This study explores the primacy of interrelating and its ecopsychological significance. Grounded in evidence from everyday experience, and in dialogue with the phenomenology of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we discover that humans are inherently relational beings, not separate egoic subjects. When experienced intimately , this realization may transform our interrelationship with the beings and presences in the community of nature. Specifically, interrelating is primary in three ways: 1) interrelating is always already here, transpiring from the beginning of (...) the human species and human culture, from the beginning of every infant's life, and from the continuously arising beginning of every presencing moment; 2) the quality of our interrelating is truly what matters most, the most important expression of and facilitator of health, compassion, and justice for humankind and the rest of nature; and 3) interrelating is the ever-present path via which we discover/create and carry on our existence. Interrelating is an existential given—indeed we are our interrelating—yet we are summoned ethically to cultivate our way of interrelating so as to serve others and the non-human natural community. Thus interrelating is our essence, our calling, and our path. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to establish a proper context for reading Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death, which, I contend, can only be understood fully against the backdrop of "Violence and Metaphysics." The later work cannot be fully understood unless the reader appreciates the fact that Derrida returns to "a certain Abraham" not only in the name of Kierkegaard but also in the name of Levinas himself. The hypothesis of the reading that follows therefore would be that Derrida (...) writes The Gift of Death not as an attempt to re-present Kierkegaard's Abraham either rightly or wrongly but as an effort to do with Kierkegaard's Abraham what is possible with his thought in a broadly Levinasian/Derridean framework. That the reading he provides of the Abraham story would not be recognizable to Kierkegaard is not the principal point of Derrida's effort; his aim is to demonstrate that Levinas should not have been so hasty to dismiss Kierkegaard but could have recovered his interpretation of Abraham for purposes that Derrida and Levinas both share. (shrink)

This paper identifies and addresses some dilemmas to be faced in promoting educational projects concerned with human rights. Part of the difficulty that human rights education initiatives must cope with is the way in which value has been historically conferred upon particular notions such as freedom and justice. I argue here that a just education must grapple head‐on with the conceptual dilemmas that have been inherited and refuse to shy away from the implications of those dilemmas. To do this I (...) address the fundamental fictions upon which rights are based and view those fictions as nonetheless useful for opening up the ethical terms of human rights education. With reference to the work of Arendt, Lyotard and Levinas, I conclude that the real potential of human rights education lies in its capacity to provoke insights that help youth live with ambiguity and dilemma, where freedom, justice, and responsibility cannot be dictated to them, but rather involve tough decisions that must be made in everyday life. (shrink)

In Totality and Infinity Levinas presents the 'face to face' as an account of intersubjectivity, but one which maintains the absolute difference of the Other. This essay explores the genesis of the 'face to face' through a discussion of Levinas in relation to Buber. It is argued that Levinas' account of subjectivity shares much in common with Fichte's theory of subjectivity. It is further argued that while the 'face to face' clarifies and opposes traditional problems in social ontology, the 'face (...) to face' is unable to avoid the traditional problems of social ontology that it seeks to avoid. (shrink)

In recent years, aggressive and conservative nationalistic forces have been growing stronger worldwide (Rydgren 2018). Increased random terrorist attacks are now occurring in sites previously thoug...

In this paper, I compare the idea of ‘substitution’, central to the later work of Emmanuel Levinas, to the idea of jinen hōni, or ‘natural acts’, proposed by Shinran Shōnin. For Levinas, ‘substitution’ meant the acceptance of responsibility for the suffering of the Other that one hasn’t caused, giving oneself up to ‘persecution’ and ‘accusation’ of the Other in absolute passivity. For Shinran, a similar passivity is implied by the unability of the ‘I’ to act in order to liberate itself (...) from its conditioned existence, a result which can be achieved by giving up one’s own agency in favour of the Other. For both thinkers, ethical selfhood is thus attainable only by forsaking of one’s worldly ego, described in remarkably similar terms, even though their understanding of alterity itself is radically different. (shrink)

I seek to draw out the unique character of Levinas’ theory of recognition by highlighting its transitional character in a double sense. It is transitional, firstly, in that it stands between two models of recognition: the earlier agonistic model of Kojeve and the later model of Honneth which takes as its point of departure a primordial relation of mutual affirmation between individuals. It is transitional secondly in the sense that, while Levinas initially employs the concept of recognition, he is later (...) explicit in his rejection of it. The interest of Levinas’ transitional model of recognition for the philosophy of religion is that Levinas negotiates both transitions by calling on archetypes borrowed from the Jewish tradition. An exploration of this model thus provides us with a fresh vantage point from which to address anew the question of the articulation of social philosophy and the philosophy of religion in his work. (shrink)

Advanced practice nursing is an expanding field within many healthcare environments around the world. The scope and particular focus of an advanced practice nurse’s role is highly variable and thus the ethical challenges they face are equally diverse. Yet, the dominant existing ethics pedagogies used in the nursing context have been described as not fit-for-purpose. Existing pedagogies do not adequately prepare APN candidates to meet the ethical challenges they will encounter in practice. Applying an arts-based pedagogy in ethics education for (...) advanced practice nurses has the capacity to provide effective ethics learning. This article reports on the value of a multidisciplinary pedagogy used in a graduate course in nursing leadership, law and ethics for advanced practice at an Australian university. Written in a multidisciplinary mode that allies with the pedagogy it presents, it addresses the key pedagogical challenges and opportunities of teaching ethics through an innovative arts-based pedagogy centred upon the changing depictions of the human person in works of art housed in a major state-funded art gallery. (shrink)

The certification-based Fair Trade initiative has been steadily growing during the last two decades. While many scholars have analyzed its main characteristics and developments, only a few have assessed it against a concept of justice. And those exceptional cases have only focused on distributive justice, proving unable to grasp the important ethical elements that Fair Trade integrates in its project. In reaction to this, this article intends to critically examine what the Fair Trade movement proposes to be ‘fair’ by resorting (...) to the thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas. To accomplish this goal, a new understanding of his conception of justice is presented, one that seeks to overcome the limitations that the two most common interpretations in the literature suffer. The idea of Lévinas’ ‘dialectics of justice’ is used to discuss Fair Trade’s relation of alterity, its appropriation of the notion of ‘face’ and its commitment to and responsibility for marginalized producers and workers. This analysis shows that Fair Trade operates with what could be described as a fetishized understanding of Levinasian ethics that justifies a deeply unjust praxis. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is commonly understood as a universal norm—moral and political—in the light of enduring differences, and for that reason it has historically embodied a seemingly inevitable dilemma of universality/particularity. Since its inception, cosmopolitan thinkers have struggled with the dilemma and have attempted ways to address the question of difference so that the universal norm and obligation can be justified and defended. One of the most common strategies is to give primacy to universal humanity and override difference; another recent strategy is (...) to give up universalism to take difference seriously and frame difference in agonistic terms. I argue in this article that both strategies are inadequate and unsatisfactory in conceptualising and dealing with difference. Briefly tracing some of the major cosmopolitan approaches, I argue that the conceptualisation of difference and human subjectivity is at the core of the problem as well as the solution. Drawing on Lévinas and his emphasis on the primacy of difference in the constitution of human subjectivity and community, I propose a new understanding of the self and the Other for the success of the cosmopolitan project. (shrink)

Psyche, the daughter of a Greek king, was so beautiful that people stopped worshipping Aphrodite; instead they turned their adoration to the girl who modestly rejected any divine honours. Aphrodite, enraged, sent her son Eros to contrive a spell to make this beautiful maiden fall in love with an ugly creature. Seeing her, however, Eros fell in love and could not obey his mother. Short version: Aphrodite, jealous, tried to sabotage Psyche with impossible tasks. After great struggle, Psyche escaped the (...) traps with the help not of the gods but of the creatures of nature. Finally, Eros appealed to Zeus to set her free. With his consent the happy couple married on Mount Olympus celebrated by all the gods including Aphrodite. Psyche bore a daughter, Voluptas (better known as Pleasure), and so goes this great myth. Weary of the mainstream’s claim that only it is scientific, and its dismissal of phenomenology as “conjecture”, this paper is an effort to return to the origins of the study of the fascinating and frustrating old psyche. To conserve (a) its most fundamental approach, (b) most empirical method, and (c) most lived psychological content, the author urges students to ask first the persistent – since the Greeks – and necessary philosophical questions (ontological, epistemological, ethical, and so forth). He proceeds from there to show that phenomenology can (a) resurrect the psyche and its neglected meanings both experienced and expressed in action, (b) rescue behaviour from the Procrustean bed of “the scientific method” and resuscitate it as lived, (c) expose the myth of objective consciousness, and (d) reaffirm that freedom makes the psyche not less but more available to science by letting human reality show itself. Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas have inspired over forty years of classroom rebellion and conservation of a psychology of incarnate humankind. These philosophers have provoked an alternative understanding of the characteristics of science (empirical, objective, reductive, and so forth). Finally, this paper reasserts a moral science with attention to the “psychology for the Other” over a “psychology for the self” with the paradoxical content: we can sabotage ourselves with selfinterested power and discover ourselves in the service of the weakness of others. The call to responsibility is the most fundamental characteristic of the psyche. (shrink)

Disease-specific stem cell therapies, created from induced pluripotent stem cell lines containing the genetic defects responsible for a particular disease, have the potential to revolutionize the treatment of refractory chronic diseases. Given their capacity to differentiate into any human cell type, these cell lines might be reprogrammed to correct a disease-causing genetic defect in any tissue or organ, in addition to offering a more clinically realistic model for testing new drugs and studying disease mechanisms. Clinical translation of these therapies provides (...) an opportunity to design a more systematic, accessible and patient-influenced model for the delivery of medically innovative treatments to chronically ill patients. (shrink)

In this article, the question is discussed if and how Healthcare Ethics Committees (HECs) should be regulated. The paper consists of two parts. First, authors from eight EC member countries describe the status quo in their respective countries, and give reasons as to the form of regulation they consider most adequate. In the second part, the country reports are analysed. It is suggested that regulation of HECs should be central and weak. Central regulation is argued to be apt to improve (...) HECs’ accountability, relevance and comparability. To facilitate biomedical citizenship and ethical reflection, regulation should at the same time be weak rather than strict. Independence of HECs to deliberate about ethical questions, and to give solicited and unsolicited advice, should be supported and only interfered with by way of exception. One exception is when circumstances become temporary adversarial to ethical deliberation in healthcare institutions. In view of European unification, steps should be taken to develop consistent policies for both Eastern and Western European countries. (shrink)

This essay examines the possibilities of being/becoming an ethical researcher in the academy. It tackles this task through the lens of an ethics application by Mary [pseudonym], a PhD student in sociology whose research thesis was investigating the reasons why married men with children use prostitutes. Two analyses are offered of Mary's story. The first analysis presents the sort of critique that a university ethics committee might make of Mary's ethics application and uses the principles that are the basis of (...) regulatory research ethics frameworks around the world. From this starting point, the second analysis examines how the problems that an ethics committee would see in Mary's proposal might have come about. By way of explanation, I posit that an ethics of rational self-interest has asserted itself as a new moral economy among students, doctoral supervisors and within the management of universities. The co-existence of these two irreconcilable discourses of ethics ? principlism and rational self-interest ? has implications for being/becoming an ethical researcher and for the work of research ethics committees in the academy. (shrink)

Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood.In the first three (...) sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro-choice assumptions. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of understanding the rudimentary elements of clinical sensitivity by investigating the works of Edmund Husserl and Emmanuel Levinas on sensibility. Husserl's theory of intentionality offers significant reflections on the role of pre-reflective and affective intuition as a condition for intentionality and reflective consciousness. These early works of Husserl, in particular his works on the constitution of phenomenological time and subjective time-consciousness, prove to be an important basis for Levinas’ works on an ethics of alterity and (...) infinite responsibility for the other person. In fact, it is difficult to understand the core of Levinasian ethics, of vulnerability as proximity, of ethical sensitivity as passivity and a suffering for the suffering of another, without understanding the influence from Husserl's work. Crucially, the paper will, on the basis of Levinasian ethics, establish an understanding of sensibility as vulnerability and receptivity that is fundamental also for understanding significant intuitions in clinical nursing. Clinical sensitivity and carefulness in nursing are shaped by the concrete and also bodily expressions of vulnerabilities in a receptivity that is pre-reflective and pre-ontological. (shrink)

Hesitation is a phenomenological moment. One is disturbed when, unexpectedly, someone else is there. There is that sharp intake of breath which accompanies being taken by surprise, and even a suspension of time, before one exhales. The other person takes us by surprise and often jolts us out of self-complacency and self-contentment, but also introduces us and invites us into a situation of responsibility in which the ego is no longer for itself but for the other. This is declining subjectivity (...) otherwise and in terms of the other. This short article takes as its point of departure a simple incident: one halts or gives way before someone pushing a child's pram. One says, 'after you.' With Levinas and Blanchot, this moment of 'giving way' needs to be phenomenologically frozen in that very moment of giving way, for hesitation is a hesitation in being. 'To be' is a reflexive verb, and existence is already fissured. Into this wound within existence, an other may enter, and provide an exit from ontology to ethics. (shrink)

: What makes us think, and what makes us think as feminists? In seeking to answer these questions, this paper draws on both Deleuze and Guattari's account of the creation of concepts, and feminist thought on feminist thinking, before suggesting with Levinas that our relation to ideas is primarily affective. Via further engagement with Levinas, I argue that it is the relation to the other which provokes and produces thought; models of autonomous theorizing are thereby supplanted by the teaching of (...) the other. (shrink)

Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelug school specifically, promotes a deep skepticism about the ability to know others’ minds. Its scripture is rife with cautionary tales allegorizing and extolling this skepticism in adherents, while claiming a buddha, by contrast, has eradicated this skepticism with their omniscience. I describe a buddha’s purported privileged epistemic access to others’ minds as “double-hiddenness.” On this skepticism, not just what a buddha knows, but if they know it is hidden, making their authority irreputable. I use critical theory (...) to investigate the ramifications of this double hiddenness, demonstrating that the resultant subjectivization brought about by this extreme skepticism—although the product of power—is not merely a type of subjugation, as suggested by Foucault, but also constitutes a robust agency. (shrink)

Designing education policy, curriculum and competences which promote and nourish the values and/or morals believed to underpin democratic culture is both contentious and something which has...

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 paper works with Levinasian thought to ask how principles of responsibility can be engaged for the twenty-first century crisis of climate destabilization, and other matters of injustice and exploitation. A case is made for extending an ethics of responsibility from a human-centered view to include humans as interdependent with nature. After a selective review of responsibility as inaugurating an ontology of otherwise-than-being, consideration is given to the phenomenology of the face-to-face relation and to notions of a teaching relation, to (...) knowledge and to Levinas’ notion of justice, in line with the philosophical and educational interests of this journal. The prospect of society constituted on responsibility is brought to life in a brief reference to Māori society and indigenous thought. An interpretation of quantum theory is also introduced because of its analogies with the inter-related world view of indigenous thought. These all point to relationality which antecedes the ontology of being. While much is made of Levinas’ work on the face, this paper argues that it is in principles of ethics that break with totality, and Levinas’ notions of transcendence and infinity rather than the face per se that enable us to broaden the scope of reference for Levinasian ethics. Levinasian ethics question the stronghold of liberal humanistic goals in educational vision, and open a horizon of the shared destiny of humans and nature—an ‘eco-pedagogy.’ The paper draws these threads together to consider their relevance to education for sustainability. (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)

This essay interprets the work of the German choreographer Pina Bausch with the help of phenomenological examinations by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Heidegger. Pina Bauschs choreography not only shares basic themes like the everyday, the body, and moods with phenomenology, but they also yield similar results in overcoming traditional dualist frameworks. Rather than being an instrument for expressing ideas, the body is in constant exchange with the natural elements, exhibiting vulnerability and passivity. Moods, in turn, are neither subjective (...) nor objective; this also holds for longing, an essential constituent of Pina Bausch's work. Dance theater and phenomenology, each in their unique ways, are capable of acknowledging and accommodating the ambiguity of our human existence. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision (...) an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity. (shrink)

In his essay 'The Scandal of Skepticism', Stanley Cavell discusses aspects of the work of Emmanuel Levinas with a view to understanding how 'philosophical and religious ambitions so apparently different' as his own and those of Levinas can have led to 'phenomenological coincidences so precise'. The present paper explores themes of scepticism and alterity as these emerge in the work of these two increasingly influential philosophers. It shows education to be a sustained preoccupation in their work, crucially related to these (...) guiding themes. In the process it seeks to dispel certain assumptions regarding poststructuralism, on the one hand, and the religious implications of Levinas's thought, on the other. This lays the way for an account of the criticality of human being, of the significance of this for community, and of the demands this makes on education. (shrink)

This essay examines one aspect of the wide-ranging philosophical background of the intellectual and dissident movement for human rights in one-time communist Czechoslovakia. I shall meditate on Jan Patočka 's finite responsibility, Derrida's aporetic emphasis on the infinite dimension of responsibility, and Lévinasian-Dostoyevskyan ethico-existential variations on in/finite responsibility. Havel alludes to hyperbolic ethics in a parenthetical remark on the birth of "Charta 77", the Manifesto for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia. The question before us is this: which dimension of responsibility appears (...) at this birth or, to put it otherwise, what responsibility is born in care for the soul and polis? (shrink)

There is an ongoing discussion concerning personal vs. impersonal considerations in professional care. In this article, three different positions within the ethics of closeness will be discussed. These are: (a) reserving the ethics of closeness for close experienced others, ‘including the experienced Other’, which is Nortvedt's position; (b) trying to bring the distant, non‐experienced others closer, ‘including the Third’; and (c) finally, an examination of whether a perspective of closeness may lead to the exclusion of various groups in need of (...) help, ‘including the Other at the expense of the Third’. These positions are discussed with a view to clarifying some of the challenges that the ethics of closeness faces when it maintains that greater ethical obligation is associated with personal than with impersonal relations, without discussing the terms on which the obligation is based. Key questions that arise for a nurse or other health professional are: If our primary moral responsibility is for those that are close to us, the experienced others, who is to be responsible for those that are outside the established health services, the non‐experienced others? Is it evident that favouring the experienced others is based on legitimate needs? Can a discussion on the legitimate basis of nursing be avoided in questions relating to closeness and priorities? This discussion touches the heart of our discipline. Is a one‐sided perspective of closeness, rejecting moral responsibility for those with whom we have no relationship, a defensible ethical position? (shrink)

This special issue contains papers first presented at a conference that was held 14–16 May 2008 at the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy at the University of Leicester. Each of the papers takes up ideas from the works of Jacques Derrida and seeks to apply these to questions of business, ethics and business ethics. The papers take up quite different parts of Derrida's works, from his work on the animal, narrative and story, the violence of codification and the limits (...) of responsibility to the aporias of decision. As a whole, the papers offer a dangerous gift to business ethics, of which the stakes are here laid bare – if business ethics is to shrug off its philosophical immaturity and take seriously the work of major European thinkers such as Derrida, then many of its assumed categories, concepts and practices will be shown to shudder and tremble, as it becomes possible to demonstrate how they, one by one, unhinge themselves. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to begin to think through the complex interlacing of Levinasian ethics, violence, terror and war. The question driving this essay is: in the midst of the harrowing debris of body parts that followed the synchronised explosions of bombs in a number of London train carriages and a bus, what can possibly remain of the ethical? This question will be examined in the context of what remains unspeakable in the face of such acts of violence. Framed (...) by the authorising rubric of declarations of law—as ‘that which speaks in the language of legislation and promises certainty in the anxious aftermath of the loss of certainty’, and the attendant concerns with the question of the ‘enemy’ —this essay seeks to examine the ‘unspeakable remainder’ of declarations of law, as that which unsettles promises of certainty in the anxious aftermath of a terrorist explosion and its ongoing trauma. In the course of this essay, I proceed to think through the contentious relation between violence and ethics in the context of a Levinasian framework, arguing for a Levinas that challenges and unsettles pietistic views of his ethical philosophy. In deploying the neologism necroethics, I attempt to examine anachronic and necrological violence and its relation to the ethical injunction to own responsibility for the dead. (shrink)

Returning to my monograph of 1996, Subjectivité et alterité dans la philosophie de Emmanuel Lévinas, I intend to illustrate an issue that is central in life and thought in today's world: the possibility that self has of justifying itself before the other. This possibility subtends the constitution of identity in relation to the individual, class, nation, and community. As regards Western thought, all its culture is a justification towards others. Peoples inhabiting the so-called developed world (15% of the world population) (...) still succeed in justifying themselves in the face of peoples inhabiting the underdeveloped world (85% of the world population), with all necessary means. The reason of identity is reason against the other. But for how long can this situation last? At a certain point it will be necessary to answer to the other not only for self but also for the other him/herself. (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)

Many philosophers have argued that psychological time is a fundamental, inherent quality of consciousness that provides continuity and sequence to mental events—enabling memory. And, since memory is consciousness, psychological time enables the individual intentionality of consciousness. Levinas , on the other hand, argues that an individual’s past, in the most original sense, is the past of other. The irreducible alterity of one’s past sets the stage for the other who co-determines the meaning of the past. This paper is about the (...) exploration cultural memory within the context of a Caucasian doctoral student entering into an African-American community during an internship, who finds that cultural memories are remarkably more complicated than the propositional description of historic events. The paper further explores how cultural memory is not a record of “what happened” but a sociolinguistic creative meaning making process. Histories can be contested. Memory, on the other hand, never adheres to the strict true or false dichotomy. Memory is like searching for the Divine, it cannot be found, only revealed in mysterious and small details. Memory, is the intruding of the infinite, creating as an effect the idea of a finite , they are not “representations” of the past nor are they a kind of mnemonic system of subjectivism to mediate all of consciousness. (shrink)

Levinas's ethics has in the last decades exerted a significant influence on Nursing and Caring Science. The core of Levinas's ethics – his analyses of how our subjectivity is established in the ethical encounter with our neighbour or the Other – is applied both to healthcare practice and in the project of building an identity of Nursing and Caring Science. Levinas's analyses are highly abstract and metaphysical, and also non‐normative. Thus, his analyses cannot be applied directly to practical problems and (...) questions. Theorists in Nursing and Caring Science are generally aware of this. Nevertheless, many of them use Levinas's analyses to explore and solve questions of practical and normative character. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas of using Levinas in this manner.The article is divided into two parts. The first part presents some central ideas of Levinas's ethics based on the latter part of his authorship. The main focus is on the radicalism of Levinas's critique of the symbolic order (which includes concepts, categories, knowledge, etc.) – or as he puts it ‘the said’ – as a basis for subjectivity and responsibility. Levinas's notions of saying, anarchy, and singularity accentuate this point of view. These notions refer to conditions in the language, which counteract the symbolic order in the ethical encounter to such an extent that it becomes an incomprehensible. Levinas gives the argumentation a metaphysical frame: The encounter with the incomprehensible is an encounter with the Holy, which is not the ontological God, but a metaphysical desire. It is a mystery as to what this means, and herein lies possibly the main challenge when using Levinas's ethics in science and research: How to maintain the radicalism of his critique of the symbolic order when this is to be communicated in a scientific context that expects clarification of statements and ideas? The second part of the article explores this question by examining how some theorists use Levinas's ethics on questions and problems in the area of healthcare and Nursing and Caring Science. The focus is especially on the theorists' reception and use of the just mentioned notions. The study reveals that these theorists to a large extent transform Levinas's ethics according to their own approaches, with the result that his ethics loses its critical radicalism. Thus, I question the reason why they use Levinas. (shrink)

This article addresses Emmanuel Levinas's re-conceptualization of Jewish identity by examining his response to a question he himself poses: “In which sense do we need a Jewish science?” First, I attend to Levinas's critique of modern science of Judaism, particularly as it was understood in the critical approaches of the nineteenth-century school of thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Next, I detail Levinas's own constructive proposal that would, in his words, “enlarge the science of Judaism.” He retrieved classical textual sources that modern (...) Judaism had neglected, while at the same time he enlarged Judaism's relevance beyond a historical community by turning to phenomenology as a rigorous science. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of this new science of Judaism for Jewish ethics and identity in a post-war period. (shrink)

This paper considers Derrida's principal works on the animal as comprising a summons to the consuming animal, the human subject. It summarizes, firstly, Derrida's accusation that the entire Western philosophic tradition is guilty of a particularly pernicious disavowal of its repudiation of the animal. This disavowal underpins what he calls the 'carnophallogocentric order' that privileges the virile male adult as a transcendental subject. The paper shows how he calls this line of argument into question by challenging the purity of the (...) predicates that are presumed to secure human self-presence, such as capacity of response. This questioning is extended to consider marketing discourse in relation to the animal. In the second part of the paper, Derrida's arguments from the points of view of 'animalséance' (which here is referred to as 'animalmalaise') and 'limitography' are compared and contrasted with those of animal ethicists, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, and with Emmanuel Levinas. Finally, some implications are discussed for what it might mean to eat well. (shrink)

Derrida's reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit provides an excellent opportunity to assess the ethical and political value of each of their works. Derrida uncovers a slippage in Heidegger during the 1930s in which Heidegger ?forgot to forget? the dangers of the ?spirit? he had disavowed in Being and Time. This reveals a substantial early investment in the National Socialist project from which Heidegger never adequately recovered. Even in his attempts to distance himself from his Nazi past, Heidegger was still (...) caught up in a metaphysical, though not a racial?biological, gesture and while Heidegger may have written at the end of philosophy, it was an end never come. One cannot stop reading Heidegger on this account. Rather, one is all the more compelled to read him, and after him Derrida. In Derrida's reading of Heidegger, we see the ways in which Heidegger opened up for Derrida an alternative space for the ethical ? in ?The call of Being? before any decision ? in the obligation to the other. However, this ethical possibility of deconstruction is only a space of undecideabiliry and questioning, never a space for political comportment; that is, it is ontological?existential, not ontical?existentiell. In this, while deconstruction opens up a space for ethics, it is never to guide, only to expose. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with what seem to be standard practices of at least some organizations that use models in their ad campaigns. These organizations know that many of their models have had drug problems but refuse either to tolerate this or to help them. Some organizations have, allegedly in the name of a responsibility for the health of their customers, rather opted for a firm condemnation of the practices in which models such as Kate Moss apparently engage. This raises (...) questions about hypocrisy. The paper uses Levinas's concept of the face critically to describe what might be going on in the conflict between Moss and some of the companies she worked for. Moss is arguably understood by these companies as a role model who should not engage with drugs or street life. Against these more or less patronizing tendencies, the paper claims that it is not so much the face but processes of defacement that should trouble us from a moral perspective. The face, it is maintained, is not only ethical but also has a materiality. In opposition to what is maintained by at least some scholars of Levinas, art, literature and history have alerted us over and over again that the face is anything but indelible. Some examples from art show us the versatility and vulnerability of the face. The gossip and hype about what came to be known as the Kate Moss affair stands, it is argued, in a long misogynic tradition of defacement. (shrink)

The current heated debate on the deteriorating status of the university raises a range of pertinent questions, including: What role can the humanities play in culture today in the face of the crisis of higher education? To answer this question, the authors begin by problematizing the relationship between culture, the humanities, and education. In the second part of the paper, they examine the changing role of the humanities in conjunction with the understandings of culture, and outline three salient ways in (...) which culture is conceived of today. Subsequently, they focus on the loss of the dominant status that culture suffered when everyday life was discovered in modernity. In the third part, they argue that everyday life, or rather social representations of everyday life and its practices, are currently becoming the chief criterion for assessing culture, the humanities, and education. However, everyday life remains complex both in theoretical conceptualizations and in research observations. For example, everyday life harbors a range of risks and anxieties which are veiled by its own obviousness and reinforced by socialization. The authors conclude that, given this, everyday life in democratic societies calls for the work of understanding, support, affirmation, and criticism, in which the humanities can retain their superior status. In the fourth part, the authors discuss non-consensual democracy, critical community, and the pedagogy of asylum as the forms of organization and action that promote an auspicious interconnection of culture, the humanities, and education. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’s doubts about the ethical value of artistic beauty have been widely acknowledged by the vast majority of Levinas’s commentators. However, though it is true that in “Reality and Its Shadow” Levinas persistently rebukes artistic beauty for its nonethicality, it is undeniable that he at least upholds the value of artistic criticism and modern literature. In this article I intend to relate Levinas’s exploration of the possibility of spiritual–ethical teaching in literature to Immanuel Kant’s reflections on the relation between (...) the feeling of beauty, that of sublimity, and sensible feeling in his third Critique. This up-close comparative examination fosters understanding of Levinas’s religious and philosophical approach to the sublime elements in some literary works, especially those of Fyodor Dostoevsky. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In reference to the article by Hanan Alexander ‘Education in nonviolence’, the text takes up the issue of reading Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic texts for the philosophy of education. It intends to positively answer the question about the value and potential of such inspiration, focusing on concepts from two of Levinas’s Talmudic readings. The first part of the text is devoted to the characteristics of the intellectual output of the thinker. The second part analyses and discusses Alexander’s commentary on one (...) of Levinas’s Talmudic readings, ‘Toward the Other’. Alexander aims to show the specificity of the idea of education in nonviolence, heavily indebted to the Jewish tradition and thought. The third part of the text is an extension of Alexander’s comment, focuses on another Talmudic reading by Levinas, ‘Cities of Refuge’, and aims to outline the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum. (shrink)

There is a rich tradition of inquiry in consumer research into how collective consumption manifests in various forms and contexts. While this literature has shown how group cohesion prescribes ethical and moral positions, our study explores how ethicality can arise from consumers and their relations in a more emergent fashion. To do so, we present a Levinasian perspective on consumer ethics through a focus on Restaurant Day, a global food carnival that is organized by consumers themselves. Our ethnographic findings highlight (...) a non-individualistic way of approaching ethical subjectivity that translates into acts of catering to the needs of other people and the subversion of extant legislation by foregrounding personal responsibility. These findings show that while consumer gatherings provide participants a license to temporarily subvert existing roles, they also allow the possibility of ethical autonomy when the mundane rules of city life are renegotiated. These sensibilities also create ‘ethical surplus’, which is an affective excess of togetherness. In the Levinasian register, Restaurant Day thus acts as an inarticulable ‘remainder’—a trace of the possibility of being able to live otherwise alongside one another in city contexts. (shrink)