Commanding, Giving, Vulnerable: What is the Normative Standing of the Other in Levinas

In Michael Fagenblat & Melis Erdur (eds.), Levinas and Analytic Philosophy: Second-Person Normativity and the Moral Life. London: Routledge (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

At the heart of Levinas’s work is the apparently simple idea that through the encounter with another person, we are forced to give up our self-concern and take heed of the ethical relation between us. But, while simple on the surface, when one tries to characterize it in more detail, it can be hard to fit together the various ways in which Levinas talks about this relation and to identify precisely what he took its normative structure to be, as this is described in a number of apparently different ways, that are not obviously compatible or equivalent, such as “command,” “call,” “summons,” “demand,” and so on. In this chapter, we intend to focus on these different characterizations and show what makes them different while also endeavoring to find a way in which Levinas’s conception may nonetheless be fitted together into a coherent account of the face-to-face encounter that is at the heart of his ethics. We will begin by considering the different normative terms used to characterize the encounter in that text and show how they are conceptually distinct from one another; we will then offer a way to read Levinas’s position to nonetheless show how these different normative relations can be fitted together into a stable position.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Giving Practical Reasons.David Enoch - 2011 - Philosophers' Imprint 11.
Understanding standing: permission to deflect reasons.Ori J. Herstein - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (12):3109-3132.
Extravagant Generosity.Christopher Cohoon - 2019 - Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 23 (2):5-27.
Levinas and Shinran: the power of the other.Rein Raud - 2018 - Asian Philosophy 28 (4):332-347.
Levinas separates the man from the nonman, using hunger, enjoyment and anxiety to illuminate their relationship.Angela Hirst - 2007 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 3 (1):159-190.
Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other.Deborah Achtenberg - 2014 - Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
The Reason-Giving Force of Requests.Peter Https://Orcidorg629X Schaber - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2):431-442.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-11-03

Downloads
140 (#123,001)

6 months
60 (#63,726)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

James H. P. Lewis
Cardiff University
Robert Stern
University of Sheffield

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references