The scope of ethics according to Levinas: from love to human community

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Hamedeh Rastaei
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Al-e Taha Institute, Tehran, Iran
10.30470/phm.2024.2017555.2478
Abstract
The subject of this article is a research on the scope of ethics from the perspective of Levinas. The main problem of Levinas’s philosophy is “ethics”. As far as we can call him a philosopher of ethics. Of course, the ethics considered by Levinas is different from conventional ethics. By passing through Kant’s autonomy, Levinas considers ethics as other-discipline and emphasizes the infinite asymmetric responsibility towards the “Other”. From some of Levinas’s expressions, it may seem that ethics is only in a romantic relationship with the “Other”. But with the introduction of the “third person” in his philosophy, the ethical relationship extends to the sphere of society and politics. The entry of the third person coincides with the birth of a new responsibility and forces the subject to compare duties and responsibilities, the result of which is justice. This removes the scope of ethics from the society of two-person romantic package and expands ethics to the plural human society and politics.
Keywords
ethics
other
Levinas
society
justice
politics
Subjects
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Philosophical Meditations
Volume 15, Issue 35 - Serial Number 35
September 2025
Pages 95-117