Reviewing "The Ethics of Gender, Feminism and Christian Ethics," and "The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology," the author suggests that Susan Parsons responds to questions postmodernism has posed to both feminism and Christian ethics by using insights gained from various accounts of the moral subject found in feminist philosophy, ethics, and theology. Hesitant to embrace postmodernism's critique of the possibility of ethics, Parsons redefines ethics by establishing a moral point of view within discursive communities. Yet in her brief treatment of (...) Emmanuel Levinas, Parsons does not explore the postmodern option he offers feminists: an understanding of moral responsibility that can be critical of ethics. Parsons also ignores some feminist perspectives in the physical and natural sciences, thereby missing valuable insights of feminists who insist upon the materiality of the body. (shrink)

One of the basic categories of religious consciousness, which has an inexhaustible spiritual-moral potential that is relevant to our times, is undoubtedly the category of holiness. To understand how it was rooted and developed on our native soil it is important to note that the Old Kievan and the later Ukrainian culture did not invent a separate or special theory of holiness, but rather borrowed it from the Old Testament and the Byzantine-Christian traditions. Yet, the concrete image of holiness that (...) was formed on this theoretical foundation has very distinct unique features. To explain how the inherited general theoretical foundations of the image of holiness were absorbed into the cultural context of Kievan Rus' I shall try to determine which aspects of the traditional conception of holiness were predominant there. (shrink)

In the first place, I discuss the main papers and books on Durkheim published in recent years, where no attention is given to the phenomenological interpretations of his work. Then I expose different phenomenological readings of Durkheim, some of them positive, some negative, some ambivalent. Later I find that there is in Durkheim an implicit practice of phenomenology, inspired by Descartes’ Meditations on first philosophy. Consequently, I support Tyriakian’s thesis that there is in Durkheim an implicit phenomenological approach, despite his (...) positivism. Then I wonder whether this tacit approach produces a phenomenological ontology of the social world. I find that it actually does, especially in what regards to social facts considered as things. I argue that Durkheim’s conception of social things is consistent with Husserl’s notion of ideal objectivities. I conclude that Durkheim’s rule of considering social facts as things is part of his phenomenological legacy and that it does not contradict the idea that they also are “states lived”. (shrink)

The dramatic change in the focus and overall project of French philosophy since World War I has become increasingly apparent, with one of the resultant developments being, as Geroulanos has identified, the emergence of “an atheism that is not humanist.” This article discusses parallels between the philosophical methodology of Gabriel Marcel and this new form of atheism. In so doing, it explores connections between Marcel and French philosophy’s more recent “turn to religion,” and uses these to demonstrate how Marcel’s notion (...) of disponibilité or “availability” operates with respect to Marcel’s conception of philosophy itself. (shrink)

In this article I will look into Corporate Legal Responsibility taking into account Levinas’s notion of infinite responsibility, as well as his understanding of ethical language. My account of Levinas’s philosophy will show that it challenges – breaking down – deeply entrenched distinctions in the dominant strands of moral philosophy, within which the theory of individual responsibility is embedded, such as between:(1) duty to others on the one hand and supererogation on the other; (2) perfect duty to others on the (...) one hand and imperfect duties to others on the other; (3) insiders and outsiders; kith and kin on the one hand and strangers on the other; Levinas’s moral vision is an inclusive one which embraces all of humanity (at least of those present today) irrespective of historical, linguistic, cultural differences and diversities. In other words, each has responsibilities for and duties towards all others. Of course, one might say that there is nothing new about a universalising ethics – after all Kantianism, liberalism as well as utilitarianism are well known instances. However, more crucially, all these traditional moral philosophies uphold the theory of individual responsibility, which is rooted in the philosophy of individualism. Such a philosophy can make sense only of the concept of individual moral/legal agency but not corporate agency. Therefore, in this article I will attempt to show that the Levinasian vision is able to help us change our view with respect to corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Egoism and altruism are unequal contenders in the explanation of human behaviour. While egoism tends to be viewed as natural and unproblematic, altruism has always been treated with suspicion, and it has often been argued that apparent cases of altruistic behaviour might really just be some special form of egoism. The reason for this is that egoism fits into our usual theoretical views of human behaviour in a way that altruism does not. This is true on the biological level, where (...) an evolutionary account seems to favour egoism, as well as on the psychological level, where an account of self-interested motivation is deeply rooted in folk psychology and in the economic model of human behaviour. While altruism has started to receive increasing support in both biological and psychological debates over the last decades, this paper focuses on yet another level, where egoism is still widely taken for granted.Philosophical egoism is the view that, on the ultimate level of intentional explanation, all action is motivated by one of the agent's desires. This view is supported by the standard notion that for a complex of behaviour to be an action, there has to be a way to account for that behaviour in terms of the agent's own pro-attitudes.Psychologicalaltruists, it is claimed, arephilosophicalegoists in that they are motivated by desires that have the other's benefit rather than the agent's own for its ultimate object. This paper casts doubt on this thesis, arguing that empathetic agents act on other people's pro-attitudes in very much the same way as agents usually act on their own, and that while other-directed desires do play an important role in many cases of psychologically altruistic action, they are not necessary in explanations of some of the most basic and most pervasive types of human altruistic behaviour. The paper concludes with the claim that philosophical egoism is really a cultural value rather than a conceptual feature of action. (shrink)

La filosofía de Lévinas se inspira en las fuentes tradicionales del judaísmo, por más que apenas consienta que afloren a la superficie del discurso. De ahí la conveniencia de abordar su obra como un palimpsesto en el que operan dos niveles textuales, uno de ellos explícito y el otro velado. El Otro y el Mismo se relacionan entre sí según el modelo bíblico del vínculo YHWH-Israel: mientras que la Revelación inspira la epifanía del rostro, la Redención subyace a la reconstrucción (...) de la subjetividad en clave ética. En su conjunto, la heterología de Lévinas reitera, en el elemento de la filosofía, las experiencias centrales del monoteísmo hebreo. (shrink)

Identity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is (...) the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: Premiss; Justice, uniqueness, and love; Sign and language; Dialogue and alterity; Semiotic materiality; Globalization and the trap of identity; Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; Ethics; The World; Outside the subject; Responsibility and Substitution; The face; Fear of the other; Alterity and justice; Justice and proximity; Literary writing; Unjust justice; Caring for the other. (shrink)

Intercultural philosophy in Latin America takes it that the only way to achieve the liberation from the rationality and thinking of the hegemonic colonial culture, present in their countries from the “discovery” of America until now, would be through the recognition of the other in its identity and origin. This philosophy of ‘decolonization’ stresses that it is there where intersubjectivity comes ontologically into being where the authentic origins of their cultures in their ancestral practices emerge. Therefore, the emergence of the (...) other is the dialectical result of a fenomenological consciousness that becomes aware of the existence of being as otherness; that is, a being that is there for another. This liberty makes possible an encounter without the kind of alienations that take place when a culture boasts of its superiority upon another. The intercultural discourse of Latin-American philosophy emphasizes the evolvement of being with others in favor of liberation for all. (shrink)