Abstract

This dissertation will examine the conception justice and its application in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. I will argue that Levinasian justice derives from his distinctive metaphysic of separation and vision of asymmetrical intersubjectivity. The transition from ethics to justice, from the immediate ethical response to the suffering of another human being to the application of fairness and equity in the political arena, poses a logical and ethical dilemma for Levinas. It appears that the transition either "betrays" the ethical relation through instrumentalization, or strands the workings of justice in pragmatic paralysis. In addressing this dilemma, Levinas rejects the dialectical model of social transformation in favor of a diachronic model that maintains a paradoxical yet practicable tension between ethics and justice. ;I will argue that Levinas calls upon the Judaic thematics of the exteriority of otherness , moral command , and covenantal responsibility in describing the ethical relation and the obligations it lays upon the subject. In doing so, he transgresses central tenets of recognition, agential autonomy, and the privilege of reason that are the backbone of Enlightenment and modern philosophical justice theories. Levinas's ethical challenge to "Greek" philosophy seeks to uncover and disrupt totalizing modalities of thought which theoretically conceal the material reality of human suffering, and have intellectually funded murderous political totalitarianisms in the modern world. By diachronically yoking the philosophical endeavor into the service of the "pre-original" interhuman relation and its concomitant duties of ethical responsibility, Levinas claims to cleanse and resuscitate the tools necessary for the construction of social justice. ;In light of the Levinasian critique and ethical reconstitution of the elements of justice theory, the final chapter of this dissertation returns to the transition from ethics to justice. By drawing an analogy with the functioning of Jewish law, halakah, I argue that Levinas's ethics give rise to a fragile yet practicable model of social transformation, wherein the subject is called and enabled to actively pursue justice in the commons