The anarchy of responsibility: alterity as a vehicle for self-representation (an ethical obligation demanded or owed).

Loumansky, Amanda ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4950-1207 (2009) The anarchy of responsibility: alterity as a vehicle for self-representation (an ethical obligation demanded or owed). Liverpool Law Review, 30 (3) . pp. 173-188. ISSN 0144-932X [Article] (doi:10.1007/s10991-010-9068-7)

Abstract

This paper explores who, in the Levinasian sense, is the ethical subject. Central to Levinas’s philosophy, is the priority he accords to the ethical encounter with the other that precedes all thought for, or of, oneself. It is in the face of the other (‘alterity’) that one discerns the source of all ethics; an ethics that obliterates all competing claims based on self interest because it eschews all demands for reciprocity. The face of the other commands us to respond unconditionally and in so doing provides the opportunity for a moral existence. Is to speak as the other an inversion of Levinas’s philosophy? Is not the authentic voice of alterity one that is obsessed with the needs of the other and not of the self, the obligations that the self owes to the other and not those owed in return. I argue that to become the voice of the other is to act unethically in a Levinasian sense and thus betray her otherness, whilst recognising that she is my other and it is my response to her that matters.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

0Downloads

6 month trend

416Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.