence of alternative ways of understanding dementia that act as a challenge to common assumptions. It proposes that dementia be understood as an experience of systems, particularly networks of people affected by the diagnosis. Taking this step reveals much about the dementia experience, and about (...) what can be learned from persons with dementia and their networks of family, friends, and carers. It also suggests that dementia may be best thought of as an ecology that arises from the interaction between neuropathological change, people, language, and meaning. While challenging, this perspective may provide new ways of responding to dementia and caring for those affected by it. (shrink)

In this article, I engage in a criticism of Jean François Lyotard’s tropological approach to Judaism, arguing that his articulation of the “the jew” as figural projection serves to establish and rigidify a number of freighted binaries such as those between reason and myth, philosophy and theology, and modern and postmodern. In comparison, I posit Theodor Adorno’s approach to tropes of Judaism as one which encompasses Lyotard’s productive emphases on the role of forgetting in subject formation while loosening these same (...) binaries. (shrink)

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics (...) enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations. (shrink)

There are two seemingly opposed descriptions of the subject in Totality and Infinity : the separate and autonomous I and the self that is ready to respond to the Other’s suffering and need. This paper points out that there is in fact another way Levinas speaks of the subject, which reinforces and reconciles the other two accounts. Throughout his first major work, Levinas explains how the ego is allowed to emerge as such by the Other who constantly confronts it. At (...) certain points in that work Levinas comes to describe the self as a creature given to itself by another. The notion of the created ego allows for both freedom and responsibility as Levinas understands the creature as capable of thinking critically, becoming an independent individual, and turning to the Other in responsibility. (shrink)

The present article aims to illuminate a notion of finite freedom in both Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas criticizes the Heideggerian ontology for holding an egoistic, unconstrained notion of freedom. The article first responds to such a criticism by showing that the Heideggerian notion of freedom as self-binding involves normativity. It then argues that both Heidegger and Levinas propose a notion of finite freedom as the unity of autonomy and heteronomy. Finally, the article also sheds light on what different approaches to (...) the source of normativity separate the two philosophers’ understandings of freedom. (shrink)

This paper articulates a conception of organizational justice based on the promise of a mode of organizing that does not violate the particularity of each and every other person. It argues that the decisive condition for such a form of justice resides in the realities of the cultural practices of an organization as they are apparent in the conduct of people in relation to multiple others. These are practices that can only seek justification in the primary right of each person (...) to be regarded with absolute alterity. It also argues that a degree of violence is unavoidable within any practical ordering of justice and that any consideration of ethics and justice in organizations must account for such violence and seek to negotiate its existence on ethical terms. The organizational justice that is referred to is one sensitive to the exercise of its own power and authority in the context of its unavoidable violation of its basis in ethics. This is a justice that is ethically necessary, but is never sure of itself. (shrink)

The patient–physician relationship is of primary importance for medical ethics, but it also teaches broader lessons about ethics generally. This is particularly true for the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas whose ethics is grounded in the other who “faces” the subject and whose suffering provokes responsibility. Given the pragmatic, situational character of Levinasian ethics, the “face of the other” may be elucidated by an analogy with the “face of the patient.” To do so, I draw on examples from Martin Winckler’s fictional physician (...) narratives. In addition, I explore how the standpoint of the physician conceals a related but often unacknowledged dimension of care: the obligation to nurse. For both nurse and physician, one question encapsulates Levinas’ medical ethics: “What does the patient say?” Using this as my guiding question, I examine the context within which physician, nurse, and patient meet in order to highlight their shared vulnerability and the care relationship that binds them together. (shrink)

How can the medium be addressed when it is always already saturated in religious over-determinations and ever marked by theological concerns (such as revelation and incarnation) while, at the same time, religion would not be practiced and theology not be done without using some such medium? We encourage methodological and conceptual shifts, first, from medium to mediality; second, from religion to its partial negation (or, perhaps, partial permeation); third, from theology to doing the theological differently. With these shifts we desire (...) to initiate, continue, and intensify debates, specifically between theologians and scholars of religious studies and media theory. (shrink)

This article applies the anthropological concept of liminality to reconceptualize palliative care ethics. Liminality possesses both spatial and temporal dimensions. Both these aspects are analyzed to provide insight into the intersubjective relationship between patient and caregiver in the context of palliative care. Aristotelian practical wisdom, or phronesis, is considered to be the appropriate model for palliative care ethics, provided it is able to account for liminality. Moreover, this article argues for the importance of liminality for providing an ethical structure that (...) grounds the doctrine of double effect and overcomes the impasse of phronesis in the treatment of the terminally ill. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

This article addresses the question how educational theory can overcome the assumptions of the tradition of the philosophy of consciousness, a tradition which can be seen as the foundation of the modern project of education. While twentieth century philosophy has seen several attempts to make a shift from consciousness to intersubjectivity (Dewey, Wittgenstein, Habermas) it is argued that this shift still remains within the humanistic tradition of modern thought in that it still tries to define, still tries to develop a (...) theory about the human subject. Foucault's thesis of the end of man is interpreted as an attempt to move beyond humanism, an attempt motivated by a sincere concern for the humanity of the subject. Starting from the question as to who comes after the subject, several answers to this question, which all share an interest in the question as to where the subject comes into presence, are discussed (referring to the writings of Tschumi, Arendt and Levinas). In the concluding section it is argued that one way to move beyond the humanistic tradition of modern thought is to conceive of the subject in terms of responsibility and ethics (Levinas) and to conceive of the very task of theory in terms of justice, and not in terms of truth. This, so it is argued, should be the final concern for educational theory and curriculum theory. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the relationship between teaching and learning. Whereas particularly in the English language the relationship between teaching and learning has become so intimate that it often looks as if ‘teaching and learning’ has become one word, I not only argue for the importance of keeping teaching and learning apart from each other, but also provide a number of arguments for suggesting that learning may not be the one and only option for teaching to aim for. I (...) explore this idea through a discussion of the relationship between teaching and learning, both at a conceptual and at an existential level. I discuss the limitations of the language of learning as an educational language, point at the political work that is being done through the language of learning, and raise epistemological and existential questions about the identity of the learner, particularly with regard to the question what it means to be in and with the world in terms of learning as comprehension and sense making. Through this I seek to suggest that learning is only one possible aim for teaching and that the learner identity and the learning way of engaging with the world puts the learner in a very specific position vis-à-vis the world, one where the learner remains in the centre and the world appears as object for the learner’s acts of learning. That it is possible to teach without requesting from students that they learn, comprehend and make sense, is demonstrated through a brief account of a course in which students were explicitly asked to refrain from learning and were instead asked to adopt a concept. I show how this request opened up very different existential possibilities for the students and argue that if we value such existential possibilities, there may be good reasons for freeing teaching from learning. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to (...) the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasizes an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to (...) be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognize, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organized around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasises an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to (...) be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognise, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organised around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice. (shrink)

The theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or (...) ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actuallysupportthe process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design. (shrink)

At a time when the practice of medicine is subject to technical and biopolitical imperatives that give rise to defensive bioethics, it is essential to revitalize the ethical dimensions of care at the very heart of the clinic, in order to give new meaning to the moral responsibility that inhabits it. This contribution seeks to meet this challenge by drawing on the ethical resources of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In Levinas’ view, ethical responsibility is the response to the injunction, (...) the interpellation, of the other’s face, and humaneness is conceived entangled in the other’s face. Against this background, I suggest that Levinas’ philosophical insight constitutes a turning point from a traditional to a new conception of responsibility that may bear great significance to a renewed understanding of an hermeneutics and an ethics of care. By drawing on this aspect of Levinas’ thought, I would like to reveal the ethical core of an ethics of clinical care that shapes a new insight on medical judgment. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze some of the major difficulties of informed consent. We consider insufficient to base IC on the principle of autonomy. We must not forget that the patient may be in a situation of extreme vulnerability and the good doctor should assume a degree of commitment and responsibility with his/her decisions. Our aim is to introduce the ethics of responsibility of Levinas in practice and theory of IC in order to generate a beneficent medical practice in which (...) the supervision and overseeing of the patient do not undermine his/her autonomy. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Levinas can be read as a critic, not just of Heideggerian being, but also of being-with. After pointing out that the publication of the Black Notebooks only makes this criticism more interesting to revisit, I first of all discuss passages from both earlier and later writings in which Levinas explicitly takes issue with Heidegger’s claim that there is no self outside of a specific socio-historical community. I then explain how these criticisms are reflected in (...) Levinas’s own account, arguing that Levinasian subjectivity and alterity are precisely defined by their not belonging to a larger unity; to the extent that they partake in a multi-personal collectivity, this does not take the form of a traditional community. In the final section, I look into a different and seemingly opposing argument Levinas makes against Heidegger: on the basis of the latter’s reflections on death, he argues that Dasein is anti-social rather than overly immersed in the socio-historical. Arguing that this rests on a misreading of Being and Time, I use this opportunity to raise questions about Levinas’s interpretation of Heidegger and his “otherwise than being-with” more generally, for Levinas’s account runs into several problems as well. Yet as I will conclude, this in fact offers a valuable insight, not just for the present-day reception of Heidegger, but also for thinking community today. It indicates that a radical break with human situatedness does not automatically fare better than a firmly enrooted account of existence. (shrink)

This essay describes some of the basic pragmatic tendencies at work in the world of working and then shows how the finite provinces of meaning of theoretical contemplation and literature act against those pragmatic tendencies. This analysis prepares the way to see how the religious province of meaning in a similar but also distinctive way acts back against these pragmatic tendencies. These three finite provinces of meaning make it possible to see the world from another center of orientation than that (...) of the ego agens and its proclivity to bring transcendences within reach, thereby freeing oneself to a degree from the fundamental anxiety and revealing the uniqueness of oneself and others, who are no longer subjected to working’s pragmatic imperatives. (shrink)

This article examines Richard Rorty's approach to the self in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity . In spite of their differing philosophical bases, Rorty and Emmanuel Levinas converge methodologically in their treatments of the self by avoiding paradigmatic notions of human nature and a philosophical project of justification. Although Rorty refuses to prioritize a moralist account of the self over its romanticist rivals, his presentation relies on the reader's response to the ethical appeal of the other as depicted by Levinas: Rorty (...) ultimately de-divinizes the moralist self on an ethical basis. Finally, a Levinasian approach would supplement Rorty's view of the self by manifesting: concern for victims of de-moralization, greater appreciation for philosophical rationality and justification, and acceptance of self-critically executed paternalistic interventions. In addition, Rorty's mistrust of universals converges with Kant's apprehension that ethical universalization could treat human beings as less than ends in themselves. Key Words: ethics • Immanuel Kant • Emmanuel Levinas • neopragmatism • phenomenology • postmodernity • psychology • Richard Rorty • the self • solidarity. (shrink)

Despite Heinrich Popitz’s non-ideological, carefully descriptive account of how power is initiated and maintained, he too easily dismisses the Frankfurt School’s call for domination-free discourse as merely a subject for academic speculation. Because of his focus on the factual, Popitz neglects the possibility that ethical norms can challenge strategically-guided discourse even if only counterfactually. In addition, such norms are at work in the very discursive exchange represented by his writing his book for his readers and in that book’s aspiration to (...) universal validity claims that run counter to strategic interests that tend to be particularistic. Popitz’s own conviction that power does not completely suppress freedom provides at least a space in which claims can be advanced and evaluated independently of strategic imperatives. Perhaps because Popitz’s approach is limited to describing the functioning of power, the underlying philosophical anthropology of his work is Hobbesian insofar as agents seek to subject others to asymmetrical power relationships and insofar as even the recognition one gives to another aims at retrieving recognition for oneself. A counter-asymmetry is to be found in Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological descriptions of the ethical summons of the other which provide a philosophical backdrop against which power is exercised and in which the first event of the interpersonal encounter is peace, not war. (shrink)

Genesis 2:4–25, the story of the creation of man and woman, has received great attention in modern theology. The text indeed contains the most fundamental teaching of the Bible on the relation between man and woman, on sexuality, and on marriage. In this article, however, I attempt to highlight some of the theoretical/philosophical potential of the text. While I accept the main theological teaching of Genesis 2 about the equality of the sexes, I argue that the text goes beyond the (...) mere presentation of this theological doctrine, and provides a structure that allows for a dynamic interplay between the sexes. I contend, furthermore, that this structure and the ensuing dynamics can be interpreted as a subtle treatment of the issue of the same and the other. Finally, I argue that in this way the biblical text can provide a description of the experience of love and an account of human creativity. In other words, it accounts for the possibility of realizing our divine likeness, the divinity of the human. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall's The Second-Person Standpoint converges with Emmanuel Levinas's concern about the role of the second-person relationship in ethics. This paper contrasts their methodologies (regressive analysis of presuppositions versus phenomenology) to explain Darwall's narrower view of ethical experience in terms of expressed reactive attitudes. It delineates Darwall's overall justificatory strategy and the centrality of autonomy and reciprocity within it, in contrast to Levinas's emphasis on the experience of responsibility. Asymmetrical responsibility plays a more foundational role as a critical counterpoint to (...) 'mean-spirited' reciprocity than Darwall's laudable distinction between accountability and revenge, and responsibility even founds this distinction. The experience of being summoned to asymmetrical responsibility amplifies the meaning of 'authority', which is a presupposition for Darwall. Finally, asymmetrical responsibility helps develop decentred reasoning, invites risk beyond the boundaries of reciprocity at moments when autonomy appears endangered, reconciles respect and care at the experiential level, and presses to extend the scope of moral obligation. (shrink)

This paper develops a critique of the concept of ‘ethical identity’ as this has been used recently to distinguish between ‘cynical’ and ‘authentic’ forms of corporate responsibility. Taking as our starting point Levinas’ demanding view of responsibility as ‘following the assignation of responsibility for my neighbour’, we use a case study of a packaging company—PackCo—to argue that a concern with being seen and/or seeing oneself as responsible should not be confused with actual responsibility. Our analysis of the case points first (...) to the allure of programmes of strategic corporate responsibility and the ways in which, through identification, they can provide a tacit form of moral sanction to managers in their aggressive pursuit of profit. It then contrasts the responses of different managers to negative staff feedback to illustrate the difference between managers’ attempts to defend their identity of being ‘responsible’ managers, and responsible conduct itself. The paper concludes that a potent danger of programmes of corporate responsibility is that they allow managers to deceive not just others, but also themselves in relation to the exercise of responsibility. (shrink)

In public discourse trauma is predominantly framed as an overwhelming event undergone by the individual. In this article I first provide a brief genealogy to trace the emergence of what is now the dominant temporal framework of psychological catastrophe. I supplement this evental nosology with a durational consideration of trauma by drawing on the works of Henri Bergson and his articulation of duration, memory, and lived experience. Durational trauma accommodates liminal and ongoing experiences of the catastrophic that are equally devastating (...) to the paradigmatic exemplars of PTSD. This alternate account entails different modalities of reparation and responsibility to the systemic traumatization of others. For this I draw on Levinas and his intersubjective ethics drawing out the relevancy his work has for this concept of durational trauma. Levinas’s emphasis on expiation avoids the reification of the trauma of the other as spectacle and draws into focus one’s own participation in the circulation and continuation of ongoing traumatic networks. This contributes to the emergent alchemy of reading Bergson and Levinas together, but likewise, to philosophy of trauma and the ethical responsibility and temporality of ongoing systemic harm. (shrink)

Abstract In this essay I show that while Levinas himself was clearly reluctant to extend to nonhuman animals the same kind of moral consideration he gave to humans, his ethics of alterity is one of the best equipped to mount a strong challenge to the traditional view of animals as beings of limited, if any, moral status. I argue that the logic of Levinas's own arguments concerning the otherness of the Other militates against interpreting ethics exclusively in terms of human (...) interests and values, and, furthermore, that Levinas's phenomenology of the face applies to all beings that can suffer and are capable of expressing that suffering to me. Insofar as an animal has a face in Levinas's sense through which it is able to express its suffering to me, then there is no moral justification for refusing to extend to it moral consideration. 1. (shrink)