The Library
The inseparability of ethics and politics : rethinking the third in Emmanuel Levinas
Tools
Fagan, Madeleine (2009) The inseparability of ethics and politics : rethinking the third in Emmanuel Levinas. Contemporary Political Theory, Vol.8 (No.1). pp. 5-22. doi:10.1057/cpt.2008.20 ISSN 1470-8914.
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2008.20
Abstract
Emmanuel Levinas is variously used to provide a conceptualization of ethics from which to deduce an ethical politics, an account of the movement from ethics to politics or an exhortation to continually interrupt politics in the name of ethics. What all these approaches share is a reading of Levinas where ethics and politics are separated and ethics is prioritized. My argument in this article is that if the concept of the Third is given due weight in Levinas's work then this separation and prioritization is untenable. The reading advanced foregrounds the Third and in doing so demonstrates that the unproblematized ‘ethics’ often drawn from Levinas is more complex than might initially appear. I argue that if the Third is taken seriously then Levinas's work leads to a requirement to think in terms of the ethico-political, so complicating any attempt to deduce politics from ethics which draws on this.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Contemporary Political Theory | ||||
Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. | ||||
ISSN: | 1470-8914 | ||||
Official Date: | 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Volume: | Vol.8 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 5-22 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1057/cpt.2008.20 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |