ENACTING LEVINAS’S INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY AS AN ETHICO-POLITICAL COMPROMISE

Julio A Andrade

doi:10.21814/eps.2.1.96

Abstract

Levinas’s work does not offer us an ethical theory but seeks rather todescribe a pre-originary ethical encounter with the other. Within this face-to-faceencounter with the other, my subjectivity is held hostage because of an originaryasymmetry between us. This ethical asymmetry produces an infinite responsibilityto and for the other, in order that the singularity of the other be preserved. In orderto moderate such a demanding position Levinas introduces the third party whorestores justice by permitting ethical calculation. This marks a move from ethics topolitics. Nonetheless, there remains a lacuna between ethics and politics. I arguefor a reading of Levinas’s claim that the third party is an incessant correction ofthe asymmetry of proximity in order to posit infinite responsibility as thecompromise of ethics with politics. I discuss some implications for business ethics,in particular CSR, in light of these findings.

Highlights

Perpich (2008; 3), following Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), describes the Enlightenment’s moral question ‘what ought I to do?’ and Ancient Ethics’ moral questions “How should one live?’ and ‘What is the best life for human beings?’, as the “end points of a continuum along which normative ethical enquiry may run, depending on whether it is individual actions or the shape of a whole life that is most at issue.” As a straightforward answer to these ethical questions, Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of an infinite responsibility to, and for the other makes little sense
Levinas does not seek to outline an ethical system or offer any normative guidelines, but rather the essence of the ethical relation in general, or what Critchley (1999; 3) has called the “primordial ethical experience”. This primordial ethical experience is to be found in the face-to-face encounter with the other, wherein the other holds my subjectivity hostage because of an originary asymmetry between us (Levinas 1969)
This summons to responsibility by the face just means that my subjectivity is hostage to the other: “the I is a privilege and an election [by the other]” (1969; 245), which is in turn, one more formulation of Levinas’s definition of ethics as “the calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the other”(43)

Summary

0.Introduction

Perpich (2008; 3), following Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), describes the Enlightenment’s moral question ‘what ought I to do?’ and Ancient Ethics’ moral questions “How should one live?’ and ‘What is the best life for human beings?’, as the “end points of a continuum along which normative ethical enquiry may run, depending on whether it is individual actions or the shape of a whole life that is most at issue.” As a straightforward answer to these ethical questions, Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of an infinite responsibility to, and for the other makes little sense. Levinas (2001; 48) says that the face “is an appeal or an imperative given to your responsibility: to encounter a face is straightaway to hear a demand and an order” This summons to responsibility by the face just means that my subjectivity is hostage to the other: “the I is a privilege and an election [by the other]” (1969; 245), which is in turn, one more formulation of Levinas’s definition of ethics as “the calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the other”(43). The law sets certain consequences out of the way” (ibid.) It is, important to note that this compromise with politics does not mean that Levinas gives up his “utopian and, for an I, inhuman conception”; he still holds that “subjectivity as such is initially hostage; it answers to the point of expiating for others” (100). I explore the parameters of the intervening practicalities and expand on the Levinasian ethico-politico compromise

The third party and ethico-politico compromise

Some implications for Business Ethics4

Conclusion