Who is my neighbor? The temptation of ethical distancing

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we examine twentieth century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's understanding of the ethical subject and the import his ideas have for contemporary subjective and interpersonal life. Applying Levinas's insight that there is a tendency among human beings to not only neglect the needs of others but to build systems that justify that neglect—to create space and build walls in order to diminish the fact that we are always implicated, ever tied to the needs of others—we explore the social mechanisms that enable such ethical distancing. Ethical distancing, we argue, is the pernicious assumption that distance absolves us, that if only we shelter ourselves from others then we will remain impervious to their cries for help, immune to their need for our care. This assumption, we show, is behind much of our Western self‐understanding. Beginning with the picture of human subjectivity portrayed in Plato's myth of the ring of Gyges, we go on to show that the understanding of the isolated, self‐enclosed subject persists to this day.