EMMANUEL LEVINAS’ ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY AS A FOUNDATION FOR ETHICAL RELATION

Abstract

In the contemporary society, more ever than before,humanity is an exigent need of the ethics of responsibility. This article presents EmmanuelLevinas' ethics of responsibility as a foundation for ethical relation. Ethics of responsibility essentially calls for morality, which creates a room for the other and indispensable to eschewing the "I" ascendency. Everyone is morally responsible for his or her neighbour, who is "the Other" either particular or "the third Party." To be human is to be responsible. "The Other" is a key concept in the vocabulary of Levinas and the starting point of his philosophy of ethics. Ethics of responsibility commands the human race to respect the alterity, dignity, rights, and otherness of the Otherthrough ethical relation despite his or her physical dynamics.It is a responsibility that postulates asymmetrical sociality, face-to-face loving encounter, ethical substitution and ethical justice as a paramount to ethical relation in contemporary broken society.