ABSTRACT
Introduction The thought of philosopher and Judaic scholar Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95) is indeed reverberating throughout much of the world, but its influence is more openly acknowledged within the humanities than the social sciences. Emmanuel Levinas is most often referred to as a philosopher of ethics or as a philosopher of the ‘other’, whose writings fit within the phenomenological tradition – yet call into question the phenomenological method – of Husserl and Heidegger. His writings are well known to those interested in French philosophy, phenomenology, Judaic studies or literary theory, but Levinas’s ideas have remained in the margins of international political thought. Emmanuel Levinas is an important philosophical and political thinker, not just because he points us to the importance of ethics and reveals it as the site of meaning and knowledge, but because there is a moral force to his writings. Levinas provides a phenomenological analysis of the interhuman relation in which he finds the preoriginal moment of responsibility and ethics, and then moves beyond this analysis to challenge philosophy, and politics, to be more ethical, more responsible. By showing us that the state and its institutions are actually beholden to justice and morality, and hence to the ethical, Levinas causes us to rethink the meaning of the political. Entering into a dialogue with Levinas within international politics requires that we critically examine the meaning of philosophy, politics, ethics and
Judaism within Levinas’s texts, and explore the relationship between these concepts as well as the tensions within them. Recent discussions of the implications of Levinas’s ideas for international relations have pointed to the problem of politicising Levinas’s ethics, and to Levinas’s support for the state (particularly the state of Israel), concluding that Levinas’s politics are not sufficiently ethical or ‘Levinasian’. Thus my aim in this chapter will be to explore these two problems through a focus on what I see as two key tensions in Levinas’s writings. The first concerns the meaning of the self-other ethical encounter in the presence of others – or the move from ethics to politics – in order to ascertain whether the ethical can indeed function within the political. Can the ethical subject move from the individual to the level of the institution and the state or other community? A possible answer to this question, I will argue, can be found in Levinas’s Judaic writings, wherein we also find the second tension concerning the ideal versus real state of Israel. Levinas’s Talmudic texts point us to an articulation of an alternative political project, a project realised, according to Levinas, through the establishment of the state of Israel. If the actual state of Israel fails to live up to Levinas’s idealised state, what are the implications for his writings on the formation of the just state? Is the ‘state beyond the state’ – the ideal state – only possible if Judaism is found at its core, or is a just state possible outside the teachings of the Torah? What, precisely, is the relationship between Judaism and the ethical-political project envisioned by Levinas? Understanding the relationship between the key elements within these tensions will enable us to assess the implications of Levinas’s thought for political theory and politics.
