Commanding, giving, vulnerable: what is the normative standing of the other in levinas?

Lewis, James H. P. and Stern, Robert 2019. Commanding, giving, vulnerable: what is the normative standing of the other in levinas? Fagenblat, Michael and Erdur, Malies, eds. Levinas and Analytic Philosophy, Routledge, pp. 101-122. (10.4324/9780429462580-5)

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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.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9780429462580
Funders:	White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 October 2023
Date of Acceptance:	11 October 2018
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2023 15:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162928

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