Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;In the present study we examine Levinas' conception of ethics in connection with the theme of justice. We do so by focussing on Levinas' relationship with Kant, construed as a relationship of distance and proximity. This ambiguity is shown to be paradigmatic of Levinas' relation to the tradition of philosophy as a whole, a tradition more or less faithful to is Parmenidean lineage in which the category of unity is considered ontologically privileged. Levinas' thinking is presented as a departure from Kant and the tradition in the measure that the ethical relation is interpreted otherwise than in terms of understanding conforming to the idealist model of the transcendental unity of apperception. It evinces its allegiance to the latter, on the other hand, to the extent that the ethical relation reveals an inalienable attachment to the problematic of justice, understood as a concomitant commitment to the universal order of reason and ontology. Our overall intent will be to establish Levinas' claim, seldom recognized by commentators and critics alike, that ethics attached to justice serves to found the order of reason and ontology, notwithstanding the inappropriateness of a purely transcendental reading of this claim insofar as the relation of founding here confounds any straightforward logical or chronological ordering of terms or events