Learning from the other: Levinas on ethics, discourse and language

ABSTRACT

Interpreters of Emmanuel Levinas often note the central role he gives to language in his account of ethical discourse. Levinas himself puts the matter quite strongly, claiming, for example, that ‘[a]bsolute difference … is established only by language’. This aspect of Levinas’s thought has seemed to many readers to rule out the possibility of ethical relations with non-human animals. My aim in this article is to present an alternative reading of Levinas that avoids this implication. I argue that the core emphasis of Levinas’s account lies not on language, but on our capacity to learn from the other. We do this through what I term the second look: we respect [re-specere] the other by letting her teach us, by giving her our undivided attention, by looking at her again. Learning from the other, whether through language or otherwise, creates an ethical conversation that ‘puts in common a world hitherto mine’.

KEYWORDS:

• Levinas
• ethics
• discourse
• language
• teaching
• animals

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented as a faculty seminar in the Philosophy Department at the University of Queensland in March 2020. I am grateful to everyone who participated in the discussion. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The following abbreviations are used to refer to Levinas’s texts throughout this article: Levinas (1969) (TI); Levinas (1998) (OB); Levinas (2006) (EN).

2 See, for example, Llewelyn (1991); Clark (1997); Derrida (2008); Plant (2011); Atterton (2011).

3 Atterton and Wright (2019), p xi.

4 Perpich (2008), p 150.

5 Perpich (2008), p 151.

6 Perpich (2008), pp 169–172.

7 Calarco (2010). See also Calarco (2019).

8 Calarco (2019), p 133.

9 Lingis (2019), p 17.

10 Lingis (2019), pp 22–26.

11 Lyotard (1988), p 128.

12 Compare Crowe (2011); Crowe and Lee (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Crowe

Professor Jonathan Crowe is Professor of Law and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Law at Bond University.