Is a Levinasian theory of justice possible? A response to Murray

Abstract

In his essay "The Dialogical Prioritization of Calls: Toward a Communicative Model of Justice," Jeffrey Murray (2003) searches for a theory of justice that is informed by Levinas' phenomenological ethics. I would not say a theory that is "founded" on Levinas' ethics. As we will see, Levinas' phenomenological antihegemonic, anti-metaphysical views are strongly anti-foundationalist and deeply suspicious of such redoubtable western traditions as Cartesian foundationalism and Kantian transcendentalist rationalism. Nor is it the case that Levinas' phenomenology favors a sentiment-based discursive analysis of human behavior and language. Levinas' views are not congenial to 20 century Anglo-American non-cognitivist views of ethics either. All this adumbrates poorly for the prospects of developing a Levinasian ethics, to say nothing of a theory of justice. David Hume, one of the most astute thinkers who ever lived, engraved the prolegomena to ethical theories of all times when he quizzed as to whether it is reason or sentiment that underpins and underwrites the subject matter of ethical reasoning. Indeed, with the whole cornucopia of ethical theories (consequentialism, principlism, deontology, non-cognitivism, virtue ethics, and post-colonial and post-modernist ethics) the various approaches gravitate toward either the one or the other; Kantian and teleological variants of rationalism, on the one hand, or sentimentbased theories of ethics on the other. Consequently, views like Levinas', which writhe in discomfiture in the presence of both reason and presumably generalizable sentiment, would be difficult, if not impossible, to fit into the rigors of an ethical-theoretical construct (*1). At a deeper level, Levinas' root suspicion of theory as such, on the grounds that it is a hegemonic imposition, preempts theoretical development. An ethical theory must, at a minimum, account for the phenomena ethics purports to study and recommend courses of action to ordinary, or even extra-ordinary human beings. It is in the latter sense that even Nietzsche has an ethical theory intended for the few peaks of humanity who will serve as ancestors to the Overman. Of course, there are today, many anti-theory constructions. This makes Levinas views especially timely. We should, however, guard against a confusion. What is known today by the neologistic term "metaethics" examines the conditions under