| Chapter 1: | Why Is It Hard to Talk about Justice? |
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On the one hand, he stresses the need to be ethical. On the other hand, he depicts this demand in such a way that he cannot specify any norms for determining ethical conduct. Their further worry is that this tension is unbearable; we should mistrust a theory of ethics that makes it impossible to specify any ethical norms whatsoever. My ultimate goal, again, is to show that Levinas offers suggestions as to what norms or ideals should guide ethical conduct. Yet much of this book is devoted to a more modest claim: I want to show that he can say substantive things on this issue. My goal in this chapter is to begin to motivate this approach by clarifying the charges against Levinas.
2. Is Levinas a Nuisance?
Several philosophers have recently argued that Levinas’s philosophy is marred by his failure to develop useful, action-guiding ethical principles or procedures. Levinas talks a lot about ethical responsibility and the role ethical considerations should play in philosophy. He claims that “ethics is first philosophy,” and he repeatedly alleges that in each of our lives, we undergo exceptional moments, face-to-face encounters with the other, in which we come to realize that we are “infinitely responsible” for each and every person. Yet he never indicates how to put his view into practice; he never indicates what normative ethics would best express his analysis of the relation to the other. Should we not be troubled by this reticence? Does it not reflect poorly on his claims about ethics that he never recommends policies for determining ethical conduct? Does it not say something about the infeasibility of his ethic of “unlimited care”1 that he never indicates how to practice it?
Richard Rorty has given the sternest formulation of this criticism: “The notion of ‘infinite responsibility’ formulated by Emmanuel Levinas,” he observes, “may be useful to us in our individual quests for private perfection. When we take up our public personalities, however, the infinite and the unrepresentable are merely nuisances.”2 Reading Levinas may be personally rewarding, but his work is useless, a “nuisance,” when it comes to the practical task of proposing concrete policies and institutions for regulating civic conduct. Simon Critchley expresses similar worries.