Morality – General – Obligation to the Other

The relationship to the other is the most important ethical encounter – even in the presence of another we must not abandon the other.

Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence, contemporaneousness, assembling order, thematisatlon, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system arid thence also a Co presence on an equal footing as before a court of justice. (OR: 157)

If the entry of the third party triggers the emergence of consciousness, it is one founded in proximity. Without proximity would be mere enjoyment and suffering, utterly egotistical and hence pointless, fatal, lonely and inhuman. The reversal of the ethical and ontological is to he found in these simple lines.

Levinas is careful to specify that the entry of the third is not necessarily empirically present, the 'other is from the first, the brother [sic] of all other men' (08: 157). Sensibility prior to cognition must contain an inherent movement beyond itself, in the direction of consciousness as transition towards proto-abstractive abilities if that thesis can be sustained. Levinas's logic at this point is extremely opaque when he argues that weighing, thought, objectification' depends on a decree which betrays the Illeity of the Other (OR: 158). lllelty understood in one way is the sheer sensed presence, the himness [sic] of the Others presence, prior to arty demanding of shibholeths, identification as one of mine or theirs, before all questions, before language as the said, before any discernment as benign stranger or malevolent alien. The absurdity of traumatised asylum-seekers having to resister their request within a few hours in a language and bureaucratic system they cannot understand sustains the more general point (Derrida, 2002a:' I cannot discuss here the 'gratingly patriarchal' (Sandford, 2002: 147) tone of Levinas's treatment, exclusion and subordination of the feminine nor the full complexities surrounding Illeity.

The emergence of justice betrays Illelty, it is a violence perpetrated on the one-for-another relationship of proximity, but simultaneously it opens a different relation to 'her', that of justice. I am now responsible to her, still not as understood as abstraction, but simultaneously as a member of society and as citizen, The betrayal has cooled the immediacy of proximity, but still informs it with its 'warmth'. The movement to abstraction, to questioning informed by the demand for justice, signals the origins (arcS) of society, legally secured rights and specified responsibilities or duties. The scales of justice as comparative weighing up of competing claims demand representation; the Saying becomes and must be fixed in the said as book. law and science. Philosophy's time has cone.

Derrida's beautiful Archive Fever is a profound meditation on this necessity and the dangers of ethical betrayal on the part of those with the authority (archons) who control access to and interpretation of the book as written law (Derrida, 1996). This 'violent' betrayal of ethical proximity necessarily persists. Ethics is entwined 'before' the law emerges. Betrayal occurs because, as conscious subjects, we become concerned with justice. As citizens we have become subject to, or always potentially capable of, being hauled 'before' the law. These themes are developed in Derrida's seminal essay 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority" (1990).

Justice is given meaning because it is always entwined with and can draw breath from proximity. 'The one for the other of proximity is not a deforming abstraction. In it justice is shown from the first ... It is born from ... the one-for-the-other, signification' (08: 159). Proximity is the 'centre of gravitation' around which the edifice of being, the state, politics and techniques revolve. It is important that 'society' for Levirias does not mean our ethnos, ir notion, us'. The state is always 'on the verge of integrating into a we, which congeals both me and my neighbor (GB: 161). Thus, 'justice remains justice only in a society where there is no distinction between those close and those far off, but in which there also remains the impossibility of passing by the closest' (OR: 139). There the guest has no responsibility. I only have it for and to her. Our hospitable laws should welcome her. The motif of the ethical encounter in I.evinas's late work has been explored. Its dependence on materiality and sensibility has been established. The creature as sensibility was distinguished from self and ego- An examination of saying, proximity, pain, worked towards understanding Levinas's conception of the psyche, singular responsibility and being for others. The source and point of justice were traced. The ethical encounter is one of almost absolute risk. Few take it consciously. Is Levinas convincing when arguing that it happens to us all as sensate creatures? Was Levinas whistling in the wind, merely offering hope when lacing the appalling horrors of the age? Paul and Anton showed that some act both responsibly and consciously!

Our existence is inherently violent-we must address this by being for the other.

W.L. van der Merwe, professor of philosophy at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, “The Ethics of Responsibility”, http://hdl.handle.net/10019/49

to life. The survived victim is the vivid symbol of all people — despite our own victimisation or innocence, we are responsible for our neighbour beyond choice or excuse. As Pascal stated in his Pensées, one’s “being in the world” or “place in the sun” is the beginning of usurpation of the whole earth (Levinas 1999: 130). Thus, one is violent and murderous toward all others whom one displaces by the simple act of taking up a place. And so it is not the suffering of the other per se that gives rise to the ethics of responsibility, but this capacity of the self both to harm and to “be-for” the other. As we have seen, this responsibility is already embedded in the “neutrality” of simply maintaining one’s own space and merely facing the other, being exposed to his alterity and infinity. Though the other may not actually be suffering, I discover myself in the nakedness of his face as one who can hurt him or simply choose to live only for myself. Not “being-for-the-other” results in hunger, poverty, and ultimately killing (Levinas 1985: 96-7). Hence, denying the humane within ourselves manifests these concrete examples of the “flesh of life” and ultimately points to a responsibility prior to any action or neglect on the part of the individual.

Levinas’s distinction between our suffering and the suffering of other is crucial-it’s crucial we take steps to alleviate the suffering of others

Edelglass, professor philosophy Colby, 2006

William Edelglass, professor of philosophy at Colby College, 10/26/2006, “Levinas on Suffering and Compassion”, http://www.springerlink.com/content/r626p602m2r7kg02/ [Luke]

With the end of theodicy, the end of theories that subsume the singular suffering of the Other into systems of knowledge, Levinas finds a grounding for ethics in the compassionate exposure to the suffering Other. The end of theodicy poses the question of the value and truth of morality, the question which inspires much of Levinas's philosophy, if not his project as a whole.

Echoing the well-known sentence that begins Totality and Infinity, in 'Useless Suffering' Levinas writes, 'The philosophical problem, then, that is posed by the useless pain that appears in its fundamental malignancy through the events of the twentieth century, concerns the meaning that religiosity, but also the human morality of goodness, can continue to have

after the end of theodicy' (US99). With the end of theodicy, Levinas hears a commandment 'that now demands even more from the resources of the I in each one of us, and from its suffering inspired by the suffering of the other, from its compassion which is a non-useless suffering (or love), which is no longer suffering 'for nothing,' and immediately has meaning' (US 100).

In the 'ethical perspective of the interhuman' suffering can be meaningful when it is the compassionate suffering for the Other: 'In this perspective,' Levinas writes, 'there is a radical difference between the suffering in the other, where it is unforgivable to me, solicits me and calls me, and suffering in me, my own experience of suffering, whose constitutional or colagenital uselessness can take on a meaning, the only one of which suffering is capable, in becoming a suffering for the suffering (inexorable though it may be) of someone else' (US94). 15

Germany/France Economy Advantage

Distributing people across Europe takes pressure of Germany and France

James Kanter, EU ministers approve plan to distribute refugees, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/world/europe/european-union-ministers-migrants-refugees.html?_r=0, DOA: 9-22-15

The idea behind the plan — backed by Germany and France, the dominant powers in Europe — is to relieve the pressure on front-line nations like Italy and Greece, which migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa have been flooding. Germany has estimated that it will give refuge to as many as one million people this year. The dispute has highlighted a political divide between wealthier countries like Germany and Sweden, which have emphasized multiculturalism and humanitarian aid, and poorer countries from the former Communist bloc, like Hungary and Slovakia, that are alarmed at the economic and social challenges of absorbing so many migrants.

Should Act on Ethics

Human survival requires acting with a conscious

Ketels, 1996

[Violet, associate professor of English at Temple University, where she formerly directed the Intellectual Heritage Program, THE HOLOCAUST: REMEMBERING FOR THE FUTURE: "Havel to the Castle!" The Power of the Word, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, November, 1996, 548 Annals 45, Lexis] /Wyo-MB

Even though, as Americans, we have not experienced "by fire, hunger and the sword" n19 the terrible disasters in war overtaking other human beings on their home ground, we know the consequences of human hospitality to evil. We know about human perfidy: the chasm that separates proclaiming virtue from acting decently. Even those of us trained to linguistic skepticism and the relativity of moral judgment can grasp the verity in the stark warning, "If something exists in one place, it will exist everywhere." n20 That the dreadful something warned against continues to exist anywhere should fill us with an inextinguishable yearning to do something. Our impotence to action against the brutality of mass slaughter shames us. We have the historical record to ransack for precedent and corollaries--letters, documents, testaments, books--written words that would even "preserve their validity in the eyes of a man threatened with instant death." n21 The truths gleanable from the record of totalitarian barbarism cited in them may be common knowledge; they are by no means commonly acknowledged. n22 They appear in print upon many a page; they have not yet--still not yet--sufficiently penetrated human consciousness. Herein lies the supreme lesson for intellectuals, those who have the projective power to grasp what is not yet evident to the general human consciousness: it is possible to bring down totalitarian regimes either by violence or by a gradual transformation of human consciousness; it is not possible to bring them down "if we ignore them, make excuses for them, yield to them or accept their way of playing the game" n23 in order to avoid violence. The history of the gentle revolutions of Poland, Hungary, and [*51] Czechoslovakia suggests that those revolutions would not have happened at all, and certainly not bloodlessly, without the moral engagement and political activism of intellectuals in those besieged cultures. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and peasants joined in the final efforts to defeat the totalitarian regimes that collapsed in 1989. Still, it was the intellectuals, during decades when they repeatedly risked careers, freedom, and their very lives, often in dangerous solitary challenges to power, who formed the unifying consensus, developed the liberating philosophy, wrote the rallying cries, framed the politics, mobilized the will and energies of disparate groups, and literally took to the streets to lead nonviolent protests that became revolutions. The most profound insights into this process that gradually penetrated social consciousness sufficiently to make revolution possible can be read in the role Vaclav Havel played before and during Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution. As George Steiner reflects, while "the mystery of creative and analytic genius . . . is given to the very few," others can be "woken to its presence and exposed to its demands." n24 Havel possesses that rare creative and analytic genius. We see it in the spaciousness of his moral vision for the future, distilled from the crucible of personal suffering and observation; in his poet's ability to translate both experience and vision into language that comes as close as possible to truth and survives translation across cultures; in the compelling force of his personal heroism. Characteristically, Havel raises local experience to universal relevance. "If today's planetary civilization has any hope of survival," he begins, "that hope lies chiefly in what we understand as the human spirit." He continues: If we don't wish to destroy ourselves in national, religious or political discord; if we don't wish to find our world with twice its current population, half of it dying of hunger; if we don't wish to kill ourselves with ballistic missiles armed with atomic warheads or eliminate ourselves with bacteria specially cultivated for the purpose; if we don't wish to see some people go desperately hungry while others throw tons of wheat into the ocean; if we don't wish to suffocate in the global greenhouse we are heating up for ourselves or to be burned by radiation leaking through holes we have made in the ozone; if we don't wish to exhaust the nonrenewable, mineral resources of this planet, without which we cannot survive; if, in short, we don't wish any of this to happen, then we must--as humanity, as people, as conscious beings with spirit, mind and a sense of responsibility--somehow come to our senses. n25 Somehow we must come together in "a kind of general mobilization of human consciousness, of the human mind and spirit, human responsibility, human reason." n26

We should extend hospitality to stop oppression

Fasching 95 1995 (Darrell J. Fasching, “Response to Peter Haas,” The Ellul Forum, January) KD

Finally, let me say that I have little patience for the argument that narratives of hospitality andhuman dignity (for after all, to offer hospitality to the stranger is to recognize the dignity of precisely theone who does not share my story) are exclusively Western and a form of liberal Westernimperialism through which we are trying to impose our morality on other societies. First of all, in The Ethical Challenge, I show that Buddhism is the bearer of the tradition of hospitalityto the stranger and human dignity in Asia (i.e., welcoming the outcast) in much the same way that Judaism is in the West But secondly, wherever you go around the world it is not the persecuted and oppressed who are saying that the ethics of human dignity and human rights are a form of cultural imperialism. On the contrary, this is an argument you find promoted by those in power who are doing the persecuting and oppressing.I see no reason why I should be co-opted by that shoddy little game into legitimating the suffering imposed on my brothers and sisters in every culture around the world. Our ethical task is to unmask the bad faith of all such ideologies that legitimate violence under the guise of cultural diversity.

The ethical and the political are not separated-politics is the ethical relationship between more than one Other. Infusing Levinasian ethics into politics will create a more ethical, less violent state.

Simmons, associate prof social sciences ASU, 2003

William Paul Simmons, associate professor of social sciences at Arizona State University, 2003, “An-Archy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’s Political Thought”

Therefore, Levinas distinguishes the ethical relationship with the Other from justice which involves three or more people.2° The an-archical relationship with the Other is the pre-linguistic world of the saying. Language is unnecessary to respond to the Other. The Third, however, demands an explanation. "In its frankness it [language] refuses the clandestinity of love, where it loses its frankness and meaning and turns into laughter or cooing. The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other-.language is justice."2' In order to judge between Others, they must be co-present, or synchronous. Thus, the Third also opens up the world of knowledge and consciousness. "Here is the hour and birthplace of the question: a demand for justice! Here is the obligation to compare unique and incomparable others; here is the hour of knowledge and, then, of the objectivity beyond or on the hither side of the nudity of the face; here is the hour of consciousness and intentionality."22

Finally, the Third introduces the realm of politics. The ego's infinite respon-

sibility must be extended to all humanity, no matter how far off. Ethics must be universalized and institutionalized to affect the others. "To the extent that someone else's Face brings us in relation with a third party, My metaphysical relation to the Other is transformed into a We, and works toward a State, institutions and laws which form the source of universality."

Before delving into the relationship between ethics and politics, several implications of Levinas's move from the Other to the Third need to be addressed. First, does the ego still have an infinite responsibility for the Other? In Otherwise than Being, Levinas defines justice as "the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question?'24 However, in the same work, he also claims that "in no way is justice a degradation of obsession, a degeneration of the for-the-other, a diminution, a limitation of anarchic responsibility.us How can these conflicting statements be resolved? Either justice limits the responsibility for the Other or it does not. The contradiction is resolved by considering, once again, Levinas's theoretical emphasis on the separation between the saying and the said. Ethics is found in the an-archical realm of the saying, while justice is a part of the totalizing realm of the said. Ethics and justice exist in both relation and separation. Neither can be reduced to the other. Thus, justice cannot diminish the infinite responsibility for the Other the ego remains infinitely, asymmetrically, and concretely responsible for the Other. This responsibility always maintains its potency. However, the ego is also invariably transported by the Third into the realm of the said. The ego must weigh its obligations. It is not possible to respond infinitely to all Others. The original demand for an infinite responsibility remains, but it cannot be fulfilled. Ethics must be universalized, but in attempting to do so, the ego has already reneged on its responsibility for the Other. Thus, Levinas's peculiar formulation; justice is un-ethical and violent "Only justice can wipe it [ethical responsibility] away by bringing this giving-oneself to my neighbor under measure, or moderating it by thinking in relation to the third and the fourth, who are also my 'others,' but justice is already the first violence."

War is inevitable in the current utilitarian politics-the only escape from world war is embracing ethics

Xiangchen, Professor of Philosophy at Fudan, 2008

Sun Xiangchen, Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University, China, “Emmanuel Levinas and the Critique of Modern Political Philosophy” http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121573478/HTMLSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

According to Hobbes's logic, there is initially a natural state of war. In order to escape violent death, people want to enter into political society, and finally morality is established to guarantee peace and stability within this political framework. This logic is opposed by Lévinas, who holds to a logic according to which we have no possibility of escaping war. For Lévinas, war is a normal state of the Western world, and the Second World War is the necessary result of the Western political tradition. We can even say that it resulted from traditional Western philosophy, which has a possessive orientation, as the extreme expression of the Western ontological tradition. Even in ancient Greece, Heraclitus had already held that being reveals itself as war.

The modern world shows this tendency to war more strongly than ever, but the root of this tendency is still in the ancient ontological tradition, which pursues sameness and totality, implying some kind of violence. I think that this is the ultimate reason why Lévinas is prepared to struggle with the whole Western philosophical tradition. The defect of this tradition is not, as claimed by Heidegger, in the oblivion of Being, but is in the oblivion of the other, or rather, in the suppression of the other. Hegel seemed to pay more attention to the other than other philosophers in the Western tradition, but in fact what Hegel does is to transform the other into his own wholeness. Lévinas's position is totally different, opposing this tradition from Greece to Heidegger, including the Hegelian attitude to the other, by placing not ontology but ethics as first philosophy. From this point of view, he also opposes the structure of modern society by claiming that society should be based on the ethical and not the political. If politics is the basis of the whole society, Lévinas's question in the preface to Totality and Infinity, "whether we are not duped by morality"1 would be crucial. Because war, which is behind modern politics, suspends the strength of morality, Hobbes held that morality could be a cheat. For political reasons, the sovereign could even burn all the books of geometry, which Hobbes regards as the sole gift from God.2 Because this is precisely what Lévinas cannot accept, he must seek another foundation for society in order to limit the logic of politics and violence within politics. Lévinas wants to establish a prepolitical ethics, which can overturn the logic of war underlying the political. Lévinas thinks that modern political theory is based on individualism and calculation, by which modern society is built up. If so, there is no chance to avoid violence and war. From the viewpoint of Hobbes, there are only two kinds of peace: Cold peace, in which people are scared of each other and keep a terrible balance, and the peace of sovereignty, in which there is one sovereignty with the rest of the population as subjects. We can imagine that the background of this theory of peace is war. From Hobbes to utilitarianism, the inner logic of calculation is same. By this calculation, peace is temporary, utilitarian, and only the interval between wars.

Regarding the question of whether the basis of society is political or ethical, Lévinas's answer is clear: It is definitely ethical. When Lévinas tries to resolve the tension between the political and the ethical, he does not rest on the political, like modern philosophers. He seeks to justify a prepolitical ethical life-world to serve as the foundation of the political. This is what Lévinas has done in Totality and Infinity. He appeals to other resource of thought in the world, such as Jewish tradition, although he does not refer to it directly. He considers that the only real peace is a kind of messianic peace:

Morality will oppose politics in history and will have gone beyond the functions of prudence or the canons of the beautiful to proclaim itself unconditional and universal when the eschatology of messianic peace will have come to superpose itself upon the ontology of war.3

The State is the beginning of all violence-not helping those who aren’t “its own” ignores responsibility for the other and is the root cause of all violence.

Aronowicz, prof Judaism Franklin and Marshall, 2006

Annette Aronowicz, professor of Judaic studies at Franklin and Marshall College, Summer 2006, “Levinas and Politics” http://66.102.1.104/scholar?q=cache:5L5lnjhcUSgJ:scholar.google.com/+levinas%2Bholocaust%2Bpolitics&hl=en

What remains after so much bloodshed and tears shed in the name of immortal principles is individual sacrifice, which, amidst the dialectical rebounds of justice and all its contradictory aboutfaces, without any hesitation finds a straight and sure way (1990: 29). Once again, we have a very violent reality, “the cruelty inherent in rational order (and

perhaps simply in Order)” says Levinas (1990: 29). Countering this is the act of protection and mercy extended from one to the other. This is not to suggest that Levinas’ solution to the problem of violence lies simply in the individual’s act of responsibility. It is neither that simple nor that simplistic. In ‘Judaism and revolution’, a very complex commentary dealing with the relationship of the Jewish tradition and the State, Levinas makes clear that the State itself is responsible for guaranteeing conditions that permit for the fulfillment of the human (Levinas 1990: 99). Yet the State claims a universalism that is deceptive, for while it attempts to protect the individual person, it limits that protection to its own and thus divides the world into an ‘us and them’, quelling the responsibility of one to the other, beyond any distinctions whatsoever. The Jewish tradition’s universalism, on the other hand, does not recognize limits to responsibility for the other person. It thus introduces a wedge between the Jewish people and the State, for the latter cannot limit the responsibility of the former. As such, the Jewish tradition always signals a loyalty beyond the State, and propels political activity in two directions. The first is in the direction of care for the most vulnerable members within it, setting the standard by which the State offers guarantees against dehumanization (Levinas 1990: 99-100). The second is in refusing to identify the good with a particular State, thus preventing the State from turning into an object of idolatry. Levinas warns, however, that even a

revolutionary movement whose aim is to overthrow a hopelessly corrupt government can turn into a mirror image of the violence it contests, dividing the world into us and them just as much. A revolution always risks the very thing it is opposing. This does not mean that revolution is never justified but once again, we are left, as our only recourse, vigilance against abuses, rather than a once and for all transformation: Revolutionary action is first of all the action of the isolated man who plans revolution not only in danger but also in the agony of conscience. In the agony of conscience that risks making revolution impossible: for it is not only a question of seizing the evil-doer but also of not making the innocent suffer (Levinas 1990:

110).

This recognition of violence creates an infinite responsibility for us to push for justice regardless of the consequences.

Smith, dept phil Berry, 03

Dr. Michael Smith, Depts of Religion and Philosophy at Berry College, “Emmanuel Levinas's Ethics of Responsibility," Mike Ryan Lecture Series, Kennesaw State College, October 7, 2003 (http://www.kennesaw.edu/clubs/psa/pdfs/Smith_2003_PSA.pdf) (GENDER MODIFIED)

One of the most surprising aspects of Levinas’s ethics—perhaps “meta-ethics,” or better yet “proto-ethics,” would be a preferable term, since Levinas’s philosophical work is really a revamping of philosophy that replaces ontology by ethics: his “ethics” is not simply layered onto thinking-as-usual—one of the most surprising aspects of this protoethics, then, is that there is no parity between my situation and yours from an ethical standpoint. You are always better than me. I am responsible, not only for my transgressions, but for yours as well! There are two aspects or stages of Levinas’s ethical thought: my relation to you (as if you were the only other person in the world) and my relation to you seen in relation to the other of you, my other. Your other may have conflicting claims, so that I am put in the position of comparing incomparables, to the extent that each person is a world. From the relation of me to my other, you, love is enough. To realize the intention of love in a broader sociality, justice is necessary. Justice, the harsh name of love, must realize love’s intentions, and in doing so may lose sight of its original intent, become alienated into a self-serving institution. This risk, in Levinas’s view, is one that must be taken. 8 Here Levinas seldom develops his thought along the lines of strict reasoning. One senses that the stays of being are relaxed and we would have no possible means of directing our thought beyond this point without a certain “inspiration.” Knowledge is no longer sought after: it is inescapable. We are the “hostage” of the other. No discussion, even as brief a one as this, can be complete without some mention of the face. This is a term that Levinas elevates to status of a philosopheme, a term endowed with a specific philosophical role. The face does not refer to the plasticity of a visual form in Levinas, nor is it just the look of the other, since the face speaks in Levinas. It is perhaps the phenomenal basis, or as Levinas sometimes says, the “mise-enscène” or theatrical “production” of the appearance of the person, and it is the way in which we may become aware of God. I quote: “The face puts into question the sufficiency of my identity as an I, it compels me to an infinite responsibility.”4 It is by substitution for the other, or by taking on the fate of the other, that I embrace a responsibility for which I never signed up. Here Levinas diverges from the usual notion of responsibility, since the ethical meaning of responsibility is bound up with the notion of freedom. We are not to imagine that Levinas is involved in some sort of Skinnerian “beyond freedom,” but Levinas does enter a realm that is distinct from the dialectic of promise and promise-keeping and freedom such as we find in the thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre, for example. This taking up of responsibility is not a virtue (virtue in the sense of strength), nor is it a weakness (as suggested by the late Michel de Certeau), but precisely the carrying out of the mitzvah, or commandment of God. We should not expect gratitude, for this would entangle us in an endless dialectic of quid pro quos. (It is interesting to note in passing that Levinas praises the institution of money, despite its possible abuses, because if frees us from having to have a personal relation with each person with whom we deal in life. We can carry on without this burden.) If we should expect anything, it is rather ingratitude. There is an impersonal—transpersonal?—sense in which action, good conduct, is nothing more nor less than a going beyond the bog of being. What is ethical behavior? It is (I quote) “the original goodness of [hu]man toward the other in which, in an ethical dis-inter-estedness—word of God—the inter-ested effort of brute being persevering in its being is interrupted.”5 This “ethics of ethics,” as it has been termed (by Jacques Derrida in his critical essay on Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics” in 1964), is not only so called because it does not prescribe any specific acts, but also because Levinas’s ethics of responsibility cannot, as the philosopher himself states, be preached. Is it because humility (which is not listed among the virtues by Aristotle) permeates Levinas’s manner? No doubt, but it is also the case for what could be called a technical reason. We noted that the I-Thou relation in Levinas is not symmetrical. The other is always greater than I, and my responsibility cannot be transferred to anyone else. This responsibility extends to and includes responsibility for the evil perpetrated against me! In commenting on Philippe Nemo’s book Job and the Excess of Evil, Levinas ventures a surprising interpretation of a well-known biblical verse of the book of Job (Job 38: 4). “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” The usual interpretation is that God is reprimanding the creature for questioning His ways, and perhaps also implying that if man knew the whole story a theodicy would be possible—and this would be seen as being the best of all possible worlds after all. Levinas: Can one not hear in this “Where were you?” a statement of deficiency (constat de carence) that cannot have meaning unless the humanity of man is fraternally bound up with creation, that is, responsible for that which has been neither his I (son moi) nor his work? Might this solidarity and this responsibility for any and all—which cannot be without pain—be spirit itself?6 A remarkable interpretation indeed, worthy of the Talmudic spirit of interpretation Levinas studied and admired so ardently. I liken the observation to the following extraordinary remark made by a child to his mother, spontaneously metaphysical: “Mother, when did we have me?” This retrogressive movement of being is very close to the sense of retrogressive and all-encompassing responsibility Levinas finds in this passage from Job. Neither his “I” nor his work. “I” in the sense of his ego, that limited “moi” that must, in Levinas’s view, be transcended by the ethical self toward responsibility for the other. 

Obligation solves war and catastrophe

Hanley, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola, 2007

Catriona Hanley, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola College, “Levinas on Peace and War”, www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id [Luke]

Justice provokes justice; injustice perpetrates injustice. On what grounds do we argue for peace in a time when the resort to violence is increasingly tolerated and even championed by both individuals and governments?

Do we need an ethical foundation for the practice of justice beyond that of the recognition that the rights extended to the other should match those I expect to enjoy? Is the continued affirmation of the sameness of the other not enough to ensure that my principled outrage at abuses be grounded? This form of universality may provide a ground – but so far it has not led to true peace. It has not led to an equal co-recognition of subjects, since the equality was always only theoretical, and outside the real context of historical suffering. It has led to war, to the imposition of my interests over others, since it begins with the assumption that you are me, and the forgetting that you are precisely not me, and in your uniqueness, inassimilable to me. The calculation of what we, who are equal but wounded, owe to each other always seems to devolve to the logic of revenge – or worse, “pre-emptive” action. You are me – then you might do to me what I could do to you, or what I have in mind to do to you – so I had better do it first. And we are all wounded by history, by circumstance, by origin, by experience, by the very particularity, which makes

each of us who we uniquely are. My wounds, my suffering is not universal, but intimately particular.

We must constantly interrupt the political with the ethical-exposing the other’s face in all available venues is key to creating a more ethical state.

Jordaan, prof Poli Sci at Stellenbosch, 2006, we reject the gendered language

Eduard Jordaan, Professor of Political Science at Stellenbosch, 2006, “Responsibility, Indifference, and Global Poverty: A Levinasian Perspective”

In light of the above preliminaries, every self has a responsibility to bring about a society that maintains and treats the other as complexly and as sensitively as possible. Since much injustice and cruelty are committed unwittingly and unintentionally, a political strategy that emphasizes and describes human complexity will help us to become aware of the (unnoticed) ways in which we have neglected and oppressed the other, and of all the ways in which he should be protected and cared for. However, an element is missing, that of activating our concern for the other. For Levinas, it is imperative that the political be forever interrupted by the ethical; the question is how? Awakening us to our responsibility for the other is the second function of the proposed strategy, which is intended to describe and emphasize human complexity to the greatest extent possible.

Throughout this study, authors in the cosmopolitan-communitarian debate have been criticized for suppressing various aspects of the ethical relation with the other, which has resulted in us being left in good conscience, despite having failed the global other. At the start of this chapter it was argued that the cosmopolitan strategy to convince us of our guilt and responsibility for the global poor is counterproductive given that its emphasis on human equality numbs that which incites us to responsibility for the other, namely glimpses of him as inexpressibly different from everyone else, unique. So, it seems as though our task is to confront the world with the ‘face’ of the other, to accuse the world of having left the other to quite literally ‘die alone’. It is imperative that we “expose” the ‘skins’ of complacent selves to “wounds and outrage,” that we elicit a “suffering for the suffering of the other” (CPP 146). In order to bring the world into proximity to the other, to expose third parties to his ‘face,’ it is claimed that actions aimed at conveying the other in as great a complexity as possible can help us do this. Human complexity/difference/dissimilarity is therefore not important for its own sake (and therefore to be maintained at all costs), but insofar as it insinuates the uniqueness of the other.

Of course, this ‘strategy’ immediately has to confront the objection that all representations of the other betray his alterity and suppress his otherness (see Broody, 2001). Granting this, the claim made here is that there are representations (and positionings) of the other and articulations of his situation that are more suggestive of his otherness and therefore of my ethical responsibility for him. That this is so is suggested by the opposite, namely an extreme form of negating the other’s alterity, his de-humanisation through racist and stereotyped representations whereby the way is paved for social and political disregard, maltreatment, or ‘disciplining’. Though one cannot be sure of the direction of causality, there seems to be a direct correlation between the fullness with which people are viewed and the extent of the concern we have for them. Is it not generally the case that the people we are most indifferent towards are also those most absent from our imaginations, those persons/groups we know least about? Returning to the group of people I am most concerned with in this study, the global poor, is it not the case that we generally know very little about tem, compared to say, Americans? And, for example, is this not part of the reason that while the world reacted with great sympathy for the victims of the September 11th attacks in which approximately three thousand people died, we do not pay much attention to the fact that every day approximately 30,000 children die from preventable illnesses, which translates into more than 10 million deaths per year (UNDP 2003: 5; World Bank, 2004)? It is my contention that there is a relationship between the fullness with which we view people and the concern we have for them, and a large part of the reason is that a fuller conception of the other person is a stronger suggestion of his altery and the ethical command that issues from the fact of his otherness.

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