Exceptional justice, violent proximity

Jesse Sims

pp. 217-239

in: Desmond Manderson (ed), Essays on Levinas and law, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

War and the political assume a proximity in Levinas’s thought that were it recognized would prove extremely uncomfortable for liberal readers accustomed to keeping war — as the alleged pathology of civility — separate from peace. The proximity of war and politics is a thought that brings Levinas closer to the thought of Clausewitz and Carl Schmitt than to the liberal ethical theory issued from Kant.1

Cited authors

Levinas Emmanuel

Kant Immanuel

Schmitt Carl